Question of the Day
Jason Kuznicki on Jul 26th 2005
Suppose a credible agent made you the following offer:
“We propose to kill you, quickly and painlessly. In return, we will construct an exact duplicate of yourself, perfect down to the molecules. Your duplicate will have all your physical attributes, abilities, and character traits. He will even remember having had all your experiences. In short, no one will be able to distinguish the duplicate from the previous you by any test whatsoever. We will also pay that duplicate ten million dollars.”
Would you accept?
I posed this question to Scott, adding that I would never accept the offer.
“I think deep down inside you’re still not really an atheist,” Scott replied. Much to my surprise, he would have accepted in a moment. And I’ve been reconsidering the question myself.
One reason for declining the bargain is that even a painless death is supremely unpleasant to contemplate. And, like all goods, even money is subject to the law of diminishing marginal utility: After a while, adding the nth additional dollar to your wealth does not make you happier to the same degree that the n-1th dollar did. Thus perhaps no amount of money could ever put us high enough on the satisfaction axis to compensate for the unpleasant experience of death–even if it did come with a rebirth of sorts just afterward.
Let’s suppose, then, that we up the stakes a bit: Our credible agent now offers world dominion for the rest of your life. You would have complete freedom to satisfy all physical, emotional, and intellectual desires, complete freedom to enact all laws, establish all customs, and rearrange or nullify all existing ones. You would rule everything, if only you would submit to the procedure.
Interested yet?
(On a related topic, one would think that Christian theists would be the most likely group to accept such a bargain. Doesn’t their very religion demand it? I mean, couldn’t the “credible agent” really be the Bible, which promises an eternity of bliss if only one is willing to die and be born again? Curiously, I suspect most Christians would not take any of these similar bargains.)
Consider the following, also an argument against the procedure: If our credible agent could create one of me, couldn’t he create more than one? Couldn’t he create two or two hundred Jasons? If so, which would be the “real” one? Perhaps, of course, they would all be the real one. But by what virtue are they real? I am me–and I am real–because I actually have had the experiences I remember, or, at least I trust that I have. Copies, no matter how perfect, would not have lived an authentic life. If they ever learned of their origins, it might be highly disturbing to them.
But now consider what I think is the strongest argument for taking the plunge after all:
1. Suppose instead of our pre-arranged bargain, you instead stepped into a teleporter, one that would transport “you” to another location, by unweaving your molecular pattern in Star Trek fashion. Again, it’s for ten million dollars. Would you do it? And would you ever worry about what was happening in the meantime?
2. What if the teleporter didn’t move you through space at all–but simply transported you to exactly the same place, just one instant later?
3. And isn’t this what we already do all the time? Isn’t the Jason of a moment ago already dead?
Still, though, I’m not sure I’d take the plunge.
[For further reading, I recommend posts from Unscrewing the Inscrutable and from the old Positive Liberty.]
Filed in The Belfry, The Biosphere
Good post.
I would guess that if resurrection theories actually require some sort of foundation in psychologial continuity theory (as you are suggesting), then Christians just don’t recognize this, and that’s what makes them OK with the Heaven deal but not with the thought experiment. My guess would be that although resurrection does in fact seem to presuppose a kind of PCT, Christians add “soul” to it. So the body resurrection is necessary, but not sufficient for full resurrection. Adding a “soul” component would make it not PCT. Thus the difference in intuitions on the case from Christians (my guess, anyway).
On “the plunge,” well, I guess it matters if you believe in PCT theories of personal identity. If you do, you should take it.
Oolong
Yeah I might take that. I’d want to make sure it wasn’t a scam and that the tech was for real. And that might be a pretty high standard to meet to my personal satisifaction.
Interesting question, but my first response is that it seems *easy* to answer for an atheist. The answer is definitely “No,” since there is no transfer of consciousness. Once Jason A is slain, what does it matter if Jason B has all his memories? You’re giving up the one life you have for…what exactly? So a clone of yourself with your memories can be wealthy? What kind of deal is that? Jason A is still dead. He got nothing out of the arrangement, and Jason B got everything.
Maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees. Once the organism known as Jason A is extinguished, how can he reap any benefits? From a purely materialist viewpoint, it would seem that the awareness that began with Jason A’s birth and ended with Jason A’s death has absolutely no overlap with Jason B’s awareness. The two are isolated patches of perception who happen to share DNA and a similar brain chemistry configuration at the time of Jason A’s death / Jason B’s creation.
I’d take the plunge. I don’t really see any reason why not too. Assuming, as you said, it was a credible source. I’m not so sure about the teleporter, though. But that’s only because I’ve watched “The Fly” (Cronenberg’s) too many times. Yech!
Andrew,
When I value myself, what is it, exactly, that I value enough to keep on living? It’s got to include my experiences, my personality, my goals, my ethics, my body, my intellect… I could go on, but what is there to value, to conserve, that ISN’T recorded in the physical structure of my body. You and Jason (Jason less now, maybe) both are attached to this idea of continuity, but I submit that the “continuity” of which you speak is in all meaningful respects identical to the mystical “soul.” It’s everything about “you” that isn’t in the stuff that makes “you” up.
I don’t believe in the soul, at all. If this body is vaporized and replaced by another one, identical in all material respects, then I have lost nothing I value. What if they do it to you when you’re asleep, and they promise the new “you” won’t perceive ever having been anything but “you”? Then that person can be you in every meaningful way for the rest of your life.
It would be, in fact, YOUR life.
The concept of consciousness, I should point out, is not valuable even for mundane considerations of “what makes up the self,” or “what do I value in myself.” When I underwent anesthesia and had no consciousness at all, I didn’t stop being me, or cease to exist, because when I came to, I was all me still. Every night we have a little death; Jason’s hypothetical is much less death even than falling asleep.
Copies, no matter how perfect, would not have lived an authentic life.
Does actually having lived the life matter all that much? You don’t know of your life because you lived it, you know of it because you REMEMBER living it. In fact, you almost certainly don’t even remember much (if any) of your life exactly the way it actually happened. I think I place more value on the memories of the experiences than the experiences themselves.
Hmmm. I probably misspoke when I used the term “consciousness.” The continuity I’m thinking about relates our organismal individuality. The destruction of the original person isn’t necessary for this thought experiement. Let’s assume that Andrew B is created whole cloth as an exact replica of Andrew A, with memories intact, and–for the the sake of argument–Andrew A is *not* killed. Neither Andrew has any ability to control the other Andrew’s thoughts or actions. (Hmmm. Shades of “natural law” there…) They could stand there and stare at one another, and each would have his own perceptions, with no crossover. One could be killed, and the other would feel no pain. This seems to suggest that there is indeed something “different” about them, even if it’s only their biological discreteness. The two “packages” of matter and energy can move around independently. One being annihilated does affect the other in the slightest.
Copies, no matter how perfect, would not have lived an authentic life.
I’ve got to disagree to this, too.
Copies, in a sense, will have lived a meaningful life, because your DNA and all of your life experiences go into forming the “you” that gets copied. Any deviation from your life in any way would result in a different copy. The copies, even if told they were copies, will not have experienced any sense of discontinuity. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. As Scott said, we experience discontinuity (or rather, we don’t) every day when we go to sleep and wake up in the morning, still “us” despite all the molecules we’ve lost or replaced.
Even so, suggesting that the continuity of a single, corporeal body is what constitutes a meaningful life is a little metaphysical. Life, like chess, is one gigantic Markov chain. All that matters is where the pieces on the board are located right now. It doesn’t matter at all how they got there. What matters is the illusion of continuity that is the “self.”
Andrew, the destruction of the original being is essential.
If an exact duplicate was created at the exact instance of the original’s destruction, there would be NOTHING different between the original and the duplicate in that instance.
Now after that instance the duplicate would instantly begin to possess memories of experiences not shared by the original (ie. anything that happens after the duplicate is created). If we allow the original to continue to exist, the pair will have different experiences and therefore become distinct beings, however if the original is destroyed in the same instance that the exact duplicate is created, there is no point in which the duplicate is different from it’s original.
