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Clones and immortality
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Takseen
Federal Defense Union
Gallente Federation
#81 - 2011-12-10 12:34:31 UTC
People's Republic ofChina wrote:
Tippia wrote:
That seems rather contradictory. If the body is not a part of what distinguishes one identity from the other, then you can't use it to determine which one is a “copy”. Either it's relevant or it isn't. If all you're using is the brain, then the brain is all you can use to distinguish who's who.


You speak of the copying of an identity, not of a consciousness. An identity is an abstract concept that can be placed upon anything if you can convince the people around you. It's meaningless. I'm talking about the stream of consciousness of the original being. This is not somehow maintained during a copy, the thinking person as a stream of consciousness is not the same as the one that steps out of the cloning vat, they are separate streams of consciousness and separate beings. They may have the same identity but that's meaningless to the original, they're still dead. Or in the concept of copying destruction of the original consciousness stream, the original is still the same being viewing the world through the senses of the source.

You can argue identity all you want, but it's not really important. I'm sure that people would be less concerned about their identity and more concerned with the fact that this method of "Immortality" does not actually maintain their stream of consciousness and therefore they aren't immortal,only their identity is.


Your "stream of consciousness" is also interrupted every time you go to sleep, get a bad knock to the head or any other unfortunate series of events. When you regain consciousness, you know you're still you because you have the same memories and because you're in the same body. If someone pulled a 1950s style headswap and you woke up with your head in another body, you'd still be you. If they just swapped your brain into a new body, you'd still be you(?). If they just swapped your thoughts into a new brain and body, would you still be you?

I'm curious where you think your consciousness fails to transfer, and why. Admittedly there's the question of how the transfer system can duplicate brain chemistry and so on, but I'm happy to wave my hands around and say "a Jovian did it!" for now
Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#82 - 2011-12-10 12:38:12 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:


That signal would then travel through the void intact, until it reached the appropriate vessel aka receptacle.


As one who studies communication technologies. This is highly unlikely. When simple cellphones broadcast to a transceiver a few hundred meters away there will be bit errors on the message (1 turns into 0, vice versa) and thus several error detection and control mechanisms are in place to minimize the effect of these errors. This is a simple message of say a few hundred bits.
Now to broadcast brain patterns (billions and utter billions of bits?) or a snapshot of a brain throughout space for a distance of several lightyears exposing it to cosmic radiations similar anomalies, etc. and not to have bit errors is again very unlikely.
This as well has to happen on different frequencies or you risk that another pod pilots brain transfer interferes and you end up losing them both. They have to coordinate who sends on what frequency.

This is nothing compared to the time it will take for the message to reach its destination with the limited speed of light. Travelling through space is therefore not an option.
Quantum entanglement, now that is a whole different story Blink
Halcyon Ingenium
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#83 - 2011-12-10 12:40:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Halcyon Ingenium
Nova Fox wrote:
Cept the clones are blanks though and your mind is required to image a new self on it.

True it may not be you, but the same argument can be said about teleportation.


The same argument can be had about the matter exchange in a normal living body. The only difference between pod death and normal metabolic function is the abruptness in the change of matter. But all the same information is still there in both cases.

The OP basically fails because he compares two very similar but still not identical entities with one entity experiencing a very rapid change in the matter that his "self" is stored on.

By the way, since we're already talking, do you want to buy a rifter? I've got the cheapest rifters in Metropolis. If you can find a cheaper rifter, buy it!
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#84 - 2011-12-10 12:42:37 UTC
Ammzi wrote:
Eternum Praetorian wrote:


That signal would then travel through the void intact, until it reached the appropriate vessel aka receptacle.


As one who studies communication technologies. This is highly unlikely. When simple cellphones broadcast to a transceiver a few hundred meters away there will be bit errors on the message (1 turns into 0, vice versa) and thus several error detection and control mechanisms are in place to minimize the effect of these errors. This is a simple message of say a few hundred bits.
Now to broadcast brain patterns (billions and utter billions of bits?) or a snapshot of a brain throughout space for a distance of several lightyears exposing it to cosmic radiations similar anomalies, etc. and not to have bit errors is again very unlikely.
This as well has to happen on different frequencies or you risk that another pod pilots brain transfer interferes and you end up losing them both. They have to coordinate who sends on what frequency.

This is nothing compared to the time it will take for the message to reach its destination with the limited speed of light. Travelling through space is therefore not an option.
Quantum entanglement, now that is a whole different story Blink



You're buying warp drive and stargates in a video game, but your not willing to imagine a world that has greater understanding of stable states of energy then what you have now? Ok... Roll

I find your tiny mind annoying.

