/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11979117]

Can any of you prove scientifically that you are the same person now as you were 5 seconds ago, and not just a different person with the same memories? Can any of you prove that the universe wasn't created 5 seconds ago and all of your memories are entirely false?

[Anonymous No.11979122]

>>11979117
>prove scientifically
science doesn’t have proof, it has evidence and occam’s razor (the principle that if there are outlandish explanations as well as sensible explanations, then the sensible explanation is the one to go with). people spouting outlandish shit like you said get razored to >>>/x/

[Anonymous No.11979127]

>>11979122
I dislike occam's razor. Who defines what is possible. The idea of an atom is equally outlandish too. I'm sure many scientific theories were first rejected because of the idea of occam's razor

There is only reality and non-reality, none of this psuedo-philosophical shit.

[Anonymous No.11979132]

>>11979127
>The idea of an atom is equally outlandish too. I'm sure many scientific theories were first rejected because of the idea of occam's razor
that’s why evidence is the number 1 and being conceptually conservative bows down to evidence.

but if people spout schizo shit without any evidence, it needs to be razored until evidence comes along. heck, if somebody gave me hard evidence for timecube or for Xenu, i’d be open to it. but without that it’s schizo shit

[Anonymous No.11979137]

>>11979132
No, you're being stupid now, how is that schizo shit? Who defines absurd? You? The only argument is that my thread is not very important to think about, but it's not schizo shit. You have been indoctrinated to hate philosophy or something?

[Anonymous No.11979139]

no, and this is why I have no worries about teleportation or uploading brain into computer

[Anonymous No.11979144]

>>11979132
To be frank I would assume scientific research actually hints towards what I was saying in the OP

[Anonymous No.11979148]

>>11979132
Okay, to be fair, the part about the universe being created 5 seconds ago is just nonsense, but the other thing might have some credibility as far as you know, it might not, but that's the point of the thread.

[Anonymous No.11979156]

>>11979137
take a step back. you are arguing that your body and "you" are two different things, and that human bodies can be different "people" at different times on the timespan of 5 seconds. what is your scientific idea for how this could happen? is there some supernatural entity that defines which "person" someone is that can travel between bodies and assume the memories stored in those bodies? you are suggesting that there is something supernatural that has a real impact on the natural world. to claim that this is a scientific thing, you need some evidence or you need to propose a natural mechanism that realizes this in a non-supernatural way. otherwise it's not science, it is actually pseudoscience. and pseudoscience is absurd because it is counter to science, which has a track record of working.

that the universe was created 5 seconds ago is even more absurd. if you can make a clock that can run for more than 5 seconds, like say swinging a pendulum, and it just works for longer than 5 seconds, and you can see it and see that it works for longer than five seconds, the only way to rationalize your belief that somehow the universe isn't doing what you see before your eyes is basically the thought that "muh personal perception of reality is more real than the direct physical evidence i have in front of my eyes!" which is basically schizophrenia according to medical books

[Anonymous No.11979165]

>>11979156
There is no true method to verify anything but the present exists.
The human body is typically thought of as being a "person" that is unique and lives his own life, but what if it was just simulating a person, and instead, you are just a representation of the body? Agree with me? Well, then why are you arguing against me?

[Anonymous No.11979176]

>>11979165
i don't understand what you're saying at all. sounds like gibberish. aside from you using the word "simulating" which is a buzzword for people who got obsessed with the Wachowski Sisters movies and don't realize how it conflicts with the laws of physics which are incredibly well verified with evidence

[Anonymous No.11979180]

>>11979176
Oh boy,
what is the color "red?"
When I see red does it look the same for me as it does for you? We each see "red" and can identify it, but does my red look the same as your red does? What if my red looks like your blue, and I just call it red when I see it, but to me it looks like blue, and I've trained myself that is called "red?"

What defines what red is? The brain, to the brain, which creates sight itself based on the eye's input, the brain is a subjective "AI" so to speak, that has its own internal understanding of data, which includes the interpretation of colours like "red" and you may as well be a representation of the AI.

[Anonymous No.11979194]

>>11979180
>goes off on the argument about "muh red could be your blue!!!!"
wow anon. that's totally unrelated. try staying on topic. i know it is hard for philosophy anons, since you guys smoke tons of weed and of course it's hard to keep your thoughts straight with so much THC in there

>, the brain is a subjective "AI" so to speak, that has its own internal understanding of data, which includes the interpretation of colours like "red" and you may as well be a representation of the AI.
what are you even saying? are you saying that the body does some sort of AI, and the "person" is independent of it? or are you saying that the body's """AI""" is actually the person? in the latter case i would argue that human intelligence is just normal Natural Intelligence or NI or just plain old intelligence or even simpler, just plain old "people". what is """artificial""" here?

[Anonymous No.11979202]

>>11979194
Think about it this way
why does everything you like and do and hate and not do, correspond entirely to the way your body physically evolved/formed?

Do you know the reason people like sex? Because the brain evolved to do it to reproduce, so your "enjoyment" is the representation of the justification of your brain's actions...

