Source Page. Credit is to SMBC-Comics and even more credit to @aperson@beehaw.org who noticed it was missing and found the credit in this comment. Sorry about that and thanks, you're awesome aperson <3
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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It's funny that when it's transporter people freak out at this idea, but technically every single person goes to sleep not knowing if the 'them' that wakes up was the same as the one that went to sleep.
We could effectively have individual consciousnesses dying each night and new ones picking back up the next morning.
Something to think about as you lie drifting off to sleep tonight.
Great, I needed more existential dread. Thanks!
The original comic page mentions the sleep thing in the alt text
The solution that clears up all of these issues and results in a fully consistent view of the self is the one people like the least. There is no "you" or "me", the self is an illusion the brain creates to make sense of things.
The Illusionist theory of Consciousness is pretty solidly refuted. The emergent theory of consciousness is vaguely similar, and argued by some to be stronger, others to be weaker, than illusionism. I think it's the most popular view among physicalist philosophers. For the arguments against emergentism, the most common seems to be the required presupposition of physicalism plus some handwaving to make it work. It's noted, however, there are a vast number of permutations of the emergentism argument or what emergent mental states actually mean, which each one of those permutations a bit different.
Upon analysis, neither has demonstrated being "a fully consistent view of the self" with any success. Ultimately, both are just unsubstantiated attempts to fill the gaps in our understanding.
That's about consciousness, which is a much larger claim than the self being an illusion. You can have consciousness without a self, that's what we call ego death. In theory, a conscious being could exist that's always in a state of ego death, and have no understanding of the self and be utterly confused by why people find anything unintuitive about the teleporter paradox.
I don't agree. Care you defend this claim? Your assertion that you can have consciousness without a self (ego death) seems more personal spiritualism than argument.
In theory like modal possibilities, or in theory like you genuinely believe such a person can exist? I'd love to hear why.
I wake up in the body of someone else with the same residue of Cheetos in my mouth as the other person ate? Seems like a lot of effort
This thought has prevented my sleep for years now.
I mean... video recording kind of shoots that theory in the foot, doesn't it?
There's a great They Might Be Giants song about exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSbEOZY7k20