
If our particles have no identity, how can we? (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/quantum-mechanics-is-putting-human-identity-on-trial
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danbruc
I would say that this is not a good article. It touches several topics and
mixes them up without really being good or clear on any of them. You could
write an article about the concept of identity as it applies to humans, you
could write an article about this imposter case, you could write an article
about identity as it applies to electrons or more generally fermions and
bosons, which don't both behave the same under exchange of two particles, you
could write yet another article trying to shed some light onto the wave and
particle nature of fundamental particles. There would be enough things to
discuss for any of these topics to get an long article out of it, heck, you
could write entire books on them. But this article just grabs random pieces
from all of the topics and leaves you not any wiser on any of them.

~~~
nixpulvis
It fits a trend in modern philosophical publishing. Part of the reason I'm so
quick to stop (or not even start reading) articles like this.

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lisper
The answer is: we are not _things_ , we are _states_ (and so are particles).

[http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-
ontology.ht...](http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-
ontology.html)

~~~
nixpulvis
This was a much better read on the subject than the original article, IMHO.

These quotes in particular stood out to me.

> Arrangement is _everything_.

> You are a computational process, reified as an arrangement of electrical
> impulses in a human brain.

I honestly like how the author makes a stab at God, even if it's loaded.

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fjsolwmv
The author is the commenter 'lisper

~~~
nixpulvis
Interesting because I don't love the distinction between states and things,
but that'll happen when you try to summarize this topic into a sentence.

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deciplex
If you attempt to identify a canonical "you" which ignores the basic fact that
your particles are entangled with virtually every other particle in the
visible universe, you're starting with an assumption wrong enough that _of
course_ you're eventually going to run into some absurdities.

If you create a universe which is indistinguishable from our own, even in a
quantum sense (i.e. you recreate the quantum state that our universe is in),
then you'll necessarily have created a universe with an indistinguishable copy
of yourself in it. But in fact that's the only way to create an
indistinguishable copy of yourself in the first place! You can't reduce the
problem any further than this.

In other words, this entire "paradox" boils down to a vague understanding of
the word "identity".

~~~
nixpulvis
Or a very good understanding of where it fits in today's (or 2015's)
linguistics. It's technical, and vague, perfect for a piece like this, where
the author can say a lot of pretty "profound" stuff without actually saying
anything at all.

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whatshisface
When you shake hands with someone, you're connected to them. Who is who?
Spooky.

I think there's a cottage industry of finding confusing thinkpieces in
nothing.

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nixpulvis
That's kinda the root of the problem with this article. It's not about the
physical particles, it's about our sense of self (which yes, is probably an
artifact of some crazy particle interactions). The distinction is that your
self doesn't magically get redefined just because you touch something else, or
because you shed some skin, or anything like that.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> your self doesn't magically get redefined just because you touch something
> else

Phineas Gage (and everyone else with brain damage) is a counterexample in one
sense. The famous statement "Gage was no longer Gage" is about as explicit as
possible in support of the idea that touching something can redefine your
self.

At a more fundamental level, there are chemicals which can penetrate your skin
and bind to (therefore changing) your DNA.

