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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / Science and Technology => Topic started by: motorollin on May 20, 2007, 11:22:50 AM
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If teleportation ever becomes possible, I find it most likely that it will work like in Star Trek:
1. The traveller's molecular structure is converted in to a pattern or algorithm
2. The pattern or algorithm is sent to the destination
3. The pattern or algorithm is used to reconstruct the traveller's body from a stock of matter
However, this poses several problems:
1. What happens to the traveller's original body at the source? Is it broken down in to stock matter? Is this equivalent to killing the original person?
2. Once the biomass is recreated at the destination, the nervous system would have no electrical activity. Thus the heart would not beat, leading to brain death. Would a medical team at the destination be able to ¨kick start¨ the traveller's nervous system with an electrical current in order to revive them?
3. The body at the destination would effectively be a clone of the original body. So would this be the same person? Since they have a biologically and chemically identical body and brain it is reasonable to assume that they will think and behave in the same way as the original person, and if memories are stored chemically and this can be reproduced then they will even share the memories of the original. But is this enough for the traveller's consciousness to be preserved? Will this be exactly the same person that entered the transporter, or would it effectively be a new person? This is really a philosophical question: are we just a bundle of nerves, tissues and chemicals, or are we more than the sum of our parts? Do we have something more (the soul?) which would not survive the process of the body being broken down and recreated?
Discuss :-)
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moto
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I don't have the answers but as a Star Trek fan I sure like your points and questions :popcorn:
BTW It reminds me of another question... "Could you go back in time and shoot your mother before you were born?" Anyone solved that one yet? :popcorn:
A4000 Mad
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Nothing will be like it is in Star Trek, which is cringingly lame in just about every technological prediction it has made. You can forgive the original series for a lot of its naivety, but the ones that were made subsequently...
Proof: Do you really think a race which has achieved molecular level replication, FTL travel, artificial gravity, matter teleportation would be using touch-screen computer terminals? ;-)
I find either wormhole generation or something like Greg Bear's "descriptor theory" based teleportation far more likely for a species that has a decent grasp of cosmology / quantum mechanics.
-edit-
Which is nice, because it completely disposes with your original problem. Neither solution implies any required deconstruction/information transmission/reconstruction of the teleported matter. The closest you get to that is Bear's descriptor theory approach in which every particle in the body to be moved is momentarily made congruent with one under explicit quantum control and simply have their positional data "edited" in place. The universe doesn't care, provided the net change in energy is zero... He uses the mechanism in "Moving Mars" to, erm, well... move Mars. To an entirely different star system.
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@A4000_Mad
If you subscribe to the notion that the future is a divergent set of possible outcomes based on the present, it might be possible to rationalise the past in the same way.
That would open up a possible solution. If you were to go back in time and kill an ancestor, it may only be one possible alternate history in which it happend. There could be a near infinite number of alternate histories in which it didn't. A congruent history convergent with it up until the present would still exist, otherwise identical except you didn't kill your ancestor and that one would become the originator for your existence in the present, ready to go back in time and eliminate yet another....
Maybe...:lol:
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@Karlos
Ok, well forget that the idea came from Star Trek's theory of transportation. As a scientist, how would you answer the issues listed above?
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moto
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It is a difficult question. First of all, if the original person is not destroyed before their clone is reconstructed at the receiving end, they are not the same person anymore. Any overlap conscious existence immediately renders them different people. The clone would have the memory of arriving at the destination, the original would not. They diverge from that moment onward.
If the process physically destroys the original prior to the construction of the clone, it's harder to say. The clone would have the conscious memory of the original and would likely regard him/herself as the same person, despite the obvious interruption of physical existence.
A persons identity is strongly bound to their past experiences, which in turn exists only as memory for that individual. If you think about it, when you woke up this morning, your sole connection to the past is only a memory. You have no conscious recollection of the intervening time asleep. So, from that perspective, a teleported person has a sense of continuity that we are likely comfortable with.
However, you do have the additional knowledge that your body is the same one that got into bed and went to sleep. I would suggest that this knowledge, often overlooked, is also subliminally fundamental to our sense of continuity. A person teleporting according to your proposed method, fully aware of the way in which it operates, would not have this reassurance.
