This is so weird, I have enjoyed using AI so much and never realized a problem. For me, it is like checking with Mike. The guy who seems to know something about everything. It has not been a life-threatening experience for me, but a lot of fun — Athena

Again: I use AI tools multiple times every day. I think they're great.
They just aren't appropriate for discussion forums yet.

If they could give short, succinct answers maybe it would be ok. But right now it's a lot of bloat.

And don't get me started on the current fad of YouTube channels doing whole episodes talking to an AI. They'll have a caption like "ChatGPT accepts proof of God!" but I'll watch maybe 10 minutes of flowery, evasive bilge before I give up and watch something else.

In fairness to open AI, it's not designed for YouTube debates. And it's not designed for discussion forums either.

I appreciate your down-to-earth explanation of potential problems. Now I am thinking this argument is like the gun argument. If someone gets shot it is not the gun's fault but the misuse of the gun. — Athena

Well it's a gun that's right now configured to misfire because using the vanilla AI gives responses that don't fit well in discussion forums.

I guess a forum could endorse AI responses, but with specific rules that the prompt to the AI must include hints like "Please respond tersely, and don't be afraid to correct errors in the initial question".
But I think it's better to just wait for the tech to improve.

Also, I am not sure if I hinted it well with my previous posts, but I think it just leads to lazy behaviour. It's like when people just drop a link to a 2 hour video or something that they claim proves their point. Except, in the case of AI, it's text that bloats the thread itself until you get tired of opening the thread. It's kryptonite to good conversation.

I want to add too that I am not piling on to the OP. It was a fine point to raise.

I actually made the same point myself, on a forum oriented towards asking miscellaneous general questions on any topic. Forums like that are going to look pretty obsolete pretty soon.

I use AI tools many times a day. I also think there may well be a time where AI could usefully contribute to general discussion threads, either as a cite, or even being allowed to directly post.

But we're not there yet.

Right now LLMs give overly verbose and wishy-washy responses to open questions. I've seen several forums embrace AI responses only to later ban them. Because they just fill up threads with meaningless bloat.

They are also programmed not to contradict the prompter too forcefully. So peddlers of the most ludicrous conspiracy theories try to claim they now have a legit cite, merely because the AI was too polite to shut down their nonsense. So you would also need to firefight that stuff too.

And again, is the solution here simply that transpeople should not be allowed on TV?
Is any public appearance "woke"?

I didn't realize I was conceding anything. When the hell did I say there was a shared consciousness? — hypericin

No, I mean you conceded the words before that: that "I" refers to the individual subject of conscious experiences, in conflict with when you earlier claimed that both me and a duplicate would be two "I"s.

I gave a model. You said, but wait, there is a problem, what about two clones, and one sticks itself with a pin? I await a demonstration of any actual problem. — hypericin

This is conflating two things. I was speaking there about how, in general, the time to handwave a problem and claim we understand it, is when we can make useful predictions and inferences about it. That's not the case here. No-one's model seems to give a direct answer about the imperfect transporter, or why it matters which atoms are used for example.

In terms of the "stick a pin" point, that is part of my answer to you when you asked "What exactly is the problem with multiple "I"s?"
The problem is that they are separate entities, as you've conceded. There's no reason to call them multiple "I"s, they are just multiple people, as separate as you and I are right now.

Inheriring memories is how the persistence of consciousness is accomplished. — Patterner

The position is the argument. Source Kirk is killed. That's what happens when someone's atoms are dispersed. — Patterner

Do you not see how those statements are in conflict? Because this conflict (and related issues) is exactly the point of the transporter problem.

"I" would mean the individual who was stuck. There are two numerically distinct individuals who claim continuity with the same individual in the past. I see nothing problematic. — hypericin

The problem is firstly, you brought up the concept of multiple "I"s and now you're conceding that "I" refers to an individual because there is not a shared consciousness.
But secondly, this whole thing has deflected us from talking about the problems. Call whoever you want, whatever you want. Call it the Ship of Theseus or Boaty McBoatface. The critical thing is if we have a model for understanding what happens to instances of consciousness.

That's not something you experience when you get into the transporter. — SolarWind

No-one said it was. I don't follow the point you're making.

If person X has the memories of person Y implanted, are they then the continuation of person X or person Y? — SolarWind

If you're asking my opinion specifically on memories, no, I don't consider memories to be the critical factor in determining instances of consciousness.

I already did, in my second to last post.

