Think of it like this. I have a computer hard drive. I can make a perfect clone of this computer hard drive. Every single one and zero accounted for on a separate disk. While these hard drives contain the same information, changes to one do not cause changes in the other. While they contain the same data, they are not the same hard drive.
If you have two drive in a RAID 1 array. They have the same data. If one dies, it doesn’t matter. Everything important is preserved without interruption.
But I’m not in a RAID array with my teleportation clone. As far as the data contained within my brain goes, nothing is lost if I die the very instant that my clone is made, but I posit that what makes my mind my mind isn’t just the data held within it.
There’s a part of my brain that argued with itself when it reread that, because if the ongoing chemical reaction is what makes my mind my mind, then if I were cloned a la Farscape season 3, then both starmans have claim on being the starman. Even then, I feel like that only helps to illustrate the fact that my mind is both the data and the uninterrupted chemical process. If both clones are made of the same ongoing chemical process but have different data in them, then they’re not the same starman as each other, even if they are the same starman as they were just before the cloning.
The data is what makes me the starman that I am right now, while the ongoing chemical process is what makes me the starman that I was yesterday, and that I’ll be tomorrow. Good talk, I love a discussion that makes me further my own opinions on personhood
Think of it like this. I have a computer hard drive. I can make a perfect clone of this computer hard drive. Every single one and zero accounted for on a separate disk. While these hard drives contain the same information, changes to one do not cause changes in the other. While they contain the same data, they are not the same hard drive.
If you have two drive in a RAID 1 array. They have the same data. If one dies, it doesn’t matter. Everything important is preserved without interruption.
But I’m not in a RAID array with my teleportation clone. As far as the data contained within my brain goes, nothing is lost if I die the very instant that my clone is made, but I posit that what makes my mind my mind isn’t just the data held within it.
There’s a part of my brain that argued with itself when it reread that, because if the ongoing chemical reaction is what makes my mind my mind, then if I were cloned a la Farscape season 3, then both starmans have claim on being the starman. Even then, I feel like that only helps to illustrate the fact that my mind is both the data and the uninterrupted chemical process. If both clones are made of the same ongoing chemical process but have different data in them, then they’re not the same starman as each other, even if they are the same starman as they were just before the cloning.
The data is what makes me the starman that I am right now, while the ongoing chemical process is what makes me the starman that I was yesterday, and that I’ll be tomorrow. Good talk, I love a discussion that makes me further my own opinions on personhood