In my opinion, a clone, no matter how perfect, is not the original entity. Without continuity of their physical and mental existence, they would cease to be the same individual.
Worse still, I would imagine the cloned entity would eventually develop some form of neuroses deriving from the knowledge of the destruction of their original self.
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Worse still, I would imagine the cloned entity would eventually develop some form of neuroses deriving from the knowledge of the destruction of their original self.
Having said that, I'm not sure. After all, there are people alive that have received organs from other people. What psycological effects occur when you know that the heart in your chest was actually someone elses?
In these situations, people probably overcome any qualms they may have via the knowledge that without it, they'd probably die.
Still, the teleport situation is different. It's your whole body that is being replaced. None of it is the original one you remember...
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Imho, teleportation through 'scan, destruct, transmit, recreate' is a dead end.
It seems that our consciousness holds its roots in quantum effects and these would have to be scanned with no (or very little) margin to error in order to be recreated. Quantum mechanics make this impossible, so we'd have to use quantum entanglement to copy the information to the new entity - doing this to a complete (living!) human body would be too complex to be actually done. Since various parts of the body keep moving all the time (heart, blood, electron activity, ...), the scan/entanglement would have to happen instantaneously.
PS: Just read up a bit on 'descriptor theory' - just manipulating some 'global variables' in the universe seems intriguing.
But I'm afraid that theory defies some physical laws... E.g. moving a mass without interaction with the rest of the universe (mass-wise) changes the center of gravity, which is always maintained otherwise.
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Karlos wrote:
if the original person is not destroyed before their clone is reconstructed at the receiving end, they are not the same person anymore
How do you know that? How do you know that an exact duplicate of the same brain physiology and chemical layout would not result in an identical, or even shared, consciousness?
Karlos wrote:
If the process physically destroys the original prior to the construction of the clone, it's harder to say. The clone would have the conscious memory of the original and would likely regard him/herself as the same person, despite the obvious interruption of physical existence
I agree here. I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here as I don't really buy the concept of the soul. But don't you think it's possible that destroying the original body would effectively kill any non-corporeal element of the person's existence? (just like if they died). The duplicate might end up a soulless being.
Karlos wrote:
I would imagine the cloned entity would eventually develop some form of neuroses deriving from the knowledge of the destruction of their original self
I'm not sure about that. Assuming that their body was *exactly* as it was before, and they retained all of their memories and personality traits, then their sense of continuity of the self would be preserved (as in your sleep example). I don't think the destruction of their old body would be as much of an issue for most people as you think since they don't 'lose' anything. But again, we just don't know.
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moto
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Hum,
QT happens all the time, naturally.
The particles that make up your body can sometimes disappear to somewhere else...
Over time, it would be possible to visit everywhere in the universe - bit by bit... \o/
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[geek]
Your original description of the star trek teleportation method is inaccurate.
The original is not scanned, transmitted, recreated from stock matter and the original destroyed. The body is scanned, matter is converted into energy, energy is transmitted, and the same energy (in whatever form star trek boffs decided it exists) is then reconverted into matter at the other end. Consequently there is no cloning, no need to "kick start" the body (as the original matter is recreated in its original energy state.
Hence such jolly adventures as Lt Barclay's awareness of creatures in the energy stream in the eposode Realm of Fear (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realm_of_Fear_(TNG_episode)), which would not be (and I use the word hesitantly) feasible if it was just an algorithm which was being transmitted.
[/geek]
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motorollin wrote:
Karlos wrote:
if the original person is not destroyed before their clone is reconstructed at the receiving end, they are not the same person anymore
How do you know that? How do you know that an exact duplicate of the same brain physiology and chemical layout would not result in an identical, or even shared, consciousness?
This is the famous no-clone theorem in quantum information theory, which states that you cannot create perfect copies of arbitrary and unknown quantum states. And it's all Heisenberg's fault that we cannot know exactly what all quantum states in a given object are. Ergo, by definition the clone cannot be an exact replica of the person going into the transporter.
This, by the way, makes no assumption whether what we refer to as 'consciousness' is actually a quantum or classical phenomenon. It has been argued on quite good grounds that it is classical, and that means you can copy it. But there would be tiny, tiny changes in its 'structure' which could eventually destroy it, much like Mandelbrot's butterfly hypothesis.