But I'll try a rephrasing specifically within the "calculating what I'll do" framing:

The three positions are:
1. My consciousness will persist even if I take the transporter; I may as well enjoy a nice holiday on Mars
2. My consciousness will only persist if I *don't* take the transporter. It's a murder box.
3. Nothing I do could possibly make my consciousness persist. Even if I don't take the transporter, consciousness doesn't have persistence, only the illusion of it, because it inherits memories.
I may as well let the next guy holiday on Mars.

B: Killed -- The Kirk at Source is one and the same with the Kirk that was born 30 years prior, but he is simply killed by this process. The Kirk that emerges at Destination is a new human, with a new consciousness, that just happens to be qualitatively the same as the Kirk that died.
— Mijin
This is the one. Except Destination Kirk doesn't "just happen" to be the same. He's a copy. Of course he's the same. But Source Kirk was disintegrated. — Patterner

It's meaningless just taking a position. What's the argument?

I thought I already said what the issue is: there might be two entities that could call themselves Mijin, but stick a pin in one, and the other doesn't feel pain. There are two instances of consciousness.
— Mijin

And what is the problem with that? — hypericin

Because the pronoun "I" refers to this instance of consciousness. In the stick a pin example, I might say "I am in pain". What would two "I"s mean?

Whether or not people explicitly believe in souls, my position is that there is an implicit presumption of souls in the abstract, that is, the mental model whereby we are non-physical entities that inhabit bodies. It is this mental model which gives rise to all the confusion of the teleporter thought experiment. Even the idea that continuity is an illusion, that we really live only in the instant, relies on this, as it fails to imagine continuity in the absence of something like a soul. — hypericin

Not really; it just takes the null position. If you wish to claim there is continuity, then it's on you to say continuity of what, and then, of course, I will come back with hypotheticals about moving atoms around or boltzmann brains or whatever. Because simple intuitions about bodily continuity only work in our world where we don't yet have tech for doing things like splicing brains; at the very least bodily continuity needs to be defined much more concretely / formally to make clear claims about such situations.

From the perspective of the beaming person, there are two possibilities: either (version plus) they see the destination after beaming, or (version minus) they are dead. — SolarWind

I was describing the three positions on continuity of consciousness and I don't see what is gained by
pre-emptively taking one off the table.

If you want to say it's important that we reduce it just to the thoughts of the person going into the transporter then sure: the person going into the transporter is me, and I think there are three scenarios to consider.

It's overbearing, disingenuous, somewhat indicative of sociopathy (the dead eyes, faked emotions, bad acting and overall bad faith display of 'Look at me be feminine!!!!!!!! WAASDIHGS{NVO'. Its preening, over-wrought, transparent and utterly perplexing. — AmadeusD

So you're calling it woke just because of her mannerisms. So again you are just taking the position that woke = someone being trans and not hiding it.
Because if the rant is just about annoying mannerisms, at least half of adverts have someone that needs a slap IMO, I don't see any reason to particularly focus on one transwoman.

Dylan Mulvaney, trans women in bathrooms, the ubiquity of violent threats and entitlement among trans activists. — AmadeusD

You've given no example of anything Dylan Mulvaney has done wrong apart from, apparently, making you uncomfortable.
Trans women in bathrooms is absolutely a non-issue; in my town a lot of the public bathrooms are unisex and it makes no difference to anything. As Alan Cummings put it in your cite (I think): Why would someone pretend to be trans to commit a rape when in America rapists are treated better?

As for violent threats yeah your list of pinterest t-shirts or whatever totally refutes the data that transpeople are massively more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.

I don't watch beer ads. This is not a gotcha. You have overstepped wildly to try to make a point not open to you. — AmadeusD

It's not a gotcha, it's a self-own. If you don't watch beer ads, what point were you even trying to originally make? That trans on TV is fine as long as you don't see it?

The OP is a bit of a jumble between beauty and youth, so I'll try to untangle at the same time as giving my 2c:

Beauty
This is not a uniquely western thing at all. We're hard-wired to make a judgement about the health, youth, fertility etc of those around us and be attracted to people with good traits as partners but data even shows it influences our choice of friendship.
So it is completely natural, and all cultures do it. I have noticed though, particularly in videos about celebrities, that people still talk as if beautiful people have done something right, and plain or unattractive people have done something wrong. Rather than it being 90%+ luck (yes, you can age better if you take good care of yourself, but even how your looks change as you age has a significant luck factor).