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Qansh
Triskelion Ouroboros
#85 - 2011-12-10 12:44:10 UTC
People's Republic ofChina wrote:
You do not fly through space with your conscious to the new body though, you are dead.

I doubt that consciousness, as in that which perceives (if you believe in such things), has a locality.

If a content-stream is spliced together and if, however it may occur, that "awareness of" attends to it all the same, then a) there is the potential immortality of the stream (through further splicing) and b) the immortality, perhaps, regardless of conditions, of the "awareness of" itself.

If the "awareness of" is immortal, then the splicing together of a content stream is merely a potential inconvenience. If there is continuity between both sides of the splice, then life goes on, nothing has changed or needs to be felt as lost.

If this "awareness of" doesn't exist, however (or is presumed to be seated in conditions), then it hardly matters what is lost or not (does it?), since it could have no continuity to begin with, which is to say that there is no "thing" which could enjoy immortality (or even life itself) except an illusion of the self, a product of conditions, an epiphenomenon of the brain.

So, is it important then to know that the same illusion (if that is what it is) is carried over? that there is a continuity to the illusion such that the illusion was never broken as opposed to two identical illusions spliced together?

If nothing is assumed to persist (the "awareness of"), then it's good "film-making" in either case but "film-making" without a fundamental watcher. In such a case I would say that the film goes on (absent a true watcher), so who really cares? To be satisfied that the illusion persists would still be an illusion.

But if the illusion works, well, that's what was asked for, right? Unless one would care to postulate more...
Halcyon Ingenium
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#86 - 2011-12-10 12:49:49 UTC
Ammzi wrote:
It really is mindblowing (oh the irony) if you perceive oneself a second ago as someone different from the person you are now in the present (which just became the past).

I am dying every second. Depressing, no?


No. Liberating. Every moment I am dying and every moment I am renewed. Each of us is an immortal phoenix, in an ever lasting now.

By the way, since we're already talking, do you want to buy a rifter? I've got the cheapest rifters in Metropolis. If you can find a cheaper rifter, buy it!
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#87 - 2011-12-10 12:51:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Eternum Praetorian
Qansh wrote:
I think I get what this guy was saying....
Sort of... What?



Your post makes me think about an experiment where a Scientist taught a series of rats complex tasks, and then removed individual sections of their brains. No matter what part of the brain he removed, the rats always recalled the complex task and never lost the memory of how to do said task.

No one knows how the brain does this, but it strongly suggests that consciousness and memory are a far more complex and broad spanning thing then people are thinking.

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Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#88 - 2011-12-10 12:54:02 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:



You're buying warp drive and stargates in a video game, but your not willing to imagine a world that has greater understanding of stable states of energy then what you have now? Ok... Roll

I find your tiny mind annoying.


Warp drive and stargates are nicely explained. "Stable energies"? What stable energies? An energy form that is powerful enough to go through matter unaltered and completely unaffected by extremely powerful cosmic events? A solar flare, gamma ray flashes, nova explosions and what happens if it passes a black hole on its way?
I mean just look at wormhole systems they are the systems furthest away from clone stations and they have this rare anomalies in which ship attributes are severely affected.

In case I bought all that that ^ the signal has to be send at speeds much higher than the speed of light in which you might as well call this subspace/hyperspace signal in which I do not know how the signal will be exposed there.
Quantum entanglement mechanics (which explains FTL communications that everyone in EVE uses) is the most promising explanation for brain-snapshot transfers and not a naked signal broadcasted throughout space and most definitely not expecting a 100 % correct signal with no erroneous bits.
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#89 - 2011-12-10 13:02:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Eternum Praetorian
Ammzi wrote:

Warp drive and stargates are nicely explained. "Stable energies"? What stable energies? An energy form that is powerful enough to go through matter unaltered and completely unaffected by extremely powerful cosmic events? A solar flare, gamma ray flashes, nova explosions and what happens if it passes a black hole on its way?
I mean just look at wormhole systems they are the systems furthest away from clone stations and they have this rare anomalies in which ship attributes are severely affected. .




It's not actually...


Warp drive... lets see.


You get:

1. Hypervelocity impacts means that space dust becomes a nuclear-bond-breaking sand blaster.
2. Extreme blue shift, bathing the vessel in untold amounts of ultra high energy radiation as everything is turned to gamma waves.
3. Micrometeorite impacts that will detonate on a ships hull like explosive ordinance going off.
4. Cosmic waves impact your ship with all of the energy of an atom masher, turning your hull into quarks and neutrinos
5. The solar wind becomes a sloth of particles that will do the same thing
6. The electrical fields of the solar wind passing over your ship at warp speed would generate such an electromagnetic pulse that it would be like dozens of nukes going off all at once (that is a conservative estimate)



So no... warp drive is not sufficiently explained at all comparative to "more advanced energy broadcasts" in a futuristic sci-fi world. It only has been sufficiently explained inside of your own mind, which evidently possesses a very limited imagination.

