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A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

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Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#151
If folks really want to make sure they come back from the dead, they might also think about setting up proper incentives for performing the potentially highly laborious process that resurrection might entail even 100+ years from now. It might be helpful to place a sort of back-to-life bounty on yourself, to be held in escrow, and only to be paid out upon successful resurrection. The bigger the bounty, the higher your de-facto priority in the queue. Let it collect interest and fund the ongoing administration of your bounty in the meantime.

If you really want to make it stringent, make the bounty require a password that only that (deceased) person knows. Best case scenario they do such a good job resurrecting you that you still remember the password, or at worst there's an incentive to picking the fact out of your brain, which might be only slightly less difficult than doing the full resurrection.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#152

This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism? I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

It’s called dualism, and you’re basically proposing a soul in 21st century language. Like a soul, it’s not testable, and lacks any evidence in favor of it, while requiring a new set of assumptions which cannot be tested. You’re also proposing some kind of new physics, which again, is somehow complementary to and yet hidden from current current theories.

You haven't proven that it's not testable.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s called dualism, and you’re basically proposing a soul in 21st century language. Like a soul, it’s not testable, and lacks any evidence in favor of it, while requiring a new set of assumptions which cannot be tested. You’re also proposing some kind of new physics, which again, is somehow complementary to and yet hidden from current current theories.

You haven't proven that it's not testable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure most of us spend more than $10000 each year on prolonging our lives (food and rent). It doesn't seem very selfish to do it just once more.

Is $10k the full price of getting this done? I thought it was just the deposit to get on the waiting list.

Good question. I'm not sure exactly, but it seems the right order of magnitude. Alcor's website says that they cost $80k, and this should be cheaper since they don't need to keep the liquid nitrogen topped up.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#155
post #139
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part I'm always surprised people don't seem to get. If someone makes an exact copy of me, the original me is still going to think "I'm me. That other thing is a copy of me." So, if the original me has to die for the clone to be created... unless my consciousness somehow jumps to the clone, I experience a death which I do not come back from.

> unless my consciousness somehow jumps to the clone You don't have conciousness when you sleep (at least during some parts of it). Your conciousness disappears every night for several hours and is recreated every morning. Why is it not a problem, but when there is 2 of you - it suddenly becomes a problem? If you were sleeping while someone made a clone - would that make it OK? If no - why? There's no evidence of any…

I disagree that I disappear during states of "unconsciousness". Sleep/general anesthesia/drugs are just different states of brain activity, but I'm still "me" during these states. We don't say people become no one, or someone else when they sleep.

So, a copy of your consciousness (if such a thing is possible) is different than sleeping. No matter how much the clone believes it is me, it will never be me. I still die in my scenario, even though the other feels differently about it.

To add to that, asking "who am I" is a philosophical question, and I'm not a strict empiricist, so I don't categorically dismiss the idea that there exists an "I" outside of my natural body.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't proven that it's not testable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

That's kind of missing his point. "Russell's Teapot" is a mental exercise that states the person making the claim that is nonstandard of current thought needs to provide proof. He's suggesting that there IS some way to provide proof perhaps, one way or the other.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't proven that it's not testable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Doesn't work here, since Erlangolem made the statement that it's not testable.

Erlangolem made that explicit assertion, and now has to back up that statement up.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#158

If folks really want to make sure they come back from the dead, they might also think about setting up proper incentives for performing the potentially highly laborious process that resurrection might entail even 100+ years from now. It might be helpful to place a sort of back-to-life bounty on yourself, to be held in escrow, and only to be paid out upon successful resurrection. The bigger the bounty, the higher your…

Hmm, interesting. Assuming resurrecting you was easier than picking your brain, there would be the problem of you lying, both when you died and after you were brought back to life. How would they deal with that?

I guess they could just kill you again. But would the threat of that happening in the future deter you from lying at time of death, when you have nothing else to lose?

It seems like there would need to be system of proving possession of a password that would have to last 100 years. I have not thought through this kind of scenario (sorry!). Perhaps this has been considered before by those studying the problem in detail (e.g. science fiction authors)? What are the solutions?

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#159
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who is cryopreserved, but is viewed as a villian in the zeitgeist of the future, could end up being booted up into a personal hell for the amusement/vindictiveness of future people. If a 'Hitler' VM was publicly available online, how many people would torture it? What are the ethics around torturing virtual consciousnesses of evil people?

A heads up for anyone interested in such matters, but an episode in the latest season of Black Mirror is specifically about this :-) (Indeed, most of the season is about the ethics of simulated consciousness in various ways.)

Great show. Loved season 3. White Christmas in season 2 also touches on this.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If electrical transmissions are at all required, then this would render a brain nothing more than an amusing curio. That fact that people sometimes survive lightning strikes and epileptic fits suggests that normal brain activity can be restarted after a disruption.

Another example is people undergoing deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, where they can only start surgery after an EEG showing no neural activity (electrocerebral silence).

Also, survivors of drowning in icy water. I linked to a review paper in another thread a while back.
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