Age
This one I'm closer to agreeing with the OP.
I lived in China for a few years, and their culture has a lot more reverence for the old. Most of the parks will have big groups of elderly people doing tai chi, dancing together, playing mahjong etc and really looking like they're having fun and basically owning the space. The old don't hide away there, or try to pretend they are young. (though this is changing; the generation in their 50s now is much more likely to try to stave off the visual effects of ageing than their parents were)
Please don't take it that I am saying Chinese culture is better but definitely in this regard I saw it as a positive.
Why there is this difference, I think will come down to many, many factors, and I would say the aesthetics are probably a side effect. That is to say, western culture is more macho, and more rebellious, so it makes men act a certain way and influences both genders' idea of what's needed to be attractive.

No, they don't. I'm now going to talk about the Star Trek transporter. The question is whether you would allow yourself to be beamed and whether you would assume that you would be the target person. So the question arises before the beaming. — SolarWind

You say "no they don't" in response to my point that the problems related to the transporter don't apply to the "no persistence" position. But then fail to say exactly what problem you think remains.
And I don't know why you are trying to clarify that you mean before the beaming.

So let me start over because I think there may be some confusion; I'll name the positions on star trek transporters as follows:

A: Sent -- The Kirk that walks out at Destination is one and the same as the one killed at Source, who in turn was one and the same with the Kirk that was born 30 years before.
B: Killed -- The Kirk at Source is one and the same with the Kirk that was born 30 years prior, but he is simply killed by this process. The Kirk that emerges at Destination is a new human, with a new consciousness, that just happens to be qualitatively the same as the Kirk that died.
C: Perpetual_Death -- The Kirk at Destination is completely new. But so was the Kirk at Source. As was the Kirk 5 minutes ago, and one second ago. Under this position, when consciousness arises in the mind it has the feeling of being one and the same entity due to having access to memories of prior events. But that's all it is. A persistent "instance" of consciousness simply isn't a real thing.

Now, the objections to A and B were not invented by me; this is a well-known philosophical problem and people a lot brighter than me have summarized the issues. I've just invented -- I think -- the "imperfect transporter" objection. The broad summary of the more standard objections are:

The issues with Sent concern why being qualitatively the same should equal being numerically the same, when we never do that with other objects. And what happens if the entity at Source is preserved?

The issues with Killed are what the person at destination lacks in order to be a continuance. If the same atoms are required...why? If the same atoms are used, does momentary separation of atoms matter? If so, why?
And this talk of atoms' history also implies that consciousness, uniquely, leads to facts about the universe that cannot be known even with a perfect knowledge of its current state.

I am not aware of any arguments against Perpetual_Death. Other than it's a very unpleasant option. You would be doing us all a favor if you could find some flaw with it.

I don't think this is a sensible position: whose illusion? On the contrary, my subjective experience and its continuity are the only certainties in the world. — SolarWind

I think you might be conflating two different things here.
I am not saying that subjective experience itself is the illusion. I am talking about persistence of a single entity of consciousness.

We all take it for granted that we are the same entity that was born N years ago -- numerically the same entity, that is, not qualitatively of course. However, when it comes to the transporter problem and similar hypotheticals, this assumption seems to lead to complex questions. The issue of how, concretely, an instance of consciousness is determined turns out to be really problematic to answer. So, as I say, the simplest option right now is to question the assumption itself. If an instance of consciousness is merely an instant of consciousness, with no persistence, just the illusion of being the same person by virtue of inheriting the memories of the last guy, all the problems disappear.

In the first case, the self could be transported, in the second case it could not. — SolarWind

Why's that? What's special about the atoms?

I suspect nobody would go along with my scenario of being disintegrated after seeing the copy come into being. — Patterner

Sure but this is a somewhat different question to the hypothetical. Even most proponents of the "sent" position say that the entities immediately diverge after the process (hypericin might be an exception to this, but we will see how he responds to my last post). So yes of course if you're stood there on the source pad, seeing the duplicate, you've already diverged and nobody on either side of this debate would advocate you take the death.

Make up any formal proof, any scenario you like. What is it that would convince you? — Patterner

I don't know. I don't think we have such a model and I don't know what one would look like.
Right now, as I say, the most bulletproof position is to basically say that there's never continuity and personal identity is basically an illusion.

I don't think my answer to that is going to elucidate much, because there's a principled and practical answer.