Karlos wrote:
I would imagine the cloned entity would eventually develop some form of neuroses deriving from the knowledge of the destruction of their original self
I'm not sure about that. Assuming that their body was *exactly* as it was before, and they retained all of their memories and personality traits, then their sense of continuity of the self would be preserved (as in your sleep example). I don't think the destruction of their old body would be as much of an issue for most people as you think since they don't 'lose' anything. But again, we just don't know.
I'm in agreement with Karlos here, not because of the knowledge of having been destructed (although it could be a factor), but simply because there is no such thing as an exact copy. That means you invite (mathematical) chaos in with open arms, and I'm not at all convinced at the moment that the human mind is capable of quelling the neurological storms which stem from such artifical causes. We'll be able to answer this question a whole lot better once IBM's BlueBrain project is well underway.
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Did Nikola Tesla work on teleportation? They say so in 'The Prestige'.
JaX
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JaXanim wrote:
Did Nikola Tesla work on teleportation? They say so in 'The Prestige'.
Not as far as I know, but he did blow up a big chunk of Siberia one time :lol: .
-Tig
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Cymric wrote:
This is the famous no-clone theorem in quantum information theory, which states that you cannot create perfect copies of arbitrary and unknown quantum states. And it's all Heisenberg's fault that we cannot know exactly what all quantum states in a given object are. Ergo, by definition the clone cannot be an exact replica of the person going into the transporter.
This may not be entirely true. Of course, due to Heisenberg, you can't measure the quantum state of the body to be transported in order to duplicate it elsewhere. But it may be possible to clone its exact state onto an entangled set of matter (Heisenberg was talking about measuring; as long as you don't actually know the state, it might be transportable).
However, as mentioned earlier, I think this method is far too complex to be feasable with an entire human body, no matter what technology.
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This may not be entirely true. Of course, due to Heisenberg, you can't measure the quantum state of the body to be transported in order to duplicate it elsewhere. But it may be possible to clone its exact state onto an entangled set of matter (Heisenberg was talking about measuring; as long as you don't actually know the state, it might be transportable).
Quite. I forgot that there is a difference between copying with knowing and copying without knowing.
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How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
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moto
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This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement) is one of the (many) weird concepts of quantum mechanics. Today it's only possible on a particle level, though just recently some scientists have managed it with a cloud of atoms. I don't actually claim to understand it, but it's pretty interesting. :-D
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motorollin wrote:
How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
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moto
How can you believe in a God without knowing it's state?
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CannonFodder wrote:
motorollin wrote:
How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
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moto
How can you believe in a God without knowing it's state?
:idea:
Maybe one day, we'll be able to transport god!
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
CannonFodder wrote:
motorollin wrote:
How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
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moto
How can you believe in a God without knowing it's state?
:idea:
Maybe one day, we'll be able to transport god!
Maybe we already can.
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CannonFodder wrote:
motorollin wrote:
How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
How can you believe in a God without knowing it's state?
I don't. But somebody who does would argue that he is evident through his works. However, I don't think this is entirely relevant. We're talking about making a copy of a living, physical being, not belief in a spiritual deity.
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moto
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motorollin wrote:
I don't. But somebody who does would argue that he is evident through his works.
I do and I don't.
However, I don't think this is entirely relevant. We're talking about making a copy of a living, physical being, not belief in a spiritual deity.
I disagree, it depends on how deep one goes into their understanding of of the metaphysical.
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CannonFodder wrote:
I do and I don't.
Do you mean that you do believe in God but you don't argue his existence in that way?
CannonFodder wrote:
However, I don't think this is entirely relevant. We're talking about making a copy of a living, physical being, not belief in a spiritual deity.
I disagree, it depends on how deep one goes into their understanding of of the metaphysical.
If you're talking about the physical structure of an object then I don't think it's a matter of metaphysics. The argument was that you can copy something without knowing its structure, not whether that object exists or not.
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moto
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motorollin wrote:
CannonFodder wrote:
I do and I don't.
Do you mean that you do believe in God but you don't argue his existence in that way?
Yes.