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Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#90 - 2011-12-10 13:06:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Ammzi
Eternum Praetorian wrote:

It's not actually...


Warp drive... lets see.


You get:

1. Hypervelocity impacts means that space dust becomes a nuclear-bond-breaking sand blaster.
2. Extreme blue shift, bathing the vessel in untold amounts of ultra high energy radiation as everything is turned to gamma radiation.
3. Micrometeorite impacts that will detonate on a ships hull like explosive ordinance going off.
4. Cosmic waves impact your ship with all of the energy of an atom masher, turning your hull into quarks and neutrinos
5. The solar wind becomes a sloth of particles that will do the same thing
6. The electrical fields of the solar wind passing over your ship at warp speed would generate such an electromagnetic pulse that it would be like dozens of nukes going off at once (that is a conservative estimate)



So no... warp drive is not sufficiently explained at all comparative to "more advanced energy broadcasts". It only has been sufficiently explained inside of your own mind.


Nonsense Eternum, it's quite well explained and should actually negate all your bullet points there, I am not really qualified to explain this in-depth, but one of the mechanism is that your warp core in the ship expands a negative matter energy bubble around your ship which creates a perfect vacuum in which your ship is completely disconnected from surrounding matter and that allows you to move at FTL speeds with zero friction.
As I read this also explains the mechanism behind warp disruptors which simply bombard your ship with particles and matter that won't allow you to enter warp.
Again this is my simple understanding for it and I think it'll be better explained in the RP-part of the forums.

PS: I found this for FTL communication :) http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/FTL_Communications
Takseen
Federal Defense Union
Gallente Federation
#91 - 2011-12-10 13:10:44 UTC
Ammzi wrote:

Quantum entanglement mechanics (which explains FTL communications that everyone in EVE uses) is the most promising explanation for brain-snapshot transfers and not a naked signal broadcasted throughout space and most definitely not expecting a 100 % correct signal with no erroneous bits.


Think it was in one of the first chronicles, but afaik pod pilot brainwaves are transmitted using that same FTL communication method. How do they get over the ridiculous bandwidth requirements....a Jovian quantum wizard did it.
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#92 - 2011-12-10 13:16:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Eternum Praetorian
Ammzi... I really should not have to explain this to you but all that crap is imaginary Shocked

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Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#93 - 2011-12-10 13:23:08 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:
Ammzi... I really should not have to explain this to you but all that crap is imaginary Shocked


What!?
People's Republic ofChina
My Other Capital Ship is Your Mom
#94 - 2011-12-10 14:10:07 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:
Ammzi wrote:
Eternum Praetorian wrote:


That signal would then travel through the void intact, until it reached the appropriate vessel aka receptacle.


As one who studies communication technologies. This is highly unlikely. When simple cellphones broadcast to a transceiver a few hundred meters away there will be bit errors on the message (1 turns into 0, vice versa) and thus several error detection and control mechanisms are in place to minimize the effect of these errors. This is a simple message of say a few hundred bits.
Now to broadcast brain patterns (billions and utter billions of bits?) or a snapshot of a brain throughout space for a distance of several lightyears exposing it to cosmic radiations similar anomalies, etc. and not to have bit errors is again very unlikely.
This as well has to happen on different frequencies or you risk that another pod pilots brain transfer interferes and you end up losing them both. They have to coordinate who sends on what frequency.

This is nothing compared to the time it will take for the message to reach its destination with the limited speed of light. Travelling through space is therefore not an option.
Quantum entanglement, now that is a whole different story Blink



You're buying warp drive and stargates in a video game, but your not willing to imagine a world that has greater understanding of stable states of energy then what you have now? Ok... Roll

I find your tiny mind annoying.



They have defined how the copy your mind, it is destruction and just reading the memories and skills. That's all there is. There is no consciousness transfer that they describe, I find your lack of knowledge on the topic annoying.
Crumplecorn
Eve Cluster Explorations
#95 - 2011-12-10 14:33:10 UTC
Vyl Vit wrote:
Conciousness, awareness of the self and ones surroundings to include awareness of ones own thoughts, can be argued to be the actual self sans physical manifestation. Cloning in the sense EVE uses it is transferring the conciousness (contrary to Tippia's assertion) into another physical organism ostensibly mapped from original DNA.
It can be argued, but with no basis whatsoever. Damage the physical brain, the person 'residing in it' changes. And I have yet to see any lore indicating that the pod system does anything other than scan the physical brain anyway.


