I think the Ship of Theseus problem is good reductionism practice. Anyone else think similarly?
If I was to use an advanced molecular assembler to create a perfect copy the Mona Lisa and destroy the old one in the process, it would still lose a lot of value. That is because many people not only value the molecular setup of things but also their causal history, what transformations things underwent.
Personally I wouldn’t care if I was disassembled and reassembled somewhere else. If that was a safe and efficient way of travel then I would do it. But I would care if that happened to some sort of artifact I value. Not only because it might lose some of its value in the eyes of other people but also because I personally value its causal history to be unaffected by certain transformations.
So in what sense would a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa be the same? In every sense except that it was copied. And if you care about that quality then a perfect copy is not the same, it is merely a perfect copy.
Sure. Relatedly, the Mona Lisa currently hanging in the Louvre isn’t the original… that only existed in the early 1500s. All we have now is the 500-year-old descendent of the original Mona Lisa, which is not the same, it is merely a descendent.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
This has nothing to do with biases, although some people might be confused about what they actually value.
(shrug) Fortunately for art collectors, human minds are such that they reliably ascribe more value to the 500-year-old descendent than to the original.
I’d rather have the early original—I’d like to see the colors Leonardo intended, though I suppose he was such a geek that he might have tweaked them to allow for some fading.
Paint or Pixel: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art has more than a little (and more than I read) about what collecting means when some art is wholly or partially digital. Some artists sell a copy of the process by which the art was created, and some make a copy in paint of the digital original.
Strange but true: making digital art is more physically wearing than using paintbrushes and pens and such.
Note: the book isn’t about illustration in general, it’s about fantasy and science fiction illustration in particular.
Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
“Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called ‘moral value’ of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements”—CEO Nwabudike Morgan, “The Ethics of Greed”, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
That is because many people not only value the molecular setup of things but also their causal history, what transformations things underwent.
In that case, its history would be that it started off as atoms, was transformed into bits, and then was transformed back into atoms again. If the transformation were truly lossless, people familiar with this fact wouldn’t care. Now, this specific example sounds silly because we have no such technology applicable to the Mona Lisa. But consider something like a mass-produced CD. You could take a CD in Europe, losslessly rip it, destroy the CD and copy the bits to America, then send them to a factory to stamp another CD. The resulting variation would be identical to that between the original CD and one of its siblings in Europe. People are familiar with the technologies involved, and they value CDs only for their bits, so the copy really is as good as the original.
(Here I have even taken pains to state that the copy is not a burned CD-R, nor that the original was signed by a band member, or any such thing.)
But I would care if that happened to some sort of artifact I value.
“During World War II, the medals of German scientists Max von Laue and James Franck were sent to Copenhagen for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark, chemist George de Hevesy dissolved them in aqua regia, to prevent confiscation by Nazi Germany and to prevent legal problems for the holders. After the war, the gold was recovered from solution, and the medals re-cast.”—Wikipedia
Here is an example. Imagine there was a human colony in another star system. After an initial exploration drone set up a communication node and a molecular assembler on a suitable planet, all other equipment and all humans were transmitted digitally an locally reassembled.
Now imagine such a colony would either receive a copy of the Venus figurine digitally transmitted and reassembled or by means of a craft capable of interstellar travel. If you don’t perceive there to be a difference then you simply don’t share my values. But consider how much resources, including time, it took to accomplish the relocation in the latter case.
The value of something can encompass more than its molecular setup. There might be many sorts of sparkling wines that taste just like Champagne. But if you claim that simply because they taste like Champagne they are Champagne, then you are missing what it is that people actually value.
To try to better understand your value system, I’m going to take what I think you value, attempt to subdivide it in half, and then reconnect it together, and see if it is still valuable. Please feel free to critique any flaws in the following story.
The seller of the Venus tells you “This Venus is the original, carried from Earth on a shuttle, that went through many twists and turns, and near accidents to get here.” and there was recently a shuttle carrying “untransportium.” so that is extremely plausible and he is a trustworthy seller. You feel confident you have just bought the original Venus.
However, later you find out that someone else next door has one of those duplicates of the Venus. He got it for much much cheaper, but you still enjoy your original. You do have to admit you can’t tell them apart in the slightest.
