Strange

I am quite happy to admit my lack of expertise in many (all?) areas. I am often corrected by those more knowledgeable than me, an I am grateful for it.

It is frustration at your stubborn refusal to learn from all the people here (all brighter and better educated then me) who have tried to explain your errors.

The fallacy of appeal to authority. What makes your position even less tenable is that you and your philosopher buddies are relying on the shorter version of the full equation. It would help if you all went off and learned some basic physics.

So do you. Or maybe it would think it was the original and you were the clone...

You are contradicting yourself: Either you are just your material self (and can therefore be copied) or you are not (and therefore require some extra thing/soul/stuff/magic/spark in addition to the matter). So are you saying that the clone would know it wasn't the real you? And that, therefore, all its memories etc. were not real?

So you are saying that your consciousness is not purely a product of the material that makes you up. There is some extra "magic" that separates you from the clone.

This is completely irrational. You are saying that consciousness is an emergent property of the material but if an exact copy of the material is made then it ceases to emerge from it. Quite the reverse: it would demonstrate that it was an emergent property of that material. So, again, you claim you are separate from the vessel.

Either mind/consciousness is a product of the material that makes up your mind and body or it isn't (1). You deny the former, therefore it must be the latter. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle

Or strain caused by different parts of the metal cooling at different rates?

Evidence? Do you feel stifled by your inability to post nonsense on science forums? Totally irrelevant. 1. This is the fallacy of appeal to authority. 2. Hawking clearly knows nothing about philosophy and is wrong on this point. 1. What are "neolithic humans"? 2. What is the "geopolitical North"? 3. Why are humans outside the "geopolitical North" no neolithic? 4. How is their claimed neolithic status relevant? So people who attempt to kill others and/or themselves are merely eccentric and should be left free to carry on as they wish. How many? What evidence is this based on? Evidence? And yet, you seem to admit that physics is "real science". So who is doing it? Please keep your antisemitic opinions out of it. Citation needed. Also, what is the "cognitive elite range"? And who defines it? Please leave your racist views out of it. What were they then? Aliens from the planet Xrag? Who are the "cognitive elite"? What evidence do you have that doctors and chemists are the "smartest of the neolithic humans"? Why are doctors and chemists the enemies of the "cognitive elite"? Why do you say that cognitive elite's "real science" is physics? There is confirmation bias (or the potential for it is all science). This still has nothing to do with the subject of your thread. Your ignorance is showing. Science in general, including physics, has nothing to do with "objective truth". For that you need to turn to religion. It is not "nonsensical according to physics", it is just irrelevant. Physics has no more to say about the mind that it does about truth or beauty. Of course, physics can tell us a blot about the brain and, therefore, how the mind arises. Repeating a baseless assertion doesn't magically make it true. Sorry. That is obviously not true as there are clear links between the mind and neurology. If you wish to claim an independent existence for the mind, perhaps you could show an example of someone able to function with no brain. As it is, your "by definition" is just another baseless assertion. So we can add experimental psychology to the long list of subjects that you are totally ignorant of? That is not how you spell, "and that's my baseless opinion".

And it isn't just an issue of not conforming to some mythical "standard". After all, everyone is different and there are many people who I might consider "odd" but others would admire. The problem is that, for some people, their mental problems are just that: problems that prevent them operating in the world. Perhaps because they are unable to tell what is real and what is hallucination/delusion. Or because they want to hurt/kill others or themselves. Saying that these problems are not real is like saying that a broken leg or smallpox are not illnesses; they are just "differences". Why would we try and treat any injury or illness? Why not just say they are just symptoms of how "different" we all are? Because if we can help someone who is suffering (physically or mentally) then we should. Of course, if they are not a danger to themselves or others, and they don't consider their "illness" to be a problem, then we can leave them be. For example, Oliver Sacks described one patient who had Tourette's but chose not to take the medication because it impaired his drum playing. Similarly, there are people who refuse treatment for physical illnesses because they prefer to put up with it than accept the alternative. The OP is also pretty offensively racist so I am not inclined to take anything he says too seriously.

It certainly wasn't scientific, as you presented no evidence. And it wasn't philosophical, unless you are redefining the word to mean rambling and incoherent. And yet, many people are mentally ill. In some cases, these have clear physical causes, in others less so. Some are more or less treatable. But to deny their existence is, well ... mad.

So, again, you are claiming that consciousness has a separate existence from the matter (and patterns of that matter) that make up your physical existence.

What is that claim based on? You only have Paul's word for that.

Then why doesn't reproducing the "the material AND the pattern" reproduce you?

So, if the material plus the pattern is not enough to reproduce "you", then you are arguing for some sort of dualism; some sort of metaphysical, essential you that is separate from matter and energy.

I thought that the whole point of the thought experiment was that it reproduced the "pattern" of the matter as well as just the matter. Otherwise you would just end up with an identical looking dead body. Or not even that: a pile of graphite, some water and a few teaspoonfuls of other elements.

Thanks!

So I don't understand why you are saying that that "you" would not be reproduced in an exact copy of the hardware. I have just seen this. This is just wrong. It is a fundamental fact of quantum theory that all electrons, quarks (of a given type), and therefore hydrogen atoms are identical and interchangeable. They are purely defined by the properties they have (spin, charge, mass, etc) which are the same for all.

You make two good points here. I accidentally hit the "-1" button so I apologize for that. (I have done this several times - I need to be more careful!) Everything we perceive is subjective (by definition). The cause of those subjective perceptions is (non-subjective) reality. So no paradox at all; it is just the way, the only way, we can perceive the universe around us.

And, currently, there is no evidence that there are more than the 4 dimensions we are all familiar with.

Is there limescale on the element? That might make the effect greater - more nucleation of small bubbles; possibly bubbles being formed under layer of scale and forcing their way out.

In the same way that there is a cosmic microwave background (CMB), there should be a cosmic neutrino background of low-energy neutrinos released early in the universe. Unfortunately, we cannot detect neutrinos with low energy like that. Which is a shame because they would probably tell us a lot about the early universe (they would have been released about 380,000 years earlier than the CMB). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background

Its meaning can be represented by the True Number zero.

So you are saying that there is some sort of "soul" or "you" that is not represented by the physical matter of the person?