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Quote from: Yankyal on November 11, 2011, 03:39:56 PM

Quote from: ARTgames on November 11, 2011, 02:43:24 PM
relevant: does true randomness exists?

@Yankyal I think you kinda put your answer in the quote. :P

Fixed it! And also I don't know about true randomness, but I do know there are things that are unpredictable, like nuclear decay. There's probably truly random shit in quantum physics but I'm not going to try and talk about it when I know nothing on the matter.

I grew up in a religion where you are told that before you came to the earth, you were told everything you would do wrong, and everything that would happen. But yet you still have the choice to do what you want to do despite this. It's contradicting. But in that, true random does not exist according to it. Because you are told the choices you will make despite still having the choice to do so.

Lets move to the scientific side now. If you look at time as a circle, which you should do, everything that will happen has already happened and everything that has happened will happen. Time is a deception. As such, there is nothing random about it. If you were meant to get that LSB, no matter how many times you reverse time to try again, you will always get it. If we lived in the dimension of time instead of this 3rd dimension, we would see that, and this question of true random would not exist.

Jake, (and Art, and anyone else interested in the topic of "What is consciousness?") I recommend looking into the following: http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

Not to get into the details (since I'm not completely familiar) but the idea is that our consciousness is formed on the structure of our minds. The very way our brain works determines our consciousness. Change it slightly, and our consciousness is altered.

Anyways, my take on this whole thing is that consciousness is fleeting. I think Jake touched on this a bit. We really could be new, speparate instances of our conscious every moment and it wouldn't make a difference. The question of whether the conscious would "transfer" to a clone or cloned brain really doesn't matter. I think a hint would be learned by the case where a perfect clone is made. It wouldn't be the same consciousness as the original. Not because it would start having new experiences or because the original still existed. The state of the original wouldn't have a bearing on the clone. It just simply wouldn't be the same consciousness. But, ultimately, what is interesting I think, is that from the clone's point of view it would be. So effectively, by creating a clone and killing the original, if neither of them knew what took place, it would appear that the consciousness had transferred into the clone (this is actually addressed in one of the story arcs in a webcomic I read called Shlock Mercenary. The main method of instant transportation actually makes a copy of the object travelling through the portal. There is a huge conspiracy because the creators of this portal capture the originals and destroy them. The effect is what I'm talking about here. It appears to the new version that they have just gone through a teleportation portal and they don't realize that they are actually copies. Of course, that's getting pretty scifi.)

It is similar with the idea of copying parts of the brain and ultimately replacing it. Since you wouldn't really be aware (given that the technology is in place for this) it wouldn't make a difference. You may ultimately be a new copy of your consciousness, but it wouldn't matter to you. You wouldn't perceive a difference. You might even say, you wouldn't be "conscious" of a difference. Eh?

I agree with what Lingus is saying.

It also makes me think about sleeping and waking up and how this comes into play.

Quote from: ARTgames on November 14, 2011, 04:40:33 PMIt also makes me think about sleeping and waking up and how this comes into play.

That's a good point. With a very slightly altered brain wave pattern you enter into a different state of consciousness. It is very interesting how the brain and the mind are interrellated. With slightly different brain chemistry, your personality can be greatly affected. It's little things like that that make it so difficult to understand.