Takseen wrote:
Your "stream of consciousness" is also interrupted every time you go to sleep, get a bad knock to the head or any other unfortunate series of events.
No it's not. Your conciousness is just an emergent property of the circuity in your brain. Sure it'll be modified if the brain is 'modified' and it goes through different state as the brain does. But it's still the same brain/conciousness. But, if you make a copy, that is a different brain with the same circuits, a seperate stream made to resemble your own.


Eternum Praetorian wrote:
Envision a world where the electrical state of the brain can be broadcasted as is, in that very moment (like a snapshot of a photograph) as a complex electromagnetic signal. It would not be a copy of your brain but an actual projection of a single instant frozen in time, no different then if your body had been frozen in cryogenic stasis.
That's exactly what we're all assuming, and is also what a copy is.

Eternum Praetorian wrote:
Then why then should you be different after your mind was broadcasted through space
The fact that you use the word mind shows you haven't even understood the question. This reminds me very much of the last thread I saw you in. Your mind can't be broadcasted as your mind is the state of the neurons in the original brain. All the is broadcasted, essentially, is instructions for making a copy.

Witty Image - Stream

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Ammzi
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#96 - 2011-12-10 14:46:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Ammzi
Crumplecorn wrote:
It can be argued, but with no basis whatsoever. Damage the physical brain, the person 'residing in it' changes. And I have yet to see any lore indicating that the pod system does anything other than scan the physical brain anyway.



It actually does. When the copy is made upon hull breach of the capsule the snapshot of the brain consequently burns/destroys the brain.
The true reason of death for all corpses we collect is actually braindeath. The system is set up to take the snap-shot as soon as death is inevitable, aka. when there's a hull breach because seconds after that the pod pilot will be in space - dead.

Quote:
Since YC 104, all hydrostatic capsules are fitted with transneural burning scanners, which is a crucial component for successful cloning of the capsuleer in case of hull-breach (also called pod kill). Thanks to the advances in cloning technology and FTL Communications, another function of the capsule is to make the capsuleer effectively immortal, by scanning the brain patterns of the pod pilot in the moment of death, thus allowing near perfect memory replication, which is almost impossible in any other situation. When a capsule's hull is breached, which signals that the death of the pod pilot is imminent, the a transneural burning scanner takes a snapshot of the capsuleer's brain while destroying the brain tissue during the process. The information is then relayed to a cloning station where the pilot has a clone prepared for this purpose and the brain structure is re-created based on the snapshot. Within seconds following his or her "death", the capsuleer awakens, safely, inside a Clone Reanimation Unit.[1]

Source: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Pod
Jagga Spikes
Spikes Chop Shop
#97 - 2011-12-10 15:11:14 UTC
what is a "human" is defined by law, made by humans. most of the time, humans agree. sometimes, they don't.

in this particular case, law says that clone that is created after pod kill is legally identical to original, therefore has to be considered original for all practical purposes. which means, we are legally immortal.

take it as you will.

P.S.: i'm certain there could be quite a few stories based on multiple active clones :)
Logan LaMort
Screaming Hayabusa
#98 - 2011-12-10 15:11:21 UTC
Ammzi wrote:
Crumplecorn wrote:
It can be argued, but with no basis whatsoever. Damage the physical brain, the person 'residing in it' changes. And I have yet to see any lore indicating that the pod system does anything other than scan the physical brain anyway.



It actually does. When the copy is made upon hull breach of the capsule the snapshot of the brain consequently burns/destroys the brain.
The true reason of death for all corpses we collect is actually braindeath. The system is set up to take the snap-shot as soon as death is inevitable, aka. when there's a hull breach because seconds after that the pod pilot will be in space - dead.

Quote:
Since YC 104, all hydrostatic capsules are fitted with transneural burning scanners, which is a crucial component for successful cloning of the capsuleer in case of hull-breach (also called pod kill). Thanks to the advances in cloning technology and FTL Communications, another function of the capsule is to make the capsuleer effectively immortal, by scanning the brain patterns of the pod pilot in the moment of death, thus allowing near perfect memory replication, which is almost impossible in any other situation. When a capsule's hull is breached, which signals that the death of the pod pilot is imminent, the a transneural burning scanner takes a snapshot of the capsuleer's brain while destroying the brain tissue during the process. The information is then relayed to a cloning station where the pilot has a clone prepared for this purpose and the brain structure is re-created based on the snapshot. Within seconds following his or her "death", the capsuleer awakens, safely, inside a Clone Reanimation Unit.[1]

Source: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Pod


Actually just before the scan, a deadly nanotoxin is released at hull breach. This is what kills the pilot.

