The Entire Star Trek Enterprise Crew Has Been Dead Since First Teleportation

ThatOwlWoman said:
It would but keep in mind that your body is an amazing factory that is constantly receiving new materials, processing and converting them to energy and matter (your cells), and then excreting the unusable byproducts. If we changed all our atoms how would we retain memories? I should have added to the other post that neurons don't get replaced nearly as quickly as other cells.
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Storages ("memories" or data) are easily transferred from a storage device to others.
 
AProudLefty said:
Wouldn't eating be an introduction of new atoms into the body? :thinking:
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We can look to the ancient Greeks for wisdom here.
Heraclitis said you can never step in the same river twice. It is similar to the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence.

Memories and experiences imprinted on the brain do not even stay the same. Psychological research demonstrates false memories and modified memories are ubiquitous in humans.

I would like to know if consciousness is something more permanent and enduring than memory and experience. I guess in an indirect way, that is the question of whether we have something akin to a soul -- or if human existence is strictly mechanistic and biochemical.
 
Cypress said:
We can look to the ancient Greeks for wisdom here.
Heraclitis said you can never step in the same river twice. It is similar to the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence.

Memories and experiences imprinted on the brain do not even stay the same. Psychological research demonstrates false memories and modified memories are ubiquitous in humans.

I would like to know if consciousness is something more permanent and enduring than memory and experience. I guess in an indirect way, that is the question of whether we have something akin to a soul -- or if human existence is strictly mechanistic and biochemical.
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The question, really, is - even if your memory is wiped clean (tabula rasa), would you still be you?

Made me think of that movie, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
 
AProudLefty said:
The question, really, is - even if your memory is wiped clean (tabula rasa), would you still be you?

Made me think of that movie, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
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No. Think of clones. If you are cloned, will the person be exactly like you? Completely different? We're more than the sum of our genes; we're also the sum of our experiences.

If you cloned 5 copies of yourself and placed the babies in different countries, would they be like you or not?

Behaviorists and sociologists love identical twin studies. Twins split at birth. Although it was unethical, and would not be done today, three identical triplets were intentionally split and one each placed in a lower, middle and upper income homes. They were each unaware they had identical siblings.

CNN made a movie about it: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/27/entertainment/three-identical-strangers-five-things

Are there similarities? Sure, but there is absolute certainty that each of them had their own personalities due to individual experiences. One of them committed suicide.

https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/three-identical-strangers
The film describes how Bobby Shafran discovered that he had a twin brother, when he arrived on the campus of a New York community college and was greeted by students who incorrectly recognized him as Eddy Galland. The two met and, knowing that they'd been adopted, quickly concluded that they were twins. Months later, the publicity of this human-interest story reached David Kellman, whose resemblance and matching adoption circumstances indicated that the three were triplets.

The brothers found themselves alike in many ways, and celebrated their new-found brotherhood. They quickly became a minor media sensation, appearing on talk shows such as the popular Phil Donahue Show. They moved in together, and opened a restaurant called Triplets Roumanian Steakhouse, which they operated together. Over time, however, differences between the three men became apparent, and their relationships with each other and others experienced difficulties. All three had struggled with mental health problems for years, and Galland took his life in 1995.

The brothers had been involved as children in a study by psychiatrists Peter B. Neubauer and Viola W. Bernard, under the auspices of the Jewish Board of Guardians, which involved periodic visits and evaluations of the boys, the full intent of which was never explained to the adoptive parents. Following the revelation that the boys were triplets, the parents sought more information from the Louise Wise adoption agency, who claimed that they had separated the boys because of the difficulty of placing triplets in a single household. But upon further investigation, it was revealed that the infants had been intentionally separated and placed with families having different parenting styles and economic levels – one blue-collar, one middle-class, and one affluent – as an experiment on human subjects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers
 
Dutch Uncle said:
No. Think of clones. If you are cloned, will the person be exactly like you? Completely different? We're more than the sum of our genes; we're also the sum of our experiences.

If you cloned 5 copies of yourself and placed the babies in different countries, would they be like you or not?

Behaviorists and sociologists love identical twin studies. Twins split at birth. Although it was unethical, and would not be done today, three identical triplets were intentionally split and one each placed in a lower, middle and upper income homes. They were each unaware they had identical siblings.

CNN made a movie about it: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/27/entertainment/three-identical-strangers-five-things

Are there similarities? Sure, but there is absolute certainty that each of them had their own personalities due to individual experiences.
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I was talking about personal identity. Clearly you and your clone are exactly the same, but your and the clone's personal identities are different. If you were to die, you wouldn't know it and your clone still lives on.
 
AProudLefty said:
I was talking about personal identity. Clearly you and your clone are exactly the same, but your and the clone's personal identities are different. If you were to die, you wouldn't know it and your clone still lives on.
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If it was possible to "wipe" a person's mind like reformatting a hard drive, then, no, you wouldn't be the same.