CannonFodder wrote:
However, I don't think this is entirely relevant. We're talking about making a copy of a living, physical being, not belief in a spiritual deity.
I disagree, it depends on how deep one goes into their understanding of of the metaphysical.
If you're talking about the physical structure of an object then I don't think it's a matter of metaphysics. The argument was that you can copy something without knowing its structure, not whether that object exists or not.
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moto
Now then, step back and put the Judaeo-Christian model of "God" to one side for a moment (It's irrelevant whether you believe in it, but you grew up here so thats the model you either accept or in your case reject).
Now consider how some people are "joined" by some "unknown bond", like twins for example.
Ponder on why for a bit.
Then ponder on my comment of "Maybe we already can." in relation to "moving God".
I could go into further detail and mash your head up with my own thoughts but I'm at work atm.
Basically, the thoughts most people have when stoned or on mushrooms I have when clean. ;-)
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CannonFodder wrote:
Basically, the thoughts most people have when stoned or on mushrooms I have when clean. ;-)
Must must be quite inconvenient :lol:
I don't fancy an existential crisis right now so I won't think too hard about your comments. I'll leave it until I'm a bit more chirpy :-)
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moto
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How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
Easy, make sure whatever it is implements the following:
class Cloneable {
public:
virtual Cloneable* clone() = 0;
virtual ~Cloneable() {}
};
and leave it up to the thing itself to worry about how it is copied ;-)
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Karlos you're such a geek :lol: :-P But I thought your post was funny, so I suppose that makes me one too...
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moto
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Your signature said as much already ;-)
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motorollin wrote:
Karlos wrote:
if the original person is not destroyed before their clone is reconstructed at the receiving end, they are not the same person anymore
...
I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here as I don't really buy the concept of the soul.
Well, fo me "soul" = "consciousness"
motorollin wrote:
But don't you think it's possible that destroying the original body would effectively kill any non-corporeal element of the person's existence? (just like if they died). The duplicate might end up a soulless being.
If really "soul" = "conscious" and if "an exact duplicate of the same brain physiology and chemical layout results in an identical, or even shared, consciousness", I would say the duplicated being should still have its soul, provided it had one before the duplication...
motorollin wrote:
Karlos wrote:
I would imagine the cloned entity would eventually develop some form of neuroses deriving from the knowledge of the destruction of their original self
I'm not sure about that. Assuming that their body was *exactly* as it was before, and they retained all of their memories and personality traits, then their sense of continuity of the self would be preserved (as in your sleep example). I don't think the destruction of their old body would be as much of an issue for most people as you think since they don't 'lose' anything. But again, we just don't know.
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moto
Hmmmm - I think of it like of an backup of an HD.
Once you have your backup, you can destroy the original machine and restore the backup on a new, identical one (identical to avoid hassle with the HW drivers).
Provided that the backup was O.K., I would not expect any loss of data...
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Boot_WB wrote:
[geek]
Your original description of the star trek teleportation method is inaccurate.
The original is not scanned, transmitted, recreated from stock matter and the original destroyed. The body is scanned, matter is converted into energy, energy is transmitted, and the same energy (in whatever form star trek boffs decided it exists) is then reconverted into matter at the other end. Consequently there is no cloning, no need to "kick start" the body (as the original matter is recreated in its original energy state.
...
[/geek]
In one of Stephen Hawking's books I read that one can look at matter as "energie, that has been slowed down below the speed of light".
If one succeeded to exceed the speed of light, the matter of his body would be transformed to energy at the very same moment he exceeds the speed of light.
In this context it might be interesting to read into the Heim theory (sorry - German only) (http://www.terra-energetic.com/Quantenfeldtheorie_Burkhard-Heim/Quantenfeldtheorie.htm) (Burkhard Heim, German physician, 1925 –2001):
"The enhanced uniform quantum field theory of Burkhard Heim
1.
Scientists like Einstein assumed non-material dimensions already long ago.
Since about 20 years this assumption is seen as secured by observation and conclusions.
It has been proven mathematically for the first time by the German physician Burkhard Heim (1925 - 2001; Wikipedia: Burkhard Heim (engl.) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim)).
2.