From a principled point of view, I think the best solution to the transporter problem is that there is never continuity of consciousness. Every instance of Mijin lives for a millisecond but in that millisecond is convinced that he has lived for years. So I should have no problem using transporters, as it is no different to the death and rebirth that happens at every instance of time.

But in practice of course I am not going to risk my life on my best philosophical guess at the moment. Heck, I'd be wary of using the transporter even if I was convinced it preserved my instance of consciousness. I'd need to see a formal proof to even consider using it.

What exactly is the problem with multiple "I"s? If we had metaphysical selves, aka souls, then it would be a problem. Which one would the soul ("I" here) go to? How could the soul be in two places at once? But if we don't, then simply, two entities would have the experience of being you, instead of one. What is the contradiction? — hypericin

I thought I already said what the issue is: there might be two entities that could call themselves Mijin, but stick a pin in one, and the other doesn't feel pain. There are two instances of consciousness.

And I don't know why you keep raising souls. As I say, within this topic it seems to only be invoked by people trying to express incredulence about the other position to their own.
I don't think anyone in this thread has taken the position that souls exist, certainly not me.

"why would the universe decree that, say, X=12,371 means surviving with brain damage, and X=12,372 means you effectively die from the injury?"

Obviously, the universe is doing no such thing. Adding a teleporter on top of this scenario changes nothing. — hypericin

It does though. Going back to the OP, what if the transporter makes so many errors that (an alive) Abraham Lincoln walks out at the destination? He's alive, but nothing at all like the person that stepped on the source transporter pad. This illiustrates that the line for suriving or not is not the same as whether the original instance of consciousness is preserved or not, as the two are independent.

How do I know that, if my atoms are separated, I no longer exist? — Patterner

Yes. A significant problem within personal identity is whether my particles could be separated for T time interval and still preserve my instance of consciousness.
You have given your position of "no", but is there an argument / reasoning behind that?

There is nothing normal, whatsoever, about how that person is behaving. Its like a childhood television presented. Its really weird, and absolutely out of hte norm for beer, advertising to adults, advertising to (mainly) men, and completely out of left field. I, personally, don't care - but I can 100% see why having someone prancing about like that out of nowhere is disconcerting, off-turning and feels intrusive. It would be the same if a load of white guys with guns and MAGA caps started appearing in Lululemon adverts. — AmadeusD

You still have not said what was wrong with her behaviour, or why it is automatically "woke" (and how any trans person can ever appear on TV in a way you wouldn't label "woke").

Your claim now seems to have shifted to just saying it was a bad fit for the brand. Sure. That's irrelevant to the discussion though...lots of ads star people that are a bad fit.

You're making up a problem, as I've explain: being trans is not the issue, for the most part (this is not to deny bigots their existence, either). It is being intrusive, entitled and hateful (again, not to ignore bigotry where it occurs); — AmadeusD

Who is being those things? Do you have an example?

Sarcasm isn't helpful. Trans people don't pass, in 99.999999999999999999% of cases. It is a pipedream. — AmadeusD

You just said you "wouldn't be surprised" if we had been buying beer advertized by trans people without knowing ‍:confused:
If your point was that those people were just behind the camera, out of sight, then you're reinforcing my point, not yours.

Well, one last interesting thing with this puzzle is: why is it so counter-intuitive? Why is it that most people, myself included, think the solution is in error at first blush?

I think there are two factors:

1. The level of indirection. In daily life, you might sometimes think on a level of "I know, that you know, that he knows" but a couple of levels of indirection like that is usually sufficient for most things. It feels weird to reason that "He will reason that, he will reason that, he will reason that...x99"...we aren't used to it
2. The premise of everyone knowing everyone else is perfectly logical. Pretty easy to say, but pretty alien in practice. We rarely have the privilege of knowing how others will reason.

Some would say that the key thing is that it seems like pointing out someone has blue eyes isn't adding new information of course. And that's true, but I think that flows from (1) and (2) above. Most people can figure out that the logic works in the 2 or 3 villagers scenarios, even though for those cases everyone already sees at least one person with blue eyes.
So I'd say it's more a symptom of the confusion, rather than the cause.

No. If my atoms are separated, I do not exist. — Patterner

How do you know that any separation for any period of time means nonexistence forever?
And note, for all we know, something akin to this happens already; if time is quantum, then at every planck time your particles jump to a new position. So, if that is our universe, do I survive the planck jumps?