One great book in my college studies was "The Psychology of Consciousness " by Robert Ornstein. Among other things like studying those who had their corpus callosum* snipped thereby dividing the two hemispheres, he also studied WWII vets who had half their head blown off and lived. Did these actions cause personality differences? You bet your sweet bippy they did!


*it connects the two halves of the brain. https://www.neuroscientificallychallenged.com/blog/know-your-brain-corpus-callosum
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Ummmm.....I'd love to see your data. :)
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tenor.gif
 
AProudLefty said:
tenor.gif
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If you wiped Data's memory banks would he still be Data? No. The mechanics are there but unless his entire memories were fully restored, he'd be different. Capabilities and experiences are different things.

We're not just genes, but also the sum of our experiences. Multiple twin studies prove this.

https://www.brainfacts.org/brain-an...tories-and-discoveries-in-neuroscience-061119
Twin studies compare two different types of twins: identical and fraternal. Identical twins possess the same set of genes entirely, while fraternal twins share about half of the same genes, on average — similar to siblings who didn’t share a womb. This difference enables scientists to explore how heredity contributes to illness and behavior. For example, if identical twins are both more likely to suffer from high or low cholesterol levels than fraternal twins, researchers can conclude that genes play an important role in the development of that trait. From there, they can search for any associated genes.

“Twin studies matter because we need to understand what influences our development. Behavior? Physical structure? Twin studies are perfectly poised to teach us that,” Segal says...

...The study included more than 137 pairs of separated identical and fraternal twins and triplets from around the world who participated in a battery of medical and psychological tests. Over the years, Bouchard reported that identical twins reared apart developed personalities and interests that showed about the same degree of resemblance as identical twins who were raised together. For example, one set of twins who had been separated at four weeks of age learned as adults that each had pursued law-enforcement training, performed better in math than in spelling, and suffered from tension headaches beginning at age 18. Much more about the origins, methods, findings, and implications of this study are available in Segal’s 2012 book, Born Together-Reared Apart.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
If you wiped Data's memory banks would he still be Data? No. The mechanics are there but unless his entire memories were fully restored, he'd be different. Capabilities and experiences are different things.
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In other words, if Data was to be duplicated with all the memories, both of them are essentially the same person?
 
AProudLefty said:
tenor.gif
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More data.

https://msutwinstudies.com/why-twin-studies
Twins provide a valuable source of information for health and psychological research, as their unique relationship allows researchers to pull apart and examine genetic and environmental influences. Twin study findings have been influential in detecting and treating various diseases and psychological disorders.

How are they able to do this? Twin studies allow researchers to examine the overall role of genes in the development of a trait or disorder. Comparisons between monozygotic (MZ or identical) twins and dizygotic (DZ or fraternal) twins are conducted to evaluate the degree of genetic and environmental influence on a specific trait. MZ twins are the same sex and share 100% of their genes. DZ twins can be the same- or opposite-sex and share, on average, 50% of their genes.

If MZ twins show more similarity on a given trait compared to DZ twins, this provides evidence that genes significantly influence that trait. However, if MZ and DZ twins share a trait to an equal extent, it is likely that the environment influences the trait more than genetic factors. For example, Figure 1 presents MZ and DZ twin correlations for several physical and psychological characteristics. As shown in the figure, MZ twins, on average, are twice as similar as DZ twins for these characteristics, suggesting that genes influence the development of these traits....

why-image.jpg
 
AProudLefty said:
In other words, if Data was to be duplicated with all the memories, both of them are essentially the same person?
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If fully reprogrammed after a memory wipe/repair, then, yes, Data should respond the same way to stimuli.

Consider this; instead of wiping his cybernetic brain we just duplicate it; identical hardware, software and memories/experiences. Upon booting up, both would be completely identical. However, from that moment on, they'll each be experiencing reality differently because they're each seeing it from different perspectives. Put them onboard the Enterprise for a few years; keep one aboard ship, never on away missions why the other is sent on every away mission. Will they be different after five years? I say yes.

How much different is another question.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
If fully reprogrammed after a memory wipe/repair, then, yes, Data should respond the same way to stimuli.

Consider this; instead of wiping his cybernetic brain we just duplicate it; identical hardware, software and memories/experiences. Upon booting up, both would be completely identical. However, from that moment on, they'll each be experiencing reality differently because they're each seeing it from different perspectives. Put them onboard the Enterprise for a few years; keep one aboard ship, never on away missions why the other is sent on every away mission. Will they be different after five years? I say yes.

How much different is another question.
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So Data would be aware of what his clone is doing? That's the point of personal identity.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
It would like a twin. Are they both individuals? Yes. Like a twin or a clone.
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Yep. So Captain Picard enters a teleporter to be teleported to another planet. He dies. The clone is there on the planet. The Captain Picard isn't aware he's dead.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Behaviorists and sociologists love identical twin studies. Twins split at birth. Although it was unethical, and would not be done today, three identical triplets were intentionally split and one each placed in a lower, middle and upper income homes. They were each unaware they had identical siblings.

CNN made a movie about it: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/27/entertainment/three-identical-strangers-five-things
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That was chilling. I read a couple of other articles just now about these brothers.
 
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