The cognitions of the existence of informational spaces, so called "Hyperspaces", and the existence of physical spaces, so called reference spaces, as well as the consecutive explanations of the Heim doctrine are fundamentally deciding for the evaluation of the transmission of information without physical equipment.
3.
..."
EDIT:
Wikipedia link (engl.) added
"New Scientist" link (engl.) added
"Elementary Structures of Matter" link (engl.) added
"New Scientist" on Burkhard Heim (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html)
Elementary Structures of Matter (http://www.datadiwan.de/netzwerk/index.htm?../heim/he_000d_.htm)
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Dandy wrote:
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In this context it might be interesting to read into the Heim theory (sorry - German only) (http://www.terra-energetic.com/Quantenfeldtheorie_Burkhard-Heim/Quantenfeldtheorie.htm) (Burkhard Heim, German physician, 1925 –2001):
"The enhanced uniform quantum field theory of Burkhard Heim
1.
Scientists like Einstein assumed non-material dimensions already long ago.
Since about 20 years this assumption is seen as secured by observation and conclusions.
It has been proven mathematically for the first time by the German physician Burkhard Heim (1925 - 2001; Wikipedia: Burkhard Heim (engl.) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim)).
2.
The cognitions of the existence of informational spaces, so called "Hyperspaces", and the existence of physical spaces, so called reference spaces, as well as the consecutive explanations of the Heim doctrine are fundamentally deciding for the evaluation of the transmission of information without physical equipment.
3.
..."
EDIT:
Wikipedia link (engl.) added
"New Scientist" link (engl.) added
"Elementary Structures of Matter" link (engl.) added
"New Scientist" on Burkhard Heim (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html)
Elementary Structures of Matter (http://www.datadiwan.de/netzwerk/index.htm?../heim/he_000d_.htm)
Hmmmmmmm - no replies for half a month now.
Is no one interested in this stuff or are all still busy reading the links I provided?
Karlos???
Blobrana???
:-?
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This is indeed a great thread. Hopefully the top brains are just taking a break to work on some more ideas theories for us :-)
:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:
A4000 Mad
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Sorry Dandy but the mention of the name ¨Hawking¨ normally means the end of the conversation for me :lol: IMO he's a crackpot.
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moto
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@motorollin:
motorollin wrote:
Sorry Dandy but the mention of the name ¨Hawking¨ normally means the end of the conversation for me
Hehe - but that shouldn't prevent you from reading/thinking about souch things.
I was 15 when I read the books of Einstein 35 years ago.
When it came to his theories, I read the parts where he described the theorie with his own words and understood his points quite well.
I skipped the parts with the formulas - they looked waayyy too frightening for me back then.
(Later - when I had learend some of the necessary mathematics - I got back to the formulas...)
Same goes for Hawking - he also describes his theories with his words - not just formulas!
I still have to read Heim's books (on the web they warn because of the heavy math stuff) - up to now I try to understand from what I find on the web - and up to now it was not always easy to follow, but nevertheless thrilling and fascinating...
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motorollin wrote:
Sorry Dandy but the mention of the name ¨Hawking¨ normally means the end of the conversation for me :lol: IMO he's a crackpot.
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moto
A crackpot? :-?
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Yes, a crackpot.
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moto
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Point of interest:
I may have missed it in this discussion but I distinctly recall Dr. McCoy hating the transporter and objecting that it wasn't the same persn after his molecules had been scrambled and beamed through space.
Several writers have toyed with the idea of sending the pattern by some means usually faster than light and using that pattern and local stock of chemicals in a vat to produce a flawless copy of the body.
It was in a Rod Serling show once;also a book I have somewhere in which a Civil War soldier is recruited to be the stationmaster for Earth,due to his isolated homestead and no close relatives.In these stories the body of the teleportee is broken down and chemicals stored for subsequent travelers on the travelers departure.
The one that is more comfortable philosophically to me is the method in the book "Jumper";a juvenile escapism and coming of age novel. The character eventually discovers he is stepping through a "door" to whatever other place he 'ports to;he also must know the destination well enough to accurately picture it in his mind.
Now this reminds me of the string theory of instant movement in which two points distant are momentarily considered to be congruent .