Then later than that, you find out that a unrelated old man who just died had been having fun with you two by flipping a coin, and periodically switching the two Venuses from one house to the other when it came up tails. He cremated himself beyond recovery, so can’t be revived and interrogated, and you have confirmed video evidence he appears to have switched the Venuses multiple times in a pattern which resembles that of someone deciding on a fair coinflip, but there doesn’t appear to be a way of determining the specific number of switches with any substantial accuracy (video records only go back so far, and you did manage to find an eyewitness who confirms he had done it since before the beginning of the video records). A probabilistic best guess gives you a 50-50 shot of having the original at this point.
Your neighbor, who doesn’t really care about the causal history of his Venus, offers to sell you his Venus for part of the price you paid for the original, and then buy himself another replica. Then you will be as certain as you were before to have the original (and you will also have a replica), but you won’t know which of the two is which.
Is it worth buying the other Venus at all if you don’t particularly value replicas?
In relation to a percent of the original, how much would you feel comfortable paying?
I guess another way of expressing what I’m trying to figure out is “Do you value having the original itself, or being able to tell the original apart from replicas, and if so can you split those two apart (in the way I tried to in the story) and tell me how much you value each?”
“Do you value having the original itself, or being able to tell the original apart from replicas, and if so can you split those two apart (in the way I tried to in the story) and tell me how much you value each?”
The value of both, one of them being the original, would be a lot less than the original. I’d pay maybe 40% for both. The value of just one would reduce to a small fraction. I wouldn’t be interested to buy it at all. The reason is the loss of information.
You would care if certain objects are destructively teleported but not care if the same happens to you (and presumably other humans)
Is this a preference you would want to want?
I mean, given the ability to self-modify, would you rather keep putting (negative) value on concepts like “copy of” even when there’s no practical physical difference?
Note that this doesn’t mean no longer caring about causal history. (you care about your own casual history in the form of memories and such)
Also, can you trace where this preference is coming from?
You would care if certain objects are destructively teleported but not care if the same happens to you (and presumably other humans)
Yeah, I would use a teleporter any time if it was safe. But I would only pay a fraction for certain artifacts that were teleported.
Is this a preference you would want to want? I mean, given the ability to self-modify, would you rather keep putting (negative) value on concepts like “copy of” even when there’s no practical physical difference?
I would keep that preference. And there is a difference. All the effort it took to relocate an object adds to its overall value. If only for the fact that other people who share my values, or play the same game and therefore play by the same rules, will desire the object even more.
Also, can you trace where this preference is coming from?
Part of the value of touching an asteroid from Mars is the knowledge of its spacetime trajectory. An atomically identical copy of a rock from Mars that was digitally transmitted by a robot probe printed out for me by my molecular assembler is very different. It is also a rock from Mars but its spacetime trajectory is different, it is artificial.
Which is similar to drinking Champagne and sparkling wine that tastes exactly the same. The first is valued because while drinking it I am aware of its spacetime trajectory, the resources it took to create it and where it originally came from and how it got here.
If only for the fact that other people who share my values, or play the same game and therefore play by the same rules, will desire the object even more.
How about if there were two worlds—one where they care about whether a spacetime trajectory does or does not go through a destroy-rebuild cycle, and one where they spend the effort on other things they value. In that case, in which world would you rather live in?
The Champagne example helps, I can understand putting value on effort for attainment, but I’d like another clarification:
If you have two rocks where rock 1 is brought from mars via spaceship, and rock 2 is the same as rock 1 only after receiving it you teleport it 1 meter to the right. Would you value rock 2 less than rock 1? If yes, why would you care about that but not about yourself undergoing the same?
How about if there were two worlds—one where they care about whether a spacetime trajectory does or does not go through a destroy-rebuild cycle, and one where they spend the effort on other things they value. In that case, in which world would you rather live in?
It is not that important. I would trade that preference for more important qualities. But that line of reasoning can also lead to the destruction of all complex values. I have to draw a line somewhere or end up solely maximizing the quality that is most important.
If you have two rocks where rock 1 is brought from mars via spaceship, and rock 2 is the same as rock 1 only after receiving it you teleport it 1 meter to the right. Would you value rock 2 less than rock 1?
Rock 1 and 2 would be of almost equal value to me.
In a hypothetical case where you werent oposed to slave trade… what’d you pay for a transported slave very much like yourself? would it matter if you had been transported?
If the slave had some famous causal history, would it matter if it was mental (composed an important song) or physical (lone survivor of a disaster)?
I think the Ship of Theseus problem is good reductionism practice. Anyone else think similarly?