You just aren't understanding what I'm saying and you are disguising yourself as the smarter one here.

[Anonymous No.11979211]

>>11979194
A plant evolved to naturally grow towards the sun.
A lesser intelligent animal evolved to fly towards the sun, like a bug for example, they fly towards lights.
A more intelligent animal like a dog evolved to think enough to move around and find food.
You evolved to be able to think enough to make posts on 4chan for the same reason as the plant or the fly or the dog, it was just environmental factors guiding the evolution of our species in one direction.

The brain grew and formed its own internal systems.

"You" do not exist.

You don't understand it.

[Anonymous No.11979215]

>>11979202
>why does everything you like and do and hate and not do, correspond entirely to the way your body physically evolved/formed?

>Do you know the reason people like sex? Because the brain evolved to do it to reproduce,
okay, sure. all this is correct.

> so your "enjoyment" is the representation of the justification of your brain's actions...
what? "the representation of the justification"???

i have a simpler explanation. the "enjoyment" is the positive neurological / neurochemical response that comes from these activities. it has nothing to do with some mystical supernatural simulation avatar

seriously, as i said you must be one of those weedsmoking philosanons. right? the act of smoking weed proves that perception is all about neurons and neurochemistry. you have to admit that chemicals in the neurotransmitter system are fundamental to the emotional responses that people subjectively experience. my point is that it's all amenable to understanding in terms of purely natural things like neurons and neurochemistry, and anything invoking supernatural shit or simulations is pure woo

[Anonymous No.11979216]

>>11979194
The REASON you don't like pain and the reason you like food, is because the brain likes food and hates pain, the brain sends a signal to the nerves/muscles to move away from pain to avoid it. Sometimes pain isn't even a bad thing (like surgery) but you evolved to negatively react to it because you didn't have the context of surgery available when you evolved to feel pain.

The reason you can think complexly is also the same exact thing as pain or food or sex, it is because the human brain was benefited from this kind of imagination, these kinds of arguments and thoughts and thinking in words and in sentences, it was beneficial for evolution, it is no different from a plant growing to face the sun, the brain evolved to think in sentences because it helped the species out and survive.

A "word" means nothing to somebody who doesn't know what the word means. A word means nothing to a rock or to a tree, it only means something to the brain, your entire existence is like words that only your own brain understands. You are just an internal world created by your brain, if your eyes are gone you can't see, if your ears are gone you can't hear, your world is created internally by the brain.

[Anonymous No.11979221]

>>11979211
i don't see how you're disagreeing with me. you should be disagreeing with the anon who thinks being a "person" is something supernatural. i am totally onboard with the purely biological/evolutionary picture of why we are the way we are.

[Anonymous No.11979222]

>>11979215
You couldn't understand me less, I am the one saying it's all just neurons. "representation of justification" means the neurons are arranged in a way to survive and you are a representation of what the neurons look like to each other, they formed their own organ and you are a representation/projection of that organ the brain. Do you understand what I'm saying now? I have probably just been doing a shitty job of trying to say what you already believe in but I don't know. I'm not saying any woo here.

[Anonymous No.11979225]

Memories are patterns of electrical pulses in my brain

[Anonymous No.11979226]

>>11979221
Lmao I must have just done a poor job explaining what I believed and you thought I was saying something about supernatural shit...

I'm not good at explaining this concept because I'm trying to be detailed about it instead of just a broad sense.

[Anonymous No.11979230]

>>11979216
hmmm i liked your post until you got to this schizo paragraph
>A "word" means nothing to somebody who doesn't know what the word means. A word means nothing to a rock or to a tree, it only means something to the brain, your entire existence is like words that only your own brain understands.
ok so far....
> You are just an internal world created by your brain,
uh, what???
> if your eyes are gone you can't see, if your ears are gone you can't hear, your world is created internally by the brain.
no, even Helen Keller was able to learn english and be a great intellectual. the world is the world, and it exists independent of whether you are alive or dead, and in fact you are just a subset of the world

[Anonymous No.11979240]

>>11979230
The issue is coming from the fact I'm not actually saying what I want to say because I don't know how to word it correctly lmao. I am saying, that, put it this way,

how can birds see more colours than humans? What mechanism allows it? It's their eyes and their brains being different from ours.

It's because their biology is different, meaning their sight is their biology.

[Anonymous No.11979247]

>>11979222
okay, so am i right in assuming you are still OP?

in that case, if you accept that the biological form of "people" is all there is to a "person", then it is absolutely clear that a person stays being the same person from one 5 second interval to another. in 5 seconds, your brain's neurons don't change appreciably, and if that is what defines a person, then that thing doesn't change much on 5 second intervals. therefore you are the same person from one minute to the next, and the "identity" of a person should be associated with the slowly changing system of neurons in their brain. therefore OP is debunked and the whole thing is settled. (with the mild exception of whether a massive brain injury constitutes someone becoming a "new person")

[Anonymous No.11979259]

>>11979194
King of brainlets

[Anonymous No.11979264]

>>11979259
good argument, Einstein

[Anonymous No.11979268]

>>11979247
The idea is that there is no person, but the "person" is just a way of representing the neurons which are constantly changing but in a similar state, and they have evolved to "create" the notion of a person and have memories, if I erase your memories from your brain, you lose them, so then what defines you as yourself? Your body? If so, then, you are constantly changing so you can't be defined as a single person because your body is never exactly the same as it was a second ago.