I'm not certain but I think Heisenberg or Heidinger cat may have stayed with me;that cat could disappear in only 3 rooms and a closet;hours of searching would reveal no cat,and the next morning she would be sitting there wanting breakfast.
Sadly,she got out whilst I was bringing in new furniture one fall day,never seen again. :-?
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motorollin wrote:
Yes, a crackpot.
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moto
In what way do you consider him a crackpot? He seems quite sane to me and his science is solid so I don't think he could really be described as a crackpot on either of those fronts.
I've been known to be wrong though. :-)
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Explain to me how the theory of infinite parallel universes, some with black holes and some without, the one in which we live conveniently being one without (which is why we can't observe their effects) is scientific.
--
moto
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motorollin wrote:
Explain to me how the theory of infinite parallel universes, some with black holes and some without, the one in which we live conveniently being one without (which is why we can't observe their effects) is scientific.
--
moto
That doesn't make him a crackpot.
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recidivist wrote:
I'm not certain but I think Heisenberg or Heidinger cat may have stayed with me;
That was Schrödinger's cat all right - she never actually decided to die after all. ;-)
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Karlos wrote:
How can you copy something without knowing its current state?
Easy, make sure whatever it is implements the following:
class Cloneable {
public:
virtual Cloneable* clone() = 0;
virtual ~Cloneable() {}
};
and leave it up to the thing itself to worry about how it is copied ;-)
You see, if God had used Java then objects would only need to implement the empty interface Serializable and Moto wouldn't have any teleportation issues :-)
Let the Holy war begin!!!! :lol:
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Apparently some theorists believe that computers will one day become powerful enough to exactly simulate the world as we know it. They have gone on to say that it is highly likely that we do in fact exist inside such a simulation.
So maybe God does use Java...
[EDIT]
I accept no responsibility for existential crises which may result from reading this posting.
[/EDIT]
--
moto
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@CannonFodder
The Oxford English defines a crackpot as "eccentric or foolish", and a crackpot idea as one which is "eccentric or impractical". Websters adds "unrealistic" to the list. By that definition, I think many of his ideas are crackpot ones, and he is potentially a crackpot himself. We'll probably never find out though, since he will be the first of our kind to evolve in to an energy-based life-form and move to a higher plane of existence.
--
moto
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motorollin wrote:
@CannonFodder
The Oxford English defines a crackpot as "eccentric or foolish", and a crackpot idea as one which is "eccentric or impractical". Websters adds "unrealistic" to the list. By that definition, I think many of his ideas are crackpot ones, and he is potentially a crackpot himself.
Eccentric he maybe but I wouldn't say the man was foolish. Foolish is calling your boss a c*nt! ;-)
We'll probably never find out though, since he will be the first of our kind to evolve in to an energy-based life-form and move to a higher plane of existence.
The first? People die everyday. :-P
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CannonFodder wrote:
Eccentric he maybe but I wouldn't say the man was foolish.
Maybe, but that definition says "eccentric or foolish, which means he only has to meet one of those two criteria in order to be defined as a crackpot.
CannonFodder wrote:
Foolish is calling your boss a c*nt! ;-)
You know my reasons for doing that. And I wouldn't have done it if the boss in question didn't happen to be my friend who I know would understand and forgive me :-)
CannonFodder wrote:
We'll probably never find out though, since he will be the first of our kind to evolve in to an energy-based life-form and move to a higher plane of existence.
The first? People die everyday. :-P
You know what I meant. Stop beng awkward :-P :lol:
--
moto
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You know what I meant. Stop beng awkward
You know you love it really. ;-)
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motorollin wrote:
...
Do we have something more (the soul?) which would not survive the process of the body being broken down and recreated?
...
As far as I understood the concept of body and soul the body is mortal, while the soul is not.
So why do you think the soul wouldn't survive, if the body broke down?
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Dandy wrote:
As far as I understood the concept of body and soul the body is mortal, while the soul is not.
So why do you think the soul wouldn't survive, if the body broke down?
Because I'm not convinced that the "soul" is anything more than our way of comprehending our conscious existence. I believe that when the body dies, your consciousness dies with it.
--
moto
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@motorollin
motorollin wrote:
Because I'm not convinced that the "soul" is anything more than our way of comprehending our conscious existence. I believe that when the body dies, your consciousness dies with it.
