I wonder if, when they do create this technology, it'll be all that great of an idea.
I'm not really on Greg Egan's page of things here.
A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
341–350 of 441 posts
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#342Earlier 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'm not sure, are you comfortable living one day only, and leaving all the problems to be for future you to take care of? Because for that logic, you basically don't exist that much at all, and the moment you go to sleep, the rest of your life is somebody else's problem, because you effectively die. That is what you're saying (and that is what people like us would expect from mind upload).
So you tell me why it's a problem, but it seems, I may go to sleep all I want, but when I wake up