If I was to use an advanced molecular assembler to create a perfect copy the Mona Lisa and destroy the old one in the process, it would still lose a lot of value. That is because many people not only value the molecular setup of things but also their causal history, what transformations things underwent.
Personally I wouldn’t care if I was disassembled and reassembled somewhere else. If that was a safe and efficient way of travel then I would do it. But I would care if that happened to some sort of artifact I value. Not only because it might lose some of its value in the eyes of other people but also because I personally value its causal history to be unaffected by certain transformations.
So in what sense would a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa be the same? In every sense except that it was copied. And if you care about that quality then a perfect copy is not the same, it is merely a perfect copy.
Sure. Relatedly, the Mona Lisa currently hanging in the Louvre isn’t the original… that only existed in the early 1500s. All we have now is the 500-year-old descendent of the original Mona Lisa, which is not the same, it is merely a descendent.
Fortunately for art collectors, human biases are such that the 500-year-old descendent is more valuable in most people’s minds than the original would be.
This has nothing to do with biases, although some people might be confused about what they actually value.
(shrug) Fortunately for art collectors, human minds are such that they reliably ascribe more value to the 500-year-old descendent than to the original.
I’d rather have the early original—I’d like to see the colors Leonardo intended, though I suppose he was such a geek that he might have tweaked them to allow for some fading.
Paint or Pixel: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art has more than a little (and more than I read) about what collecting means when some art is wholly or partially digital. Some artists sell a copy of the process by which the art was created, and some make a copy in paint of the digital original.
Strange but true: making digital art is more physically wearing than using paintbrushes and pens and such.
Note: the book isn’t about illustration in general, it’s about fantasy and science fiction illustration in particular.
Surely the original, if discovered to be still extant after all (and proved to really be the original), would be even more highly valued if we had it?
Can you expand a little on how you imagine this happening? I suspect we may be talking past one another.
Ah, I have completely misunderstood you! Thanks for suspecting that we were talking past one another, because it made me reread your comment.
I thought that you were taking as factual certain theories that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy (not descendant) of a painting that has since been lost. Rather than directly engage that claim (which I think is pretty thoroughly disbelieved), I just responded to the idea that the true original would be less valuable, which I find even weirder. But you were not talking about that at all.
My only defence is that “the original would be” doesn’t really make sense either; perhaps you should write “the original was”?
Heh. I wasn’t even aware of any such theories existing.
You don’t really need defense here, my point was decidedly obscure, as I realized when I tried to answer your question. I got about two paragraphs into a response before I foundered in the inferential gulf.
I suspect that any way of talking about “the original” as distinct from its “descendent” is going to lose comprehensibility as it runs into the human predisposition to treat identity as preserved over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation\_about\_Mona\_Lisa#Other\_versions (which is more than just speculation about the original)
Requoting:
“Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called ‘moral value’ of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements”—CEO Nwabudike Morgan, “The Ethics of Greed”, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
In that case, its history would be that it started off as atoms, was transformed into bits, and then was transformed back into atoms again. If the transformation were truly lossless, people familiar with this fact wouldn’t care. Now, this specific example sounds silly because we have no such technology applicable to the Mona Lisa. But consider something like a mass-produced CD. You could take a CD in Europe, losslessly rip it, destroy the CD and copy the bits to America, then send them to a factory to stamp another CD. The resulting variation would be identical to that between the original CD and one of its siblings in Europe. People are familiar with the technologies involved, and they value CDs only for their bits, so the copy really is as good as the original.
(Here I have even taken pains to state that the copy is not a burned CD-R, nor that the original was signed by a band member, or any such thing.)
“During World War II, the medals of German scientists Max von Laue and James Franck were sent to Copenhagen for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark, chemist George de Hevesy dissolved them in aqua regia, to prevent confiscation by Nazi Germany and to prevent legal problems for the holders. After the war, the gold was recovered from solution, and the medals re-cast.”—Wikipedia
Here is an example. Imagine there was a human colony in another star system. After an initial exploration drone set up a communication node and a molecular assembler on a suitable planet, all other equipment and all humans were transmitted digitally an locally reassembled.
Now imagine such a colony would either receive a copy of the Venus figurine digitally transmitted and reassembled or by means of a craft capable of interstellar travel. If you don’t perceive there to be a difference then you simply don’t share my values. But consider how much resources, including time, it took to accomplish the relocation in the latter case.