Why is it essential? It seems like the thought experiment is set up specifically to avoid the appearance of discontinuity. While you might contend that overlapping the existence of Andrew A and B in time creates the illusion of dicontinuity, I would argue that the concurrent destruction of A and creation of B creates the illusion of continuity. Regardless of how finely we subdivide time, the lump of matter and energy that was Andrew A has still been annihilated, has still ceased to exist. The instantaneous replacement with another lump of matter and energy that is exactly identical doesn’t seem to negate the fact of the annihilation of the first. I suppose one could argue that *all* matter and energy is constantly being created and destroyed when we subdivide time down to 1/unity, but I would defer to a particle physicist on that one…
We could certainly go the other way with the thought experiment. What if one second divided the destruction of Andrew A and the creation of Andrew B? Are they still the same person if there is a “missing second”? What if–as in AI–we could reconstruct a person’s body and memories exactly at the time of their death
at the time of their death from their DNA? If produced a replica of Abe Lincoln from the preserved blood on his stained bedclothes, and brought him to life in the year 2005, would it be, in fact, Abe Lincoln? Or would it be something else, “Abe Lincoln II”?
Actually, Jason, your average Christian (at least if I can use myself as a yardstick for what constitutes such a critter) would be most unlikely to accept the offer. It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t qualify as suicide (a mortal sin in the Catholic tradition)–and for pay, at that, which would only make it worse.
The difference between your hypothetical and the “eternal life” spoken of in the Gospels is that the latter comes only at the end of our natural lives here on earth–over which we have very little control. And the rewards aren’t supposed to be quite as materialistic as either $10m or world domination. As Jesus asked his disciples (Matthew 16:26), “What does it profit a person if she gains the whole world but loses her soul?” (my translation from the original Greek, which uses the neutral ἄνθρωπος instead of the gendered ἀνήρ).
I also have to quibble with both Kris and dolphin.
Dolphin asks “Does actually having lived the life matter all that much?” The only possible answer I can give to that question is “Yes.”
Kris asserts, “Copies, in a sense, will have lived a meaningful life, because your DNA and all of your life experiences go into forming the ‘you’ that gets copied.”
I think that’s exactly backwards. An exact “copy” or clone would have had no life prior to its awakening. While it would be a perfect genetic copy, it should in theory be a true tabula rasa until somehow my memories and personality are implanted within its brain. But that’s hardly the same thing as living the experiences which are now locked away in my memory, or learning (often painfully and in fits and starts and “Aha!” moments) the many things stored away there. It’s the quick-and-dirty fix that a lot of people might say they want, but which I have to regard as a poor substitute for actually living the life and learning those things the hard way.
“While it would be a perfect genetic copy, it should in theory be a true tabula rasa until somehow my memories and personality are implanted within its brain.”
Michael, that was all a part of the hypothetical as stated above–the new body would not be merely a genetic clone; it would be identical down to the molecule, sharing all memories and character traits. In a sense, copies would share all of your experiences–except that they would have been (1) physicially discontinuous with your previous “self” and (2) not authentic in that their origin was in a lab rather than in the real world.
But you do have a good point on suicide–if, that is, it really was a suicide, which I can’t say for certain.
I guess I’m having trouble seeing how that hypothetical would play out, though. How could the duplicate be “identical down to the molecule, sharing all memories and character traits” unless it had lived them alongside the original? A true clone would get you the genetic identity, and it should in theory be possible to transfer the memories from one brain to another–or at least a few sci-fi writers have speculated on that possibility. But character traits? That’s a tougher nut to crack, it would seem to me. And I’m still not convinced that merely transfering or implanting memories from one person to another is the equivalent of living them, but that’s a relatively trivial point.
On the suicide question, it’s a finicky distinction, but I think it’s there. Assisted suicide, at least. In order for the hypothetical to work, the original person must agree to allow him/herself to be killed in order to receive the benefits. If it’s immoral for me to ask my doctor to give me a lethal dose of barbiturates to end my sufferings, I don’t see how it could possibly be considered moral for me to accept a deal that necessitates my death solely for material gain. Even the principle of the double effect wouldn’t get me past it, since there’s no way to look at the situation where my death wouldn’t be an intended consequence.
I guess I’m having trouble seeing how that hypothetical would play out, though. How could the duplicate be “identical down to the molecule, sharing all memories and character traits” unless it had lived them alongside the original? A true clone would get you the genetic identity, and it should in theory be possible to transfer the memories from one brain to another–or at least a few sci-fi writers have speculated on that possibility. But character traits?