Quote:
In the capsule, however, things are different. All the equipment needs to do is detect a breach in the pod, because – as every cadet has hammered into his head from the moment he starts training – pod breach, without exception, spells doom for the person inside. Therefore, the instant the egg begins to crack, two things happen: the wire-cap on the pilot’s head injects an instantly lethal nanotoxin into his bloodstream and the scanner sends its piercing light into his skull. Scarce seconds later, he begins the muddy climb towards consciousness in a new body, light years away.


But see, my character is immortal in EVE, only my clones have died. You know why? Jump cloning, which is available to Pod pilots and regular people alike, for example:

Quote:
A man in his position had easy access to the newest technology and, as the servant helped him put on a robe, he yet again marveled at this new mind-transfer technology. In the few short weeks since he started using it, it had transformed his life in more ways than he could imagine. No more tedious space travel, no more time wasting on idle journeys through volatile regions. All he had to do was set up clones of himself in places he frequented, hook them into the mind-transfer machine, and he could whiz halfway through the known world in a heartbeat. He could spend the morning in a dour board meeting on Alenia V, the afternoon sun-surfing in Maseera and the evening dining at Giraldi’s on Archavoinet II. ‘Ah, yes. Life is wonderful.’ Ancru mused.


So before getting into a Pod, before dying, my character simply made a jump clone, his original body, the one he was born in safely stored away in a cryogenic stasis chamber in a Duvolle Labs station. His clone is what stepped into a Pod for the first time and and that clone is what experienced Pod death and his subsequent clones.

See the thing is, if my character's conciousness was transferred to the new clone and all the clones afterwards, wonderful. If not though and what I strongly think, that clones are just a doppelgänger of your previous self, then all these clones I've made are just vessels for my character's accumulated memory. When they die the memories and experience get passed on to the next.
The best part about this though is that only my character's copies have died, my original character is still alive in stasis. This means that if I ever jump cloned back to the original character, the memories and experiences of all those previous clones would be hammered back into my character's original mind and it would be as if he experienced them first hand, because he did... in a way, just not until now.
rodyas
Tie Fighters Inc
#99 - 2011-12-10 15:17:59 UTC
Ammzi wrote:
Eternum Praetorian wrote:


That signal would then travel through the void intact, until it reached the appropriate vessel aka receptacle.


As one who studies communication technologies. This is highly unlikely. When simple cellphones broadcast to a transceiver a few hundred meters away there will be bit errors on the message (1 turns into 0, vice versa) and thus several error detection and control mechanisms are in place to minimize the effect of these errors. This is a simple message of say a few hundred bits.
Now to broadcast brain patterns (billions and utter billions of bits?) or a snapshot of a brain throughout space for a distance of several lightyears exposing it to cosmic radiations similar anomalies, etc. and not to have bit errors is again very unlikely.
This as well has to happen on different frequencies or you risk that another pod pilots brain transfer interferes and you end up losing them both. They have to coordinate who sends on what frequency.

This is nothing compared to the time it will take for the message to reach its destination with the limited speed of light. Travelling through space is therefore not an option.
Quantum entanglement, now that is a whole different story Blink



That is kind of true with the messages sent. Also in this game we still run through planets and stations while warping, cant imagine what my stream of counciousness must go through to get back to the medical place.

Signature removed for inappropriate language - CCP Eterne
Takseen
Federal Defense Union
Gallente Federation
#100 - 2011-12-10 15:26:12 UTC
Crumplecorn wrote:


Takseen wrote:
Your "stream of consciousness" is also interrupted every time you go to sleep, get a bad knock to the head or any other unfortunate series of events.
No it's not. Your conciousness is just an emergent property of the circuity in your brain. Sure it'll be modified if the brain is 'modified' and it goes through different state as the brain does. But it's still the same brain/conciousness. But, if you make a copy, that is a different brain with the same circuits, a seperate stream made to resemble your own.


And unless you think there's a soul or some other intangible thing that doesn't get included in the copying process, it doesn't matter.

A pilot's pod gets a hull breach, he blacks out, a piece of Jovian technology teleports his entire body into a safe location. He wakes up again, remembering how close he was to death.
A pilot's pod gets a hull breach, he blacks out, a piece of Jovian technology teleports his mind into an identical body in a safe location. He wakes up again, remembering how close he was to death.

If its a perfect copy process, then you wouldn't be able to tell which scenario had actually occurred.