The value of something can encompass more than its molecular setup. There might be many sorts of sparkling wines that taste just like Champagne. But if you claim that simply because they taste like Champagne they are Champagne, then you are missing what it is that people actually value.
To try to better understand your value system, I’m going to take what I think you value, attempt to subdivide it in half, and then reconnect it together, and see if it is still valuable. Please feel free to critique any flaws in the following story.
The seller of the Venus tells you “This Venus is the original, carried from Earth on a shuttle, that went through many twists and turns, and near accidents to get here.” and there was recently a shuttle carrying “untransportium.” so that is extremely plausible and he is a trustworthy seller. You feel confident you have just bought the original Venus.
However, later you find out that someone else next door has one of those duplicates of the Venus. He got it for much much cheaper, but you still enjoy your original. You do have to admit you can’t tell them apart in the slightest.
Then later than that, you find out that a unrelated old man who just died had been having fun with you two by flipping a coin, and periodically switching the two Venuses from one house to the other when it came up tails. He cremated himself beyond recovery, so can’t be revived and interrogated, and you have confirmed video evidence he appears to have switched the Venuses multiple times in a pattern which resembles that of someone deciding on a fair coinflip, but there doesn’t appear to be a way of determining the specific number of switches with any substantial accuracy (video records only go back so far, and you did manage to find an eyewitness who confirms he had done it since before the beginning of the video records). A probabilistic best guess gives you a 50-50 shot of having the original at this point.
Your neighbor, who doesn’t really care about the causal history of his Venus, offers to sell you his Venus for part of the price you paid for the original, and then buy himself another replica. Then you will be as certain as you were before to have the original (and you will also have a replica), but you won’t know which of the two is which.
Is it worth buying the other Venus at all if you don’t particularly value replicas? In relation to a percent of the original, how much would you feel comfortable paying?
I guess another way of expressing what I’m trying to figure out is “Do you value having the original itself, or being able to tell the original apart from replicas, and if so can you split those two apart (in the way I tried to in the story) and tell me how much you value each?”
The value of both, one of them being the original, would be a lot less than the original. I’d pay maybe 40% for both. The value of just one would reduce to a small fraction. I wouldn’t be interested to buy it at all. The reason is the loss of information.
You would care if certain objects are destructively teleported but not care if the same happens to you (and presumably other humans)
Is this a preference you would want to want? I mean, given the ability to self-modify, would you rather keep putting (negative) value on concepts like “copy of” even when there’s no practical physical difference? Note that this doesn’t mean no longer caring about causal history. (you care about your own casual history in the form of memories and such)
Also, can you trace where this preference is coming from?
Yeah, I would use a teleporter any time if it was safe. But I would only pay a fraction for certain artifacts that were teleported.
I would keep that preference. And there is a difference. All the effort it took to relocate an object adds to its overall value. If only for the fact that other people who share my values, or play the same game and therefore play by the same rules, will desire the object even more.
Part of the value of touching an asteroid from Mars is the knowledge of its spacetime trajectory. An atomically identical copy of a rock from Mars that was digitally transmitted by a robot probe printed out for me by my molecular assembler is very different. It is also a rock from Mars but its spacetime trajectory is different, it is artificial.
Which is similar to drinking Champagne and sparkling wine that tastes exactly the same. The first is valued because while drinking it I am aware of its spacetime trajectory, the resources it took to create it and where it originally came from and how it got here.
How about if there were two worlds—one where they care about whether a spacetime trajectory does or does not go through a destroy-rebuild cycle, and one where they spend the effort on other things they value. In that case, in which world would you rather live in?
The Champagne example helps, I can understand putting value on effort for attainment, but I’d like another clarification:
If you have two rocks where rock 1 is brought from mars via spaceship, and rock 2 is the same as rock 1 only after receiving it you teleport it 1 meter to the right. Would you value rock 2 less than rock 1? If yes, why would you care about that but not about yourself undergoing the same?
It is not that important. I would trade that preference for more important qualities. But that line of reasoning can also lead to the destruction of all complex values. I have to draw a line somewhere or end up solely maximizing the quality that is most important.
Rock 1 and 2 would be of almost equal value to me.
In a hypothetical case where you werent oposed to slave trade… what’d you pay for a transported slave very much like yourself? would it matter if you had been transported?
If the slave had some famous causal history, would it matter if it was mental (composed an important song) or physical (lone survivor of a disaster)?
So the labour theory of value is true for art?