It’s all part of Jason’s hypothetical. It question assumes that you believe the sum total of a person’s character traits, personality, memories, etc. - the stuff that makes you you - is encoded physically in the architecture of our synapses. Jason isn’t talking about merely a genetic clone, but rather a molecular clone, which presumably would carry with it all the hard-coded memories, down to the transient thoughts you were having at the moment of duplication.
“How could the duplicate be “identical down to the molecule, sharing all memories and character traits” unless it had lived them alongside the original?”
All of those things are mechanical, and thus, theoretically, reproducable.
But people aren’t just the machines. People are a _process_. If you made an exact duplicate and started it, you’re still starting a new process; the thing that makes me look out from inside my head won’t make me also look out from inside the head of the new clone.
I would refuse to do it for ten million dollars, but accept if my substitute could rule the world.
As Andrew Wyatt says, the substitute created would still not be me, and I would still be dead. So ten million dollars would have no value to me, and I’m not willing to die so some other guy (no matter how much he resembles me) can have ten million dollars.
But there are some causes I would die for. If I knew that, an instant after my death, someone exactly like me would rule the world, then I would certainly accept death, confident that my substitute’s first action would be to stop the genocide in Darfur. (I’ll keep my fantasies about what he’d do to George Bush private.)
I think I would do it. (Ask me later when it really happens.) As long as there is psychological continuity between me and my clone, that should be sufficient for something of me to survive, no?
The thing is, Kris, we at least supposedly know how to make genetic clones. “Molecular” clones, on the other hand, I don’t believe I’ve ever even heard of. I seriously doubt we have the technology to create them at this point, and I’m not sure we ever would. And the entire hypothetical presupposes a considerably better understanding of the nature of intelligence, memory, personality, and even the basics of the human nervous system, than I see around me in the world right now.
Sure, I could do this as a thought experiment in alternative universes, but if it’s to have any kind of relevance, the alternative universe has to be at least reasonably similar to this one. And I’m not seeing that.
And David, I’m not sure I can agree with you that things like memory and personality are purely mechanical and therefore reproducible. That would certainly fit with a behaviorist understanding of psychology, but that runs up against the problem that if the behaviorists are correct then they should not have been able to invent behaviorism in the first place. So I’ll take that theory with a grain or three of salt.
Very interesting thread. The problem of continuity brings to mind one of the oldest logical paradoxes in the book: the Ship of Theseus paradox. If all the constituent parts of a complex thing are replaced or reconstituted, does the thing remain the same?
What leaps out at me about Jason’s thought experiment is what everyone else seems to blow right by: the stipulation of a “credible agent.” Surely the problem of credibility here is as troubling as the problem of continuity. At the very least, in order to agree to such a radical proposal, I would have to set extraordinarily high standards of credibility, one of the least of which would be having seen the procedure performed successfully before. But even that standard’s being met would not make my resolve invincible here. No matter how credible the agent is, running the risks involved here means taking a leap of faith. Maybe the real reason for reticence that some seem to have to take this leap has less to do with the continuity paradox and more to do with an implicit epistemological problem here: less to do with what constitutes continuous identity and more to do with what constitutes credibility.
Another thing that leaps out at me from the thought experiment is the fact that even if I were to be “resurrected” by the putative procedure, Caleb B would still presumably die. Now, perhaps the thought experiment could simply be tweaked to account for this problem: perhaps we could postulate that I could have the procedure done again and again. But at that point, the sweetener of the deal ($10 million) would start to be less enticing. The intuitive appeal of that reward comes from the way this thought experiment still assumes that you only have one life (maybe two lives) to live, and that for this reason, any risk you are running (and risk is always involved so long as the credibility problem persists) is worth the potential rewards. Eliminate any risk or any credibility gap, and the whole thought experiment, which is premised on a submerged cost-benefit analysis, might dissolve.