Hmmmm - lets see:
All thinking is based on chemical-electric processes - so I'd say it's fair to say that consciousness = energy.
Do you know the physical principle that energy can't be lost - it just can be transformed (law of the conservation of energy)?
That's already secured cognition in classic physics (in our four dimensional space-time).
And if you read and try to understand what Burkhard Heim found out about the up to twelve dimensions our universe consists of, you might be tempted to change your mind - just follow the links I gave above (don't be afraid - there's nothing that could remotedly remind you of sex ;-) )...
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Apparently some theorists believe that computers will one day become powerful enough to exactly simulate the world as we know it. They have gone on to say that it is highly likely that we do in fact exist inside such a simulation.
This differs from the various religious teachings of a creator in what way exactly?
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CannonFodder on 2007/6/21 20:27:55
CannonFodder wrote:
Apparently some theorists believe that computers will one day become powerful enough to exactly simulate the world as we know it. They have gone on to say that it is highly likely that we do in fact exist inside such a simulation.
This differs from the various religious teachings of a creator in what way exactly?
In that it's nowhere reported that the various religious creators used computers and simulations and so...
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Dandy wrote:
CannonFodder on 2007/6/21 20:27:55
CannonFodder wrote:
Apparently some theorists believe that computers will one day become powerful enough to exactly simulate the world as we know it. They have gone on to say that it is highly likely that we do in fact exist inside such a simulation.
This differs from the various religious teachings of a creator in what way exactly?
In that it's nowhere reported that the various religious creators used computers and simulations and so...
Again, whats the difference?
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CannonFodder wrote:
Dandy wrote:
CannonFodder on 2007/6/21 20:27:55
CannonFodder wrote:
Apparently some theorists believe that computers will one day become powerful enough to exactly simulate the world as we know it. They have gone on to say that it is highly likely that we do in fact exist inside such a simulation.
This differs from the various religious teachings of a creator in what way exactly?
In that it's nowhere reported that the various religious creators used computers and simulations and so...
Again, whats the difference?
Again:
In that it's nowhere reported that the various religious creators used computers and simulations and so...
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In none of the various religions is it reported that the various religious creators did not use computers and simulations and so...
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Sorry to interrupt this witty exchange... But if you create a perfect copy of someone (on an atomic level, yes yes, I know Heir Heizenberg would complain!) then you destroy the original... what difference does it make?
For the original it would just be like going to sleep... for the copy it would just be like waking up. You could say that the copy wouldn't be the same conciousness as the original... But then I put it to you that the conciousness you experience today is not the same as yesterday, it is a new conciousness.
If you died in your sleep you'd never know about it. If you died in your sleep then you were replaced with a prefect copy, no one would know about it.
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bloodline wrote:
Sorry to interrupt this witty exchange... But if you create a perfect copy of someone (on an atomic level, yes yes, I know Heir Heizenberg would complain!) then you destroy the original... what difference does it make?
For the original it would just be like going to sleep... for the copy it would just be like waking up. You could say that the copy wouldn't be the same conciousness as the original... But then I put it to you that the conciousness you experience today is not the same as yesterday, it is a new conciousness.
If you died in your sleep you'd never know about it. If you died in your sleep then you were replaced with a prefect copy, no one would know about it.
You make the assumption that the clone would have the memories of the original.
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CannonFodder wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Sorry to interrupt this witty exchange... But if you create a perfect copy of someone (on an atomic level, yes yes, I know Heir Heizenberg would complain!) then you destroy the original... what difference does it make?
For the original it would just be like going to sleep... for the copy it would just be like waking up. You could say that the copy wouldn't be the same conciousness as the original... But then I put it to you that the conciousness you experience today is not the same as yesterday, it is a new conciousness.
If you died in your sleep you'd never know about it. If you died in your sleep then you were replaced with a prefect copy, no one would know about it.
You make the assumption that the clone would have the memories of the original.
Of course it would, I implied that fact when I stated that the copy was identical on an atomic level.
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Of course it would
I don't think the clone would have the memories of the original.
When someone gets physical brain damage to the bits of the brain that control memory function, is it the memory that is damaged or the method of memory recall that is damaged?
