41–50 of 441 posts
Reconstructing a human in silico from a dead brain is likely to be a very expensive process. Why would anyone in the future be interested in going through with it for any more than a few select old brains when there will be plenty of dead brains to go around at that time?
that's why you bury some treasure and keep the location locked away in your brain!
Best part of the article for sure
“What if we told you we can backup your mind?” ...and never restore it. As someone who has lived through many backup formats that stop being supported, don’t work, or decay with time this seems monumentally stupid as anything other than basic research. I applaud their goal, digital sentience, but sorry for any of their customers. They need a pitch that works on the recently dead (eg, current cryo companies) as I don’…
Backup is a misnomer here--it's a fixation of the biological tissues. So the format for preservation matches the structure of the original neural tissue down do the nanometer scale, which is a format nature has deemed appropriate to stabilize on the time scales we care about. I agree that there's research to be done, which is why we're not offering a product at this time, and may not for years. I would say that even…
I guess that's one way of managing customer expectation.
https://www.theonion.com/popular-new-amazon-service-just-com...
In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?
In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?
I've yet to come across any evidence of a "self" that exists outside a brain.
> Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?
It's a problem that was hypothesized (and not solved) by philosophy, but as far as I know there's no evidence the problem exists.
You can hypothesize any number of problems but if there isn't any evidence they exist, there's not much urgency in solving these problems.
What if invisible monsters are breeding all around us and building up numbers before they wipe out the human race? There's equal evidence that this could be happening, and the consequences are more immediately dire, so perhaps we should discuss that first?
In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?
This question descends from an ancient philosophical question; see the Ship of Theseus[0]. CGP Grey has a good look at the question wrt Star Trek teleportation[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus [1] https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI
“What if we told you we can backup your mind?” ...and never restore it. As someone who has lived through many backup formats that stop being supported, don’t work, or decay with time this seems monumentally stupid as anything other than basic research. I applaud their goal, digital sentience, but sorry for any of their customers. They need a pitch that works on the recently dead (eg, current cryo companies) as I don’…
What probability of restoration would be high enough to consider it? The future timelines in which restoration does happen are probably extremely interesting to be part of, given how far tech would have progressed. (There are lots of sucky future timelines too, say with nuclear holocausts, where you'd be unlikely to be restored.) No: 100% chance of death. Yes: 100-X% chance of death, X% chance of getting to see a sup…
So while it is non-zero, that doesn’t mean it’s worth the cost. That’s why I brought up backups.
Remember Zip drives for backup? Imagine if there was no reader at time of launch. And how likely it was to build the reader without any changes to spec that the existing Zip disk could be used to restore without any problems. Even with read and write available, those things didn’t work well. You could say “0% chance of restore if you don’t buy, but non-zero if you do buy; therefore buy.” But that only works if the cost is zero.
* which grew and pruned themselves the same as organic ones
In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?