One reason why I’m raising these points is to challenge the passing parallel between this thought experiment and Christian beliefs in resurrection. If a Christian wanted to refuse Jason’s proposal but still believe in resurrection, contradiction would not necessarily threaten: the Christian might have a credibility calculus that makes her more willing to make a leap of faith in the direction of a divine agent than in the direction of a human one (you could quibble with that credibility calculus, of course, first of all by pointing out that Christian beliefs in resurrection require placing faith in the credibility of human informants as well as in the credibility of divine promises, but the point is that there is not a simple or curious contradiction here).
Even more importantly, the Christian belief in resurrection posits not just the continuity of the believer’s life after death, but the larger end of death itself–the end of discontinuity in general, not just the continuation of one life in particular. In fact, presumably the Christian is banking on not just a duplication of this present coil, but an improved model–not an exact molecular reproduction of this bag of skin and bones, but an incorruptible “body” for which we might not even have referents at present.
And most importantly of all, the Christian belief in resurrection does not reduce to anything so crude as a belief that death will be rewarded with pie-in-the-sky, the spiritual equivalent of $10 million, although it is often caricatured in that way by some of the religion’s own adherents and even more of its critics. Although reward is promised (crown after cross, etc.) and although enigmatic and canonical sayings suggest that “he who loses his life will save it,” the Christian hope in resurrection is not fundamentally utilitarian. It is not just a hope that I in particular will be rewarded, but that the earth itself will be redeemed of the kind of greed that makes me thirst for reward, and that God will act to vindicate the victimized, and a whole host of other things. I realize this belief might sound ludicrous, but at least it’s more like what Christians really do (or really should) believe than the straw man parenthetically set up in this post.
I may be making a lot out of nothing, but vast consequences (all of which, I think, are theologically suspect) follow from the implication that Christian hope is strictly analogous to the hope of the hypothetical decision-maker in this thought experiment, so I want to at least cast doubt on the analogy.
For those who think “theologically suspect” is a tautology, I’m still interested in the subtext problems I raised at the beginning: the implied “credibility” problem in the thought experiment, and the cost-benefit analysis problem, which I would formalize this way:
1. However I slice this proposal, I’m running a risk.
2. To take that risk, the benefits have to be substantial enough to outweigh the risk (Jason’s marginal utility point).
3. But I know that whatever the benefits are, they will be short-lived, since I’ll still die, making the margin of utility even smaller, since in taking the plunge I could lose what limited life Caleb A still has.
At this point, the thought experiment could be modified to make the credibility of the agent indubitable, or to give me infinite iterations of resurrection, but then the thought experiment no longer has any cost-benefit analysis component at all, and it just becomes a ho-hum Ship of Theseus paradox about whether “I” would still be “me” through all of these successive changes. The decision calculus element of the experiment dissolves.
Or so it seems to me.
Caleb - I guess I never saw the cost-benefit aspect as being that important, since in Jason’s hypothetical situation the indubitability (indubitableness?) of the credible source was given / axiomatic / beyond question. Given that, you’re absolutely right, it boils down to a Theseus’ ship paradox. But phrased in a way that makes you really think about faith or lack thereof. If there was even a shred of doubt about the source’s credibility, no way in hell would I take the offer!
To reply to Michael, Jason’s question in no way supposes that the experiment is (or will ever be) possible. It is a hypothetical situation, a thought experiment. You don’t have to actually conduct it in order to speculate about the implications.
[...] Below, Kuznicki asks whether we would be willing to allow someone to kill us quickly and painlessly, in exchange for having an exact duplicate (including our memories) created and given ten million dollars. [...]
I think the illussion of continuity would be enough for me. Look at it from the memories of the duplicate. I would remember being asked about this, deciding to go ahead with it, climbing into the machine that would do it, and then climbing back out and collecting my money.
Hypothetically Speaking…
Despite browsing through various news articles, fellow bloggers, and random thoughts, nothing is striking me as something I have a great urge to write about. In the mean time, Jason of Positive Liberty (which he has just expanded to a collaborative p…
Very interesting thread. Will have to think about this one.
One thing occured to me. As we grow and develop, aren’t our cells constantly dying off and being replaced anyway? Isn’t that kind of a slow-motion version of exactly the kind of hypothetical process presented here, once every cell has been replaced? I know not every cell gets replaced, but is that difference impotant here?