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CannonFodder wrote:
Of course it would
I don't think the clone would have the memories of the original.
When someone gets physical brain damage to the bits of the brain that control memory function, is it the memory that is damaged or the method of memory recall that is damaged?
Yes, it's well documented that the person can still form and recall new memories...
Anyway, in a neural net the method of storage and recall is the same thing. Memory is stored in the structure of the network.
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All thinking is based on chemical-electric processes - so I'd say it's fair to say that consciousness = energy.
This is not fair to say. Hardware and a currently running program are not the same thing.
If I throw a fork at a wall the fork is not conscious. Energy may be a requirement in order to have consciousness, which would only make sense, but energy is != consciousness. The electricity from my wall is not conscious...it has no independant thought.
The people who say there is no death or there is life after death because energy is never "lost" have completely lost the plot.
Energy is neither life, nor consciousness (whose definition has much more to do with self awareness and the ability for at least a perceived independant thought).
When I unplug my computer it does not still work just because the energy has not technically been "lost"...and when I eat a fish the fish does indeed lose its consciousness and die...assuming you believe that animals have consciousness.
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Wain wrote:
All thinking is based on chemical-electric processes - so I'd say it's fair to say that consciousness = energy.
This is not fair to say. Hardware and a currently running program are not the same thing.
I know - but you can't run a program without hardware, can you?
Wain wrote:
If I throw a fork at a wall the fork is not conscious. Energy may be a requirement in order to have consciousness, which would only make sense, but energy is != consciousness. The electricity from my wall is not conscious...it has no independant thought.
You are of course perfectly right.
But that was not what I was trying to bring across.
Please don't forget that I'm no native English speaker and so may have some difficulties to find the proper words.
What I said was: "consciousness = energy" - not the other way round.
To make more clear what I mean I possibly should have written:
"consciousness = a certain form of energy"
And please don't mix up "energy" and "electricity" - the latter also is a certain form of energy, but not the same.
The energy I'm talking about can appear in form of heat (or the lack of it), light, or any other radiation, gravitation, electricity, matter, ...
Wain wrote:
The people who say there is no death or there is life after death because energy is never "lost" have completely lost the plot.
Hmmmm - can you please explain why you think so?
Wain wrote:
Energy is neither life, nor consciousness (whose definition has much more to do with self awareness and the ability for at least a perceived independant thought).
I somehow can't avoid the feeling that you're rather talking about electricity and not about the energy as such.
What makes you so sure that life or consciousness can't be a certain form of energy?
Wain wrote:
When I unplug my computer it does not still work just because the energy has not technically been "lost"
Perfectly right.
What you do is to cut off the fresh supply of energy.
That is what stops the maschine from further working.
The energy already supplied to your computer before you unplugged it is not lost - it is transformed into heat and into already manipulated data (in the sense that the manipulation of the data needs energy and therefor the manipulation is the transformed electricity-energy).
Wain wrote:
...and when I eat a fish the fish does indeed lose its consciousness and die...assuming you believe that animals have consciousness.
I see it this way:
The biological/physical body of the fish dies - no doubt about that.
Although - the energy equivalent of the matter of the fish's biological/physical body isn't lost - it's transferred to your biological/physical body when you eat the fish.
If we now assume that the fish had a consciousness, I would expect this consciousness to be part of an "higher dimension" (see Heim theory) and if the body it's tied to dies, then from the consciousness's point of view it's most likely like taking off a glove or such. His consciousness (summ of all experiences of his life) would then simply continue to exist in that "higher dimension".
I take the fact that you don't share/have the fish's experiences after you eate it as an indicator for you just having eaten the fish's biological/physical body - and not somehow assimilated it's consciousness.
Your biological/physical body gets fresh energy supplied by eating the fish - not your consciousness!
If two things are tied together with a rope and you cut the rope and take one of the two things away - wouldn't you agree that the other thing still is there and did not cease to exist just because you took the other thing away?
Lets look at the computer example again:
If you compare the "biological/physical body" with the hardware and the "consciousness" with the software, you can always take the software (when the hardware died) and
"revive" it on some other suited hardware whenever you like.
I hope I found the proper words to bring my point across...
:roll: