I really don't understand people's existential horror at Star Trek transporters.
If you're a materialist - why do you care if your body is preserved alongside your mind. Why is it a problem that you get stored in a pattern buffer?
If you're not a materialist - why do you care about the body and not the soul? Why do you think your soul would become untethered because of changes in your body? I don't get it!
trashHeap
in reply to silverwizard • • •I once had a conversation in a philosophy of the mind class, where we were spitballing some things on a similar topic.
A lot of our everyday intuitions on our idea of a "self" involve that self having an unbroken continuity. (Whether one believes this is accurate or not.)
Most things that break that continuity give us the heebie-jeebies when put under a mental microscope.
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silverwizard
in reply to trashHeap • •Malin
in reply to silverwizard • • •Maybe it shines too much of a spotlight onto the fact that a person is, much like a legal entity, a fiction; created by shared understanding, which is also a fiction.
You cant move files onto a USB stick - you can only copy them, then delete the first copy.
You can believe in materialism, and computer-files, while still feeling uncomfortable with the full implications.
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silverwizard
in reply to Malin • •@Malin Interesting - so you think that it's about the ability to copy. Thomas Riker is the real prior art here - but also kinda the counter example. Mirroring the pattern was supposed to be impossible - the idea of copying something with the transporter is impossible properly.
Maybe it's true - the idea of digital information is what's causing the issue - computers can only properly copy - but as envisioned in the 60s there's this idea that you can be transformed into a "matter stream" and stored in a buffer and it's fine. But now people don't materially engage with that...
Malin
in reply to silverwizard • • •Riker's twin makes a great example, along with that guy with the fear of transporters.
I think the fear comes from really thinking about what the real process is, but you're probably right that people understand it more now from working with files.
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