• 31 Posts
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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: January 15th, 2024

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  • And I’m saying, even if they are polite, they are polite because I comply. If I don’t really want to be in handcuffs right then - doesn’t matter. If I’ve got an important appointment or was about to leave to pick up my child from school before police arrived to “make sure I’m not a threat” - doesn’t matter.

    Your options at that point, even as someone who has done nothing wrong are comply, or expect violence. THAT is inherently traumatic.


  • I don’t disagree with you about this specific case, I was reacting to your “people put too much stock in being cuffed.” Removing another person’s bodily autonomy under direct threat of violence is just another day for police, but for the rest of us it’s a pretty fucking traumatic thing to be on the other end of.

    Perhaps if you don’t understand what police officers go through, I could see it.

    I understand they can pick a different job if it’s too much for them, and that they knew what the job entailed when they picked the career in the first place.


  • I always felt like people put too much stock into being handcuffed or not

    Too much stock? Your bodily autonomy is being removed, under overt threat of further violence if you resist. It’s humiliating if seen in that condition because of assumptions people make. For someone who has done nothing wrong why the fuck wouldn’t they be indignant?

    I’ve been handcuffed before, In a similar but not nearly as severe circumstance.

    Me too, and I knew that they at least had a reason to think I was up to no good (I was not), it’s not the same as literally minding your own business in your own home and having them barge in. Not really apples to apples to this situation here.










  • I don’t think I can defend my position very cogently or I’d argue against other interpretations more vigorously - and as I’ve said I’d love to be wrong. It’s certainly at or beyond the depth of my understanding of consciousness, but that doesn’t mean I accept that yours is necessarily more valid. (no snark intended with that comment)

    When I bring it up I get challenged to articulate why I feel that way and inevitably get presented with a question like yours that I can’t answer - but generally no one gives me a “here’s why you are wrong” argument, they just give me “you can’t differentiate between what you’ve posited and a nondestructive consciousness transfer and therefore you are wrong.” I maintain that my lack of ability to articulate that difference reflects poorly on me, but doesn’t actually prove I’m wrong.

    For example, I don’t think my inability to articulate a ‘property that is altered’ represents a weakness in my position, and I’m not sure a property needs to be altered for my understanding to be true.

    Using (very poorly and atypically) the ship of Theseus example, I think we’d agree that if I had two absolutely identical sets of shipbuilding materials, down to the atomic level, or further, down to the state of all observable properties of that matter and the particles that make it up, (I have no idea how one would achieve such a thing), and built a ship from one set of those materials, then vaporized that ship and built another that was 100% identical using the second set of those materials, those ships would be two identical but distnict entities. I don’t think I’ve seen an argument that convinces me that the same wouldn’t be true for pulling my consciousness (ephemeral and subjective as it may be) and body through a transporter or other such destructive process.

    Your argument feels like you are telling me that if I use a replicator to make two different but identical cups of earl grey hot they are actually the same cup of tea, when plainly they are not. Considering (sticking with star trek) the stories of duplicates due to being stuck in the “pattern buffer” or similar handwavium, it seems clear that the ST transporter is capable of creating multiple entities. The only difference between a normal transporter experience and one of those freaky transporter accidents seems to be whether the two entities are both alive at the same time.

    COULD there be (since we’re in the realm of scifi anyway) some method of transferring consciousness that wouldn’t seem like death to me? Yes I’m sure there could. But I don’t think I’ve seen one in any popular scifi, at least not that I can think of right now.




  • Well that sent me down an interesting but short rabbithole wormhole, ending here. Glad to see I’m not alone in thinking most forms of consciousness copy or transfer that get discussed are actually involving murder/death of the original, even if the resulting copy believes itself to be the same entity and people around it treat it as such.

    I’d absolutely be one of those “I ain’t getting in that transporter” people on Star Trek unless convinced that it truly was a transfer of consciousness, not a copy and destroy.

    Mind you, I’d love for that not to be the case, and would love to be convinced otherwise. It kills my enjoyment of stories that are centered around that sort of technology sometimes.

    Mind uploading may potentially be accomplished by either of two methods: copy-and-upload or copy-and-delete by gradual replacement of neurons (which can be considered as a gradual destructive uploading), until the original organic brain no longer exists and a computer program emulating the brain takes control of the body.

    Oddly, the bolded ship-of-Theseus kind of approach doesn’t bother me as much - maybe because it feels akin to the continuous death and replacement of individual cells, but if challenged I might have a hard time defending why this bothers me so much less than the Transporter or even Altered Carbon approach.





  • it’s companies super eager to replace human workers with automation (or replace skilled workers with cheaper, unskilled workers). The problem is, every worker not working is another adult (and maybe some kids) not eating and not paying rent.

    I agree this is the real problem. (And also shit like Microsoft’s “now I can attend three meetings at once” ad) However:

    I stand by my opinion that learning systems training on copyrighted materials isn’t the problem

    The industries whose works are being used for training are on the front lines of efforts to replace human workers with AI - writers and visual artists.