I hope they enjoyed the quarter of a cup of seeds they got out of those shells

There is no metaphysical “you” that exists outside of the software running in your head.

100% agreed.

You would experience perfect continuity if your body was dismantled and reconstructed.

I’m going to explain it a different way.

This is Bill.

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I’m going to transport Bill over here.

☁️⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺

That’s still the same Bill, right? There’s continuity?

Now I’m going to do a Tom Riker, and unsuccessfully transport Bill.

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Which one is the real Bill?

If I’m understanding your argument right, you seem to think both of these are Bill. Which they are, but they’re not the same Bill. Despite both of them subjectively feeling a sense of continuity, only Left Bill has existed for more than a few seconds. If I correct my mistake by shooting Left Bill in the head, his subjective experience of being Bill is over. If I never made the mistake, and successfully dismantled him, the same would occur. For him, continuity is not maintained through the transporter.

I was never concerned with whether the me that steps out of the transporter experiences continuity. I’m only concerned with whether the me that exists right now does.

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Because the process of chemical reactions in my brain never stopped. I suppose if, without my knowledge, I was killed and replaced with a clone that has all my memories, there would be no way for me to tell, but the sleeping isn’t what kills me there

This is why I hate using the word consciousness in these debates. It’s too ill defined, and isn’t really what I mean anyway. The process of chemical reactions in my brain is my mind, regardless of whether it’s aware of any external stimuli.

It’s also irrelevant to the discussion about teleportation. Whether or not you’re the same person after you’ve gone to sleep and woken up is debatable, but whether or not the person who steps into the transporter is the person that steps out of a transporter isn’t. Like I’ve said too many times in this thread, if you step into the transporter and it fails to dismantle you when it creates your copy, you and your copy are two distinct individuals. You don’t get to see through your copy’s eyes. So when the one who stepped into the transporter dies, that individual’s subjective experience ends. This is the same whether they die before the copy is made, as the copy is made, or after the copy is made. They never get to see the other side of the transporter.

For the iteration who came out the other side of the transporter, this is a meaningless distinction. But for the iteration who stepped into the transporter, the distinction is quite literally life and death.

There’s no gap in continuity when I’m asleep. The chemical processes comprising my mind don’t stop. The mind is a process of chemical reactions, regardless of whether it’s conscious at any given time. My mind Is my mind regardless of whether it’s aware of its surroundings at any given time. If the product of the physical interactions between the neurons in my brain.

The neurons are what make the thoughts. I acknowledge the existence of neuroplasticity and vasanas, but the mind is an emergent property of the physical neurons. If your thoughts are having an effect on the brain, that is because there are physical processes happening in the brain that are affecting the brain.

My hot take of the day is that sleep is not truly unconsciousness, because you’re still to some extent aware of your surroundings. If you weren’t, then you wouldn’t react to light, or alarm clocks, or cold water on your face, or any number of other external stimuli

My second hot take of the day is that Last Thursdayism is a fun idea, but is disruptive to actual conversations about reality

Yeah, I’m aware of that. Vasanas are a related topic. But these are results of physical interactions between neurons in your brain. There’s nothing nonphysical about your mind that creates or alters matter supernaturally. My point stands, the mind is, as far as a naturalistic philosophy is concerned, an emergent property of complex interactions in the brain.

Your idea of what constitutes “you” Is wrong. Your subjective experience ends when you get dismantled. We can say this definitively, because when the transporter fails to dismantle the original, they don’t get to see through their copy’s eyes. If they don’t get to see what the transporter clone sees when both are alive, then it stands to reason that if they get dismantled, they still don’t get to see what their clone sees. Their subjective experience ends.

Because I want to see where I’m going, and if my consciousness ends, I don’t get to see it

No, we do know that the brain makes the mind. Physical changes to the brain can make predictable changes to the mind, but your thoughts don’t change the structure of your brain.

I’m confused here. No, it doesn’t matter that I’ve gone to sleep. I don’t have a new mind when I wake up.

It’s true that the entirety of a person is “just” a very complex interplay of elementary particles, but I don’t think it’s only an actual issue if you’re a spiritualist. I’m a naturalistic determinist, there’s no such thing as souls or spirits.

My line of thinking is this. Let’s say I step into the machine, and it makes a perfect copy of me at another location, but fails to dismantle my body. Since we’re talking about the transporters in Star Trek, there is precedent for this happening. I step out of the transporter entrance, and another me steps out of the transporter exit. I don’t see through that person’s eyes, I don’t hear through that person’s ears. They are separate entity, no matter how similar they are to me.

If the transporter had successfully dismantled me, I still wouldn’t see through that person’s eyes or hear through their ears. I would be dead. Another person with my memories would step out of the exit. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, that person is me. But I don’t care about the rest of the universe, I care about my own brain, which has been destroyed. Why would I agree to be transported, if I don’t get to see what happens after?

Whether or not you lose consciousness entirely during sleep is kind of hazy. Like, you are to some extent aware of your surroundings. Even people in comas can react to external stimulus. If we fully lost consciousness whenever we went to sleep, it would be impossible to rouse someone to wake

I’m firmly on the anti-transporter side, but I’m also super into the concept of artificial personhood. The people that step out of those transporters have just as much of a soul as the people who stepped in, even if they are separate people

That’s a copout. They didn’t ask whether it was possible; in the scenario they posed, it is possible, and they do it

I’m even more confused now

This is a semantics argument. The way the person you’re talking to means it, two things being equally fake also means that they’re equally real, because they are both just as real as the other (that is, not).

Yeah, the comic’s story and message are beautiful, but the “sleep kills you” argument is poorly thought out, and based on a shallow understanding of what continuity actually means. It’s not about consciousness, it’s about continuity. The processes in the brain that make up your mind don’t stop as soon as you fall asleep.

There’s an argument to be made about how you’re never the same person that you were even just a moment ago, because you’re constantly changing. That’s also shallow and lazy, and ignores the continuity we’re talking about.

There’s an argument to be made that from your perspective, continuity isn’t broken. That’s also shallow and lazy, because it treats the perception of continuity as if it’s the same thing as real continuity. As far as your clone is concerned, continuity wasn’t broken. But I was never worried about whether my clone will die when I go in the teleporter, you know?