EVE General Discussion

You're trying to draw a distinction where none exists. I *am* my skills and memories. What else do you think is there?

Well if you get into duplication of minds then that's *really* way over my head, so I'll skip that :)
But as long as the "original" mind is destroyed when the "new" mind is created, there's no difficulty in viewing them as one person that has gone through a particularly traumatic experience.

Put it this way. Say you're in a car crash and lose consci...black out for several days, during which time surgeons are forced to reconstruct most of your face and replace several organs. Are you still the same person? Of course not, you've just been in a car crash, a massively traumatic experience! But you're still YOU.

Same thing goes for clone jumping. Its just a bit more extreme. But as long as you remember being *you*, you will continue to *be* you.

Not when I joined they didn't.


If the patterns are you, you are talking metaphysics. Materialism dictates that your experiences and thoughts are the actual electrical impulses on the actual neurons. That your 'mind' is just an arrangement of matter. Create an idential arrangement of matter, you'll have an idential, but seperate, "mind".

In the same way, you are not the same person from moment to moment. The difference is that there is an unbroken link between who you were a second ago and who you are now; your "mind" now is just a slight modification of your "mind" a moment ago. Whereas, when cloning, however the data is transferred, and whatever data is transferred, you are building a new brain. It's a copy. There is no link between it and you for what you consider to be your "mind" to travel along.


It it still duplication of minds either way. If you would see a copy that is awake at the same time as you as a seperate being, it is no different just because the original happens to die at the moment the copy wakes up.

Every single piece of the body minus the brain (and probably only the neo-cortex) is non-essential. Everything can be replaced in the body minus the brain (that we know of so far). Once we learn more we may find parts of the brain that can be replaced, but there is a certain limit as to what can be replaced and when to maintain the thought processes in the brain.

I subscribe to the belief that the brain is us and we are the brain, that collection of neurons defines us. Creating a copy somewhere else is not us, it's a copy of us at the moment of the copy. Then it is merely a person based of us a moment ago but now neither of us is the same.

When you die your soul leaves your body and goes to an empty body. Where do you think ghosts come from and why they're always stalking children's hospitals? I took this body over when some dunce choked on a jar of glue.

…and that is why “copy” is the wrong term to use. There is no copy because there is no original — both are just simulacra based on a common ground. The link is still there — it just forks off in two different directions where neither party can claim primacy.

…but here's the thing: neither of those two are Bob. While both Bob₁ and Bob₂ came out of Bob, none of them are the same, and in a moment, both Bob₁ and Bob₂ cease to exist and turn into the next index. What the Infomorph lets you do is avoid that problem: it ensures that Bob₁ and Bob₂ are, indeed, the same — the line of progression is never broken (as long as you pay your bills), and all simulacra share the same identity.


edit: I think the key issue here is that capsuleers are, strictly speaking, no longer human — they don't have the same kind of self/identity/conciousness/whateveryouwanttocallit, but rather something slightly different that can be manipulated in ways that aren't available to mere mortals…

No, the original-Bob differs from source-Bob in the exact same way as copy-Bob differs from source-Bob. From that moment on, the two will diverge, but that's because neither of them can remain original-Bob — that would require a state of stasis that doesn't exist.
The problem is that for that to work, you have to mark Bob before you make the copy, or you will not know which is the original. But that means that, in creating the copy, you copy the mark as well, so the question remains. Marking one after the fact just means you can now distinguish between Bob₁ and Bob₂, but you can do that anyway and it tells us nothing about Bob₀ — in fact, making one of the Bobs means you've now expressly created a difference between what you consider the original and the actual original so the two are no longer the same.

Physics would like a word with you on that.


As for the topic at hand... It's a rather difficult question. As it stands right now, we don't really know for a fact that you can't gradually replace the brain bit by bit, maintaining the electrical impulses that existed there, and have the 'same' person wake up after the procedure.

Now, assuming that a person is defined by his memories and experiences as well as the continuity of aforementioned electrical impulses, it is not a stretch to say that only one original person in that sense can exist. From that particular person's point of view. For an outside observer, if one were to make a perfect copy of everything said above, one would have two identical beings who from that point onward diverge from each other. From the viewpoint of each of them, they'd both think they're the original, and there would be no reliable way to tell who is right because there's no way we can distinguish electrons and thus electrical impulses. So, for the 'original', the person would observe a perfect copy being created and behaving just like oneself, and for the 'copy', the person would observe a perfect copy standing right next to you and thinking that the 'copy' is the original.

Ugh, confusing. The core of the matter is (provided the above assumption is true), are fundamental particles distinguishable from each other? If so, how? And if not... well


So, using the above assumptions, it would be not far-fetched to say that when a pod pilot dies, he dies. A perfect replica wakes up somewhere and goes on just like before, but a person just died, nevertheless, unless the copying process were to somehow transmit the exact same electrical impulses, that we for the sake of argument assume uniquely identify a person as a discrete entity, to the clone. And that's where this exercise in philosophy ends for me, because of this strange thing we humans need, sleep.

Looking forward to reading some more of this in the morning, keep at it

Well I personally assume that the pod pilot cloning process *is* that advanced. The body still dies, but the mind is unharmed and essentially unchanged before and after the copy process. Well apart from the trauma of nearly dying and losing a ship and stuff.

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I believe String Theory is flawed but I am not qualified to postulate why, nor am I qualified to comprehend the explanation of someone who is. Outside of mathematical equations strings have not been quantified. Proof of parts of the theory is not proof of the entire theory. That is all I know about it, experimental physics is more my "thing".



This is what people are really hung up on, the outside observer. They are not important as they do not have the viewpoint that the original does. The original can be fooled into thinking that they are the copy yes, however it is very easy to just mark the original or the copy during creation to prevent this from occurring. The body is inconsequential and non-essential, you can copy the person minus an arm but they are still the same collection of thoughts and memories up until the point of copying. They also happen to lack an arm which the original still has.