Reminds me of an old puzzle. A mans loans another an old boat with the proviso that any damage accrued be repaired. As time goes by, the boat essentially falls apart but the second man dutifully repairs each bit of damage. Eventually the boat gets to the point where no original parts remain and all that’s left is new pieces. The first man complains this is no longer his boat, and that the second man broke their bargain. The second says it is the first guys boat and he did everything asked of him. Who is correct?
Derek Parfit spends about a quarter of his book, Reasons and Persons, developing arguments about what’s happening in cases like this one and considering the implications. Parfit argues that what matters is psychological continuity and connectedness. As long as the duplicate will have your memories, have your personality, be able to fulfill your intentions, and so forth, it is relatively unimportant whether it is a replica, recreated from different physical material, or the original you. Parfit thinks that your replica would be you (as long as there is never more than one version of you alive at once), so it would be able to say that it had had all of these experiences, but that ultimately the question of whether this person is really you isn’t very important. Since personal identity is not some deep further fact over and above the series of interrelated physical and mental events that occur, the claim “but that wouldn’t be me” (or “but that wasn’t me“) can’t carry much weight. The question “would that be me?” doesn’t even always have a determinate answer, since a slight physical change to your brain and body and a slight change to your psychology wouldn’t change who you are, but a complete physical change to your brain and body and a complete change to your psychology would make you a completely different person, and there is no principled way to draw a line that separates the cases where the changes are enough to make you a new person from the cases that are not.
No, my physical mind is as important in identifying myself as the thoughts, memories contained in it. It’s interesting that you brought up teleportation because in terms of real science this is exactly how it would work, the orginal is destroyed and a copy is made. It’s just real-time cloning as opposed to real world cloning where you get a baby instead of a full-grown person.
But as to this question, as Andrew pointed out, as an atheist I have to say no, because my memories and personality do not = me by themselves.
Fascinating concept. It does have religious undertones, though. I’ve always wondered how anyone could NOT believe that what makes us individual persons is both physical AND spiritual. Merely having a first-person perspective of the world begs the question of a soul, doesn’t it? But if one is purely athiest, I can’t imagine they would do such a thing unless they trusted their clone would carry out some unbelievable amount of “good” to compensate them for their own sacrifice, because surely they would not “wake up” in a new body — they’d be dead, and their clone would be alive as a unique “person”.
In a sense, this is martyrdom, in that they would have to believe there are things worth dying for (like world domination, or $10m). But martyrdom presupposes that you have placed other morals and values “above the self” (remember, you’d be dead… regardless of what your clone does, even with your memories, you can’t say they’d be “you” any more than identical twins can see through each other’s eyes).
So, an athiest who accepts the offer does so based on submission to some higher morality (”the greater good”) — which is sort of religious, isn’t it? I would think that a pure athiest would always say “no” to the offer.
I’m not an athiest, by the way.
As a Christian, I believe in salvation of all (and not just for Christians — in this way, I’m a bit liberal in the church), in the existence of the soul (or spirit), and in an afterlife. But believing in God leaves one to question whether God would want you to tamper with nature to such an extent. Christianity says that what is material in this life has no value in the next (so who cares if you’re rich or poor on Earth anyway, except for satisfying selfish creature-comforts… or you could donate it all to charity, I suppose). Worse, though, desiring world domination, even for your duplicate, means you trust them to act as a “god on Earth” — and nobody can handle that kind of power but God. So, to a Christian, the incentives don’t matter. Even if the clone could try to use the money or power for “good” our human perspective is not sufficient to foresee any outcomes.
Ever see the Star Trek episode where Edith Keeler must die, because her pacifism, were she to live, would have caused a string of events to unfold, allowing Hitler to conquer the world? (there’s this whole time travel thing, and Kirk falls in love with her… yeah, I’m a geek). The point is, we cannot judge whether the decisions we make serve a “greater good” ourselves. So, I’m sure I wouldn’t want my clone to have that kind of autocratic authority over others. The Christian says that God is in control at all times.
Having said this, you might consider making the offer more enticing: what if someone else had done this before you, and it “worked” from their perspective. It “proves” the technology works.
But, there is no way to test whether the “soul” made the transfer too… and that’s what creeps out theists, and spiritualists.
Awesome blog, by the way!
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