The philosophy thread general discussion

The concept "Change", it turns out, is surprisingly difficult to define. Philosophers have been debating the issue going all the way back to Heraclitus and the ancient greeks. What is change? Nearly every definition will include the concept of "time" ("an alteration in the status of a phenomenon over time" for example). The problem with that is nearly every definition of "time" includes the concept of change- because the only way of measuring time is by measuring change. Indeed, some physicists are of the opinion that if all quantum events in the universe were somehow frozen, time would cease to exist. So the definitions are circular, and there is no independent objective definition of what change actually is. It may be one of those higher order concepts that cannot be precisely defined.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" is more or less a way of saying that while surface appearances may change, there are underlying patterns that remain consistent, esp. in terms of human social and political relationships. You end up marrying someone who resembles your parents, the new governing administration acts in ways very similar to the old administration, our civilization shares many similarities with previous ones, such as the Romans. There is an appearance of a balance between change and continuity which marks perceptions of interpersonal and social relationships and institutions.

The whole global instantaneous communication network that popped up recently might manage to shake things up, mind you.

While it is true that all reality is filtered through human perceptions, and cause and effect are therefore paradigms that we establish because of perceived changes in our memory state, it is somewhat puerile to insist that time does not exist outside of our perceptions. After all, changes in physical states are observable and reproducible. Electrons change levels and release energy; photons travel in space, etc. General relativity tells us that time is part of the basic structure of the universe.

edited 23rd Jun '16 8:04:18 AM by Fighteer

Although some philosophers struggle with the definitions of change and time, both are trivially definable using the words state, difference and continuum.

Time is a continuum of different sequential states. Change is a difference between states in a continuum.

Whether or not time exists in our universe is a closed question. As our universe is a continuum and at least two different states have been observed. However, I am not clear on how dissent would be childish.

Am I the only person who thinks the guy in this comic is being overdramatic and/or may need therapy?

edited 25th Jun '16 7:17:03 PM by Xopher001

In a story like that, the characters exist only to portray (and usually exaggerate) particular points of view related to the main topic of the comic. Their reactions will be extreme, because that is (usually) the most effective way to tell the story and get the point across. You're not meant to take them as real or even realistic characters with complex personalities.

So, obviously, his reactions are extreme. They're supposed to be.

(As a side note, when I first saw that comic I was a little bit annoyed because I had previously thought of a story about someone who isn't able to cope with the realisation that there is no continuity between your consciousness when you fall asleep and the consciousness that wakes up, so to speak, and thus he decided he will not allow himself to lose consciousness again. I thought it was a fairly original idea, but since I saw that comic and thought about it a bit more I realised it must be among the most common stories thought up by people who write stories and have even a passing interest in philosophy.)

Overdramatic? Those thoughts reflect Ideas I have come to believe long ago. Although, to be fair, letting truths like that get to you is a bit silly.

This is of course assuming waking consciousness equals identity

Yeah, that part is silly. You don't remain the same person even if you maintain perpetual consciousness. "Death," or ceasing to be what you were is an inexorable component of life. Without which not even understanding is possible.

edited 25th Jun '16 7:55:08 PM by war877

Bleh: apparently, REM sleep doesn't exist. Forget lucid dreaming. ;P

Failure of neurology for a philosophical point. <_<

edited 25th Jun '16 10:12:01 PM by Euodiachloris

The teleportation thing is genuinely pretty terrifying. Especially the part about watching the original get destroyed. And I don't think it's really comparable to normal aging, or sleep or whatever. That's more of a Theseus' ship kind of thing rather than a copy-paste-delete situation.

Seriously, just use wormholes instead. Or keep the originals alive and create an army of copies. Mwahaha...

There was nothing, so far as I can see, to prevent the machine from creating more than one copy, at which point the character's philosophical resolution begins to break Which one is the "real" person? Btw, a really good short story which covers these issues pretty well is Budrys' Rogue Moon.

All of them?

There would be no obvious way to tell which was not the real person, so Cloning Blues would be in full effect.

Its impossible to be teleported to a point where you could observe your original being destroyed because that information about you would have to travel faster than the speed of light

Only if the destruction happens as a part of the scanning process, which isn't necessarily the case. The original could walk into the teleporter, get scanned, and walk right out again wondering why "nothing happened."

Unless the machine is literally just creating another copy of you, which it probably already is. In that case one, just needs to delay the destruction until the clone is already complete and is able to see and comprehend the destruction of someone who looks very much like them.

And people wonder why I have transporter phobia.

Fun fact. Although the Stargate is technically a wormhole transportation device, technically, the gate converts your pattern into digitised data then broadcasts it through the wormhole to be reconstructed on the other side. If something goes wrong, you can end up stored for days in the gate's memory.

This makes me think of Soma. Especially the part where you need to upload your mind to a different robot body to keep going. You get into the scanning chair, the screen gets all glitchy for a while, and you wake up in the new body. And then you hear a voice from the other room asking why the "transfer" is taking so long...

Never watched much Stargate myself. Is that how it canonically works, or did they just get the technobabble a bit mixed up? I always assumed it was more of a literal "gate".

edited 26th Jun '16 1:29:40 PM by Corvidae

Early on, the "event horizon" that is a shot of the top of a pool with an underwater camera was a wormhole event horizon. And the transportation graphic showed a view of flying through a "tube in space". That all changed after season one when they decided the science had to actually make sense.

If a teleportor works perfectly so it doesn't even break your train of thought, then any and all copies are you.

Indeed. But they wont be the same person for long.

Once they are different people, which will happen as soon as either one notices they are in a different location from the other, an identity crisis is logical. Which one owns the car? Which one owns the house? Which one is in a relationship with their significant other? Which one holds the job of industrial engineer?

I have a standing agreement with any future clone that the original gets the house, the car and the kids. Clone gets 1/2 the savings, and 1/2 the royalties of the duobiography we will write.

Well they all have an equal right to those things, since they're all equally valid comtinuations the original. But if there's no solution for all of them, I guess it will have to be Mortal Komb...a contest of some sort.

I guess you could multi-transpoort the wive to.

Why couldn't you both have the kids, and the house?

edited 28th Jun '16 6:33:17 AM by supermerlin100

Why should we both suffer?