[Anonymous No.11979287]

>>11979268
“erasing” a person’s memories, according to science, is equivalent making to a drastic change in their neurons. memories are encoded in the neurons and their connections. that means erasing a person’s memories requires a huge change to their brain’s neuronal structure, and thus it is equivalent to a massive brain injury, which, as i said, might be considered to make a “new person” even if the rest of their body isn’t injured to the same extreme degree.

for example, some people who suffer gunshot wounds to the brain with little or no other injuries never recover a memory of their past selves or, for example, their past expertise in some occupation, so maybe their past occupational certifications need to be redone afterword

[Anonymous No.11979291]

>>11979287
Yes, so if a big brain change can fundamentally change who "you" are, then you are just the brain, which changes all the time in small ways and is never exactly the same, neither is the electricity flowing thoughout it.

[Anonymous No.11979300]

>>11979287
You might think only a big change in the brain can change who "you" are but you don't realize that a small change also changes who you are, you just become a more similar person to the previous one, which is why you don't notice the difference as easily. The brain changes constantly.

[Anonymous No.11979310]

for example, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin was certainly a different person today in 2020 from who he was when he was a sex symbol in 1970, but there is a continuity of Robert Plant over the years, through all his changes, that defines who "Robert Plant" actually is in a timeless sense

[Anonymous No.11979324]

>>11979291
>>11979300
goddamn i wrote a nice post to respond to you guys but the Capcha fucked things up.

anyhow what i was trying to say, in reduced form since i'm getting tired of this conversation, is that a person's "identity" thus must be defined in terms of the continuity of someone over time. neuronal changes happen only slowly (modulo massive brain injuries) so it is possible to trace a person's identity like a trajectory through spacetime. even if a person changes all the time, those changes are small so the "person" is always traceable to their past self of a short while ago. this continuity is what allows us to identify a person over time.

here is what i was able to salvage from my fucked up post
>for example, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin was certainly a different person today in 2020 from who he was when he was a sex symbol in 1970, but there is a continuity of Robert Plant over the years, through all his changes, that defines who "Robert Plant" actually is in a timeless sense

[Anonymous No.11979328]

>>11979165
>what is special relativity

[Anonymous No.11979335]

>>11979117
Since the content of my dna is the same 5 seconds ago, I'm the same person 5 seconds ago.
>Mutations
Now you're just stretching it.

[Anonymous No.11979339]

>>11979156
>you are arguing that your body and "you" are two different things, and that human bodies can be different "people" at different times on the timespan of 5 seconds. what is your scientific idea for how this could happen? is there some supernatural entity that defines which "person" someone is that can travel between bodies and assume the memories stored in those bodies? you are suggesting that there is something supernatural that has a real impact on the natural world. to claim that this is a scientific thing, you need some evidence or you need to propose a natural mechanism that realizes this in a non-supernatural way.
What's the scientific reason for why I am this particular person now, rather than some other person. I have more evidence that I am conscious than I do for literally anything else, and I can directly observe being in this particular body.

[Anonymous No.11979341]

>>11979328
That is a valid concept but, it doesn't override my statement.

[Anonymous No.11979345]

>>11979156
>>11979225
>being a reductive ph*sicalist

[Anonymous No.11979346]

>>11979339
>What's the scientific reason for why I am this particular person now, rather than some other person.
because your mother birthed you and (hopefully) raised you (hopefully along with your father) and programmed you to have your identity. you need to appreciate the agency of your ancestors in creating "you"

[Anonymous No.11979347]

>>11979339
But so does everybody else, because it is all just subjective, each single human body only has evidence that they exist, don't you get it. I have as much evidence you exist as you have evidence I exist... that is the whole point

>>11979335
The thing that caused you to type "since" is different than what caused you to type "im the same person" meaning something in your brain changed between that time.

Try to think about it because this isn't wrong it's true.

[Anonymous No.11979353]

>>11979117
:) I am a rule not a state, what lies before and ahead an abstraction, the present i bear witness too.

[Anonymous No.11979373]

>>11979346
But there are lots of other people who have mothers that gave birth to them. Yet I am not them. Out of all the people in existence, why do I happen to exist as THIS particular person?

[Anonymous No.11979376]

>>11979117
No, but the outcomes are identical and the experiences are identical so it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous No.11979497]

You are primarly the information, and the computing unit secondly.

Your memories are the information, your brain is the computing unit, therefore if the information, is wiped a new human is born.

This is a testable hipothesis, the tools to do so will be available in 50 to 100 years from now.