A trans person behaving like that is 'woke'. And specifically, it's 'woke' because it was a cynical attempt at identity politics for sales point percentage by Bud Light. It has (almost) nothing to do with the simple fact that Dylan is trans and advertising beer. I wouldn't be surprised to find out we've been advertised to by trans people for beer in the past. I, and anyone I know, simply don't care about that. Its the surrounding ideological problems. — AmadeusD

Behaving like what? I watched it again to be sure, and she talks about a bunch of things, and if the ad is about anything, it's about March Madness. Yes, she mentions it's a year since she transitioned...is that topic verboten?

It's good to know though that you're big enough to not label things as woke where you unknowingly see someone trans. It will be a big comfort to the community that they don't need to hide necessarily, as long as they can perfectly pass as cisgender.

Well I was replying to a post about Dylan Mulvaney. Just the very notion of a trans person advertizing beer is "woke". So is it the case that anyone that isn't white, male, Christian needs to hide?

Nice skit by Alan Cummings though, thanks.

No, normally not, normally "I" just designates the speaker. In this question, though, it seems to designate not the speaker as such, but an implicit ghost in the machine. Each and every aspect of the speaker that "I" normally designates (body, mind, personality, self-history, relationships) survive without question. So "I" here cannot be referring to any of those. — hypericin

But this seems to be taking the position that I alluded to upthread as "Locke's conception"; that the critical thing is the pattern of memories, characteristics etc.
This also has issues; e.g. what if we don't delete the original, does it mean we have multiple "I"s? And how can that be, when the experiences of those I's is separate?

It's also vulnerable to the "imperfect transporter" as described in the OP.

And it also implies immortality. Because, perhaps in a trillion trillion times the universe's current age some particles randomly come together to form a brain like yours. So that's you, you're back...right?

Finally, as I said in the OP, it's fascinating that in this discussion both sides accuse the other of assuming the existence of a soul.

You cannot successfully transport a living person if you separate all their atoms. You have already failed, because separating all of a person's atoms means the person no longer exists. — Patterner

How do you know that? Let's say there was technology that allowed me to separate and reform all your atoms within a nanosecond. Would you survive that process? If you would, what's the difference with any arbitrary duration of separation? If not, why not?

Once again: I'm not asking these questions to be an ass (that comes naturally ).
I am just illustrating that we don't have a good model for personal identity yet. Common sense notions of bodily continuity are only trivial solutions now because we don't have tech to splice / augment / duplicate consciousness.

I think it is the kind of fact presupposed by the question "do I survive, or does someone else exit the teleporter?" What is the "I" in the question referring to if not the metaphysical self i am denying? — hypericin

You believe that in daily life, any time I refer to "I" that I am making a metaphysical claim?
In any case, it's a question, so anyone disputing this depiction of a subjective self can explain why it is in error in the answer. ISTM a reasonable question to ask whether I would survive the transporter as it would be to ask whether I would survive if all my brain activity ceased for n nanoseconds (as I'll address in my below post).

By posing this question you are importing the notion that there is a metaphysical, persistent self that may or may not persist. — hypericin

If that was the way the point came across, it wasn't my intention.
I meant: the key problem with the transporter concerns persistence of the self which encompasses all of 1) whether there is any persistence 2) what kind of persistence there is and 3) what governs what kind of persistence there is.

FTR I don't believe in a soul or anything like that. I am purely talking about instances of consciousness. Though, yes, this hypothetical also presents problems for those who do believe in the soul.

By listing the facts that I did, I am claiming that these constitute the exhaustive facts of the matter. — hypericin

Right, and I am disagreeing.
To be more specific, I think this is focusing on third-person, objective facts. The situation is indeed simpler if we reduce our focus to that.
But the problem encompasses -- indeed is primarily concerned with -- the first-person, subjective facts.

I care about whether I -- this instance of consciousness -- will survive this process. Sidestepping this question doesn't answer it.

The original is always killed, and a copy constructed at the destination. Maybe deconstructing the original is needed to get all the information, and I don't know how deconstructing a living human can be seen as not killing them. — Patterner

Yes, again this is alluding to the position of bodily continuity and of course it makes intuitive sense. It's pretty much the paradigm that we all assume in daily life today.

The transporter does present problems for this view though.

If moving my actual atoms is needed for a successful transport...why is that? What's so special about my atoms? What if we partially use my atoms....how do we square the binary nature of me being alive or dead and the apparent continuous nature of n atoms being from the original?

The problem is, any time anyone gay, non-binary, disabled etc does anything now, it gets labelled as "woke".
Are they supposed to just hide? Like they've had to do for most of the history of Christian and Muslim countries?