Before saying "your self doesn't get redefined by X", you need a robust
definition of what your "self" is.

~~~
nixpulvis
Agreed, and good luck with that definition. It's going to depend on the
physical space and only be related over time.

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maxxxxx
The buddhists went through this thought process and have decided that nothing
has inherent identity. IT's called "emptiness" or "Shunyata". In general it
seems a more philosophical question than scientific.

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lisper
IMHO the Buddhists threw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because nothing
has _inherent_ identity (which is true) that does not mean that it makes no
sense to assign an identity to the unique collection of memories and
experiences that I call "me".

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Florin_Andrei
> _that does not mean that it makes no sense to assign an identity to the
> unique collection of memories and experiences that I call "me"._

Actually, that is not disputed - at least in some buddhist schools. Identity
as an epiphenomenon is quite sensible, and they understood this. Well, some of
them at least.

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auntienomen
In quantum field theory on curved spacetime backgrounds, the notion of a
particle is observer-dependent. Particles are departures from the lowest
energy state, but which state has lowest energy can depend on an observer's
acceleration. Consequently, different observers can disagree about whether and
which particles are present in a physical system. (This phenomenon is the
theoretical basis for the Hawking Effect.)

If your particles aren't real, are you real?

It's silly to base a discussion of human identity on field quanta.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It is silly - not because the question is silly, but because the article
ignorantly misses the fact that there's an established and much-discussed
philosophical background to these questions, and the author seems completely
unaware of it.

It would be hilarious if David Chalmers is right, and science is looking
through the telescope the wrong way.

Instead of there being no subjectivity, perhaps there is _only_ subjectivity -
different points of view experiencing different elements of reality, loosely
constrained by probabilities, limited only by relative complexity of
perception, freedom of action, and processing power.

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agensaequivocum
> And so when particles like our electron go unwatched, they become diffuse
> and placeless.

I'm curious, how is this demonstrated?

\--------------------------------------------

I have a couple questions.

In the example of two electrons and the two boxes: can we not just say that
they are one in kind thought two in number? This fits with Aristotle's
understanding of a hylomorphic composite. As the two electrons are really both
an electron (one in kind), but their accidental property of place differ (two
in number).

What is the definition of a `wave`? It seems to me weird to say a thing is a
wave because I understand a wave to be a property of something. A motion
through a medium. So I have trouble understanding the notion that a thing is
wave as such.

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hyperion2010
Nothing has identity, but it might be possible to write down an identity
function that gives a set of things distinct identities. The more interesting
question then becomes how those identity functions fail and under what
circumstances.

~~~
nixpulvis
Honestly, this means nothing to me. Not even trying to be mean, I just don't
at all understand what you are saying.

~~~
stcredzero
A has no identity. B has no identity. C has no identity.

But perhaps {A, B, C} can have identity?

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nixpulvis
I guess my confusion is, how can anything have an identity if we just asserted
that nothing does.

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Semirhage
The same way that a pile of identical bricks can have no identity, but a home
you build out of it could?

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xd
The most interesting point, if you read the article, which from the comments
no one actually seems to have done; she finishes with the idea: "Our identity
is a state, but if it’s not a state of matter—not a state of individual
physical objects, like quarks and electrons—then a state of what?"

The geek in me thinks of a program at rest on disk vs a running program.

~~~
nixpulvis
But running programs have state too. I stopped reading this half way because
the author really doesn't have anything to say here. But I can understand that
it's a thought provoking piece.

~~~
xd
Different states.. state of an electron on disc used by every execution of a
program vs the very different state of a program after it's been running for
some time vs any other invocation of that program.

edit: it's what makes debugging so much fun :D

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btilly
My favorite consequence of simple things having no identity is this. Every
oxygen atom that you breathe is a superposition of having been many places a
century ago, including in every lungful of breath that anyone anywhere was
breathing. It isn't "x atoms were in so and so's lungs", EVERY atom both was
and wasn't.

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nixpulvis
Honestly stopped reading about half way through. It seems obvious to me that
we are identified just as anything. And just as anything else, it may not be
perfect. I'm sure if you could copy me perfectly (which you can't) then you
also would not be able to identify the original from the copy. This is
basically a tautology.

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lainga
It's not just a tautology, it probably made Amanda Gefter a lot of money.

~~~
neonate
Nobody's making a lot of money writing articles for Nautilus.

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Promarged
Related: integers do not have identity [0] but objects that have reference
semantics have identity.

[0]:
[https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/60549](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/60549)

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nickthemagicman
If something has a property it has identity. Our particles have properties
that differ them from other particles. I think the real issue is that we
haven't discovered all of the properties.

