This thing just ate my entry.
I’ll be back.
Sorry.
Happy Birthday, Part II
November 3, 2006We left off discussing several different conditions, that hopefully got you thinking in the right direction. In essence, we are asking what is the ‘you’ that makes you you? It must be in the body or connected to the body, since you are in there somewhere. It really seems like it would be located in the brain, since that is where the memory, processing and personality seem to be located. But what is it exactly that is the you?
Is the bit that is you simply the arrangement of elementary particles? Is a person merely a pattern of particles? How does that fit with the ideas of consciousness and free will?
Back to the discussion.
In the malfunctioning teleporter condition, the “copy” would be totally convinced that he (or she) is the original. There would be no way to distinguish between the two. The copy would have all the memories, personality, awareness of the original. Surely there would be two consciousnesses, not one that is somehow getting input from both beings, right? So if it happened to you, how would you know if you were the original or the copy?1 Somehow, the consciousness is connected with the brain matter.
Whatever it is that makes you you is in the brain. So, what if we messed with your memories? What if we took all your long term memories and removed them. Are you still you? Would you have the same personality? What if we then gave you somebody else’s memories? Who are you? A or B or some AB hybrid?
What if we just changed things a little bit. Say, eliminate one memory. You probably wouldn’t even notice that. Certainly, others would be hard pressed to uncover the difference. Then, the next day, we add a new memory. No big deal there, either. But then say that each day we make a small change over ten years. That is 3,652 changes. Are you still you? Or are you someone else? Has your consciousness changed?
Where does your consciousness go?
In Condition B, the Particle Teleportation (that works correctly), does consciousness go with the new body or is it destroyed? If it goes with the new body, how so? Is it attached to the particular elementary particles?
If consciousness is tied to particular elementary particles, then Condition C, Pattern Teleportation, can’t send consciousness along with the pattern. But if consciousness is just a pattern, like DNA is a pattern, then consciousness isn’t lost.
If consciousness is tied to particular elementary particles, then the malfunction holds no worries, since only the original will have consciousness. If not, then we get double-trouble.
Here is where it gets weird though. While the teleporting is happening, or while you are exploded out into elementary particles, where does your consciousness go? Is it destroyed, and then recreated when you are put back together? What about when you are asleep? Knocked unconscious? What about when you die for three minutes (or 10 minutes, or 30) and then are resuscitated? Is that still you, or is it some other consciousness? Or is it some non-conscious being?
Instanced Consciousness
You turn off your computer (PC) and it is inactive. Turn it on again and poof, there is everything just the way you left it.
Go to sleep and you are inactive. Wake up again and poof, there is everything very similar to the way you left it.
But not quite the same. While you were out (sleeping) some processes were going on. Information was moved into long term storage. Some synaptic connections were strengthened. The levels of various hormones in your body were adjusted. Wake up after forty winks and you are not quite the same person you were when you went to sleep.
Take a minute and feel what it is like to be conscious. You probably get a sense of your body state, emotional state, mood, memories that may be weighing on your mind, tasks that you need to remember, etc. What about what consciousness felt like yesterday? Can you even remember what it was like, just 24 hours ago? And how different could it have been?
What about a year ago? Ten years?
How about tomorrow?
How many times have you thought, if I do x then I’ll be happy. Then you did x and it didn’t make an inch of difference?
How many times have you looked back on your life and said to yourself, “What the hell was I thinking? I can’t even understand why I thought that was a good idea.” Its as if you are looking on another person, and are totally out of touch with what it felt like to be that person.
It seems like consciousness is a product of the brain. Change the brain and you change the consciousness. Change the memories, and you can change some of the behavior. What do you think happens every day? You change a little bit, and you can never go back.
The you that you are right now is very short lived. Tomorrow, he or she will be dead, and will be replaced by a very similar doppleganger. Your friends and family won’t notice. The imposter will be completely convinced that he or she is the original. It will have access to all of your memories–even your memories of what it feels like to be you right now.
Of course it will be convinced that it is the real you, it remembers thinking what you are thinking now. Or rather, it will have the memory of what you are thinking now. Just like you have the memory of what yesterday’s you was thinking then.
But it isn’t the same person. It isn’t the same consciousness.
You die every day.