Can you summarize the argument please? I can't read every book / chapter or watch every video suggested to me in forums.

These are the facts. Someone steps out of the teleporter. That someone has experiences. That someone has a self-autobiography, that tells it that it is, or is not, the same someone that stepped into the teleporter.

That is where the facts stop. — hypericin

Those facts are the premise of the problem though. The actual problem is in figuring out which persistent self(s) exist. All this kind of description does is take the difficult bit off the table so we can pretend the problem is simple

Sensations from the world are oriented around the pole of the self. They are what the self experiences, from the self's perspective. Sensations from yourself (thoughts, body sensations, emotions) are about the self. — hypericin

Which self?
I know it might seem I'm being a bit obtuse, but put it like this: we understand a phenomenon when we can make useful predictions or inferences about it.
It's very easy to just say: Mijin that walks out of the transporter truly is Mijin or whatever. In fact, that's a given part of the problem.

But the key thing is: do we have an explanation that allows us to clearly answer questions like "Is quantum immortality possible?" "If a configuration of atoms one day, by chance, is in an arrangement that has my memories right now, am I ressurected? What if that configuration of atoms is only N% the same...what N brings me back from the grave, and why?" etc etc

This is not a person engaging in good faith, or with any reasonable basis. This is an embarrassed toddler saving face. — AmadeusD

Agreed. What a waste of time.

You gave three examples of speech you fear, ones you completely made up I might add. — NOS4A2

Firstly, so what if I made them up? We are speaking about principles, and setting laws. You think we don't need to consider what might happen?
Secondly, these scenarios *have* all happened, at least partially. So this whole talking point of "imagined scenarios" or whatever is garbage. They are realistic scenarios, you just don't like them because they show the flaw of an absolutist position on speech.

Then you finished it off with the “yelling fire in a crowded theater“ canard, which was used as a legal dictum to justify jailing critics of the First World War. — NOS4A2

So you've had plenty of time to consider an answer to the hypothetical. Let's hear it.

I’m not sure why you refuse to answer the question. Do you want the government to decide what you can say or read? — NOS4A2

I want the freedom to state any opinion, or good faith reporting. But yes, I am quite happy for the government to limit other speech e.g. say I can't claim a product is safe for human consumption when I know it isn't.

The core confusion of all such problems is the nature of identity. Identity is a mental label masquerading as a metaphysical property. When this is realized, just as with the ship of Theseus, you realize there is no strictly correct answer to such questions. — hypericin

The problem though is whether I am alive or not is not merely semantics. Right now I am having experiences of the world; those experiences can be at different levels; some are more vivid than others, but we can still say there is a binary between having experiences of any type, and simply no longer having experiences.

And I care about that hugely. I don't care whether some third party is having a ship of theseus moment about whether to consider it the same Mijin. I care if the mind right now that is having experiences will still be having experiences.

If not, then (it seems to me) that individual identity = strict identity, which means that even a 1 particle difference would render the transported object something non-identical (having a different identity) on each end. — Relativist

Really? So if we made the machine then if particle 4ea26363f75 was in position x=71.23 then: welcome to your new life on mars. But had it been at x=71.23000001 then: it was simply a murder box. An infinitesimal difference is life and death?
...and we'll never know for sure. Theres no experiment to perform to ever know if it's a numerically identical person or just qualitatively (nearly) identical.

The nature of the transport also seems important. Are the actual particles being moved from place to place, or are a different set of particles being assembled into the same form at the receiving end? If the latter, then arguably - the receiving end is a duplicate, not the "same" individual. — Relativist

Why? Do the particles contain some essence of you?

It’s clear from your own examples that you want the government to decide what you can and cannot say. — NOS4A2

So I have put it to you that you are not engaging with the problems with absolute free speech and gave three examples to illustrate the problems.

Your response is to...just straight up ignore the examples. Again. And just imply again that any restriction on speech must be about the government deciding what views are allowed.

If you aren't going to engage with the points, why are you on a discussion forum?

@wonderer1 I have now. Very interesting, thanks.
It also raises another point. If numerical identity is based purely on the pattern of atoms then it implies a form of immortality. Because, even if our universe terminates at a heat death, that's not really a final end point as particles are still moving, and there is a non-zero chance of a structure of arbitrary size forming.
Even if it takes Graham's Number years before your current brain state is recreated by chance, it seems it will eventually happen.