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.
A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
151–160 of 441 posts
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#152This 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.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#153Earlier 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.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#154Earlier 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.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#155Earlier 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…
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”
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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”
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
You haven't proven that it's not testable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
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”
#158If 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…
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”
#159Earlier 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.)
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#160Earlier 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).