You won’t be driving this body around tomorrow. That’ll be some other guy who has all of your memories. You don’t worry about this because you have the memory of having lived yesterday and the day before, ad infinitum. But you are just like the copy who gets up out of the teleporter. He was just created two seconds ago, yet is totally convinced that he is the original. He only has the memories of a lifetime. You only have the memories of having lived yesterday. You have memories of many days. You have the illusion of continuity.
You die every day. The poster should be changed from, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” to:
“This is the last and only day of your life.”
You don’t get any tomorrows. You only get a series of right nows. Don’t waste right now.
Happy Birthday!
1 Assume that the knowledge of who came out of which machine has been lost.
Best Halloween Costume Ever
October 31, 2006We interrupt our regularly scheduled post for a cutting-edge commentary on Halloween, traditional values, and the corruption of our modern, science-based culture.
Not.
Seriously, this year the award for Best Halloween Costume Ever goes to me, for my stunning and elaborate costume as a person with neither consciousness, nor free will.
So far, no one has figured it out. Not that I can blame them. How would you distinguish between a person with or without free will, or a person with or without consciousness? What is it that Free Will does that makes human beings any different from, as Scott Adams puts it, a moist robot? Ditto for consciousness.
There’s your X-Prize competition right there.
Walk through this bizarre and macabre thought experiment with an open mind. What does free will do? How do we know that it is there?
One argument is that Free Will is detectable because human behavior is unpredictable. But so is the weather, and so is animal behavior. In each case, behavior can be predicted on a limited probabilistic manner. There is a 40% chance of rain, 20% chance the dog will wee on the carpet, and a 99.9% chance that people will continue to buy lottery tickets but never win.
Here is an example from pyschology that certainly hints that we don’t have free will: Diffusion of Responsibility1.
Study after study provide supporting evidence that when there are three or more people involved in a situation, each feels a lessened burden of responsibility to act. So if a person is choking, and there is only one witness present, that witness is the most likely to act. If there are instead five witnesses, then each one is significantly less likely to act. If each witness is anonymously present, safe and sound inside their own apartment and looking out the window onto an emergency, then they are dramatically less likely to act. The entire group may twiddle their thumbs and think, “Someone else will take care of it.”
This is strikingly similar to the effects of a “Somebody Else’s Problem” field generator, or SEP, from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy2.
Where is there room for free will in there? If all you have to do is change the circumstances in order to create a change in behavior, how is that reconciled with free will?
Take a moist robot, that looks and acts just like a human being, but instead of an actual human brain, it has a highly complex organic computer that directs its behavior. This robot has no consciousness. It has no free will. How will its behavior differ in any way from that of an ordinary human being? How can you tell the difference?
Here is the essence of the matter: if you take the same brain, and put it into the same circumstances, it will make the same choice every time4. Just like a computer.
As a final note, in psychology there is a concept known as the Fundamental Attribution Error5. At its heart, FAE says that people tend to over-emphasize personality as a cause of behavior, and underestimate the influnce of circumstances, when considering the cause of someone’s behavior. Here is the classic experiment, in summary:
“Subjects listened to pro- and anti-Fidel Castro speeches. Subjects were asked to rate the pro-Castro attitudes of both. When the subjects believed that the speech makers freely chose which position to take (for or against Castro), they naturally rated the people who gave the pro-Castro speeches as having a more positive attitude toward Castro. However, contradicting Jones and Harris’ hypothesis, when the subjects were specifically told that the speech makers gave either a pro- or an anti-Castro speech solely as the result of a coin that was tossed up in the air and subsequently flipped over onto another side at random, the subjects still rated the people who gave the pro-Castro speeches as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro than those giving anti-Castro speeches. Thus, even when subjects were aware that the speeches made were solely because of the flip of a coin, they committed the fundamental attribution error when it came to judging the motivation behind pro or anti-Castro attitudes of the speech makers.”6
In other words, even if a person knows that someone else’s behavior is determined by a coin flip, they will still make attributions about the kind of person they are based on that (seemingly random) behavior. Even if they know better–even if you know better– you cannot override the internal machinery of your brain. Behavior is caused by meat. If there is some kind of free will, it is weaker than meat.
The meat wins.
Happy Halloween, meat-head!
1 Diffusion of Responsibility here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility 2 SEP Field Generator here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem_field
3 Millgram Experiment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
4 Everything has to be exactly the same. The same genetics, the same experiences, the same attitudes, the same social conditions, etc. This is a thought experiment and cannot be conducted in real life.
5 Fundamental Attribution Error here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
