Is it even a person then if it's all simulated on a computer? How can it be when you could clone it 100 times and get identical results. I personally would prefer to be a brain in a vat than "have my consciousness transferred".

Again "Stargate effect". Every time they step through their matter is converted to energy then reconstructed back into matter in a buffer. It's better to not think too hard about copies. It's a known problem whenever you're dealing with simulations.

This thread very much reminds me of [color="#0000FF"]The Story of a Brain. Highly recommended short story!

[quote name='GMuser' timestamp='1303772908' post='4802858']
Is it even a person then if it's all simulated on a computer? How can it be when you could clone it 100 times and get identical results. I personally would prefer to be a brain in a vat than "have my consciousness transferred".

Again "Stargate effect". Every time they step through their matter is converted to energy then reconstructed back into matter in a buffer. It's better to not think too hard about copies. It's a known problem whenever you're dealing with simulations.
[/quote]

... So for a short while- they're dead?? Or they are dead and just copies are made? Man. I like being my own original me. No copy wannabes.

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1303785022' post='4802906']
[quote name='GMuser' timestamp='1303772908' post='4802858']
Is it even a person then if it's all simulated on a computer? How can it be when you could clone it 100 times and get identical results. I personally would prefer to be a brain in a vat than "have my consciousness transferred".

Again "Stargate effect". Every time they step through their matter is converted to energy then reconstructed back into matter in a buffer. It's better to not think too hard about copies. It's a known problem whenever you're dealing with simulations.
[/quote]
... So for a short while- they're dead?? Or they are dead and just copies are made? Man. I like being my own original me. No copy wannabes.
[/quote]
To be very clear a human body is made up of atoms. None of these atoms are unique. You could find these atoms anywhere. You replace a ton of atoms all the time repairing things and usually have no connection to the dead skin cells that fall off all day long and are generated using food atoms you had eaten a while ago. Technically all it took to make you was food. You could break apart that food and construct an adult human from it identical to yourself. It would just skip the growing up step but it would be in the same state as you are now. The concept of dead or alive is linked to consciousness. All of the atoms working in a specific system to make "consciousness" that others can detect. There's nothing to say you could shed those useless atoms in the body and store that state in a computer. There is always the ability to clone someone but there is just the lack of technology at the present time to clone the full state.

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1303785022' post='4802906']
[quote name='GMuser' timestamp='1303772908' post='4802858']
Is it even a person then if it's all simulated on a computer? How can it be when you could clone it 100 times and get identical results. I personally would prefer to be a brain in a vat than "have my consciousness transferred".

Again "Stargate effect". Every time they step through their matter is converted to energy then reconstructed back into matter in a buffer. It's better to not think too hard about copies. It's a known problem whenever you're dealing with simulations.
[/quote]

... So for a short while- they're dead?? Or they are dead and just copies are made? Man. I like being my own original me. No copy wannabes.
[/quote]Awesome movie which describes how to handle the duplication problem.

Awesome movie which describes how to handle the duplication problem.

How to handle the duplication problem if you are morbid and self loathing maybe...

But yes. Awesome movie.

About atom replacement in your body, a statistic that I always thought was fascinating is that every seven years or so, every single atom in your body will have been replaced by a different atom. So every bit of matter in your body is different from what was there seven years ago. Whatever you think of to be "yourself", the physical components can't be it because they don't persist over the course of your existence.

As for the storage of the state of all the atoms in your body, there is one thing that prevents it from being done, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can't know everything about the state of an atom at once, and so can't store it exactly in a computer. I remember physics geeks complained about that in the original Star Trek, and then in Next Generation they made sure that the transporters had a device called the Heisenberg Compensator or something like that.

[s]The state of the human mind can be even more complex than storing all the atoms' state.

[/s]EDIT: Bah, stupid statement.[s]
[/s]

[s]The state of the human mind can be even more complex than storing all the atoms' state.

[/s]EDIT: Bah, stupid statement.[s]
[/s]

We don't know that for sure. What we do know is how such an emulator would look in VB:


If Request.AtomState(1) = 0 And Request.AtomState(2) = 1 Or Request.AtomState(1) = 1 And Request.AtomState(2) = 0 Or Request.AtomState(1) = 1 And Request.AtomState(2) = 1 Or ..
Response.Say("Hello World")
End If


To be very clear a human body is made up of atoms. None of these atoms are unique. You could find these atoms anywhere. You replace a ton of atoms all the time repairing things and usually have no connection to the dead skin cells that fall off all day long and are generated using food atoms you had eaten a while ago. Technically all it took to make you was food. You could break apart that food and construct an adult human from it identical to yourself. It would just skip the growing up step but it would be in the same state as you are now. The concept of dead or alive is linked to consciousness. All of the atoms working in a specific system to make "consciousness" that others can detect. There's nothing to say you could shed those useless atoms in the body and store that state in a computer. There is always the ability to clone someone but there is just the lack of technology at the present time to clone the full state.

To address that further, in my opinion when humans are born they are not "persons" until they actually develop self awareness which happens around the age of 1 years old but the ability to fully process or retain information occurs at about 3 or 4 years and continues developing into adulthood. Imagine a blank recurrent neural network made up of one hundred billion neurons with very basic feedback mechanisms(emotions) connected to the body of a child. It would likely act very similar to a real child and have the same level of progression. Eventually it would become a real person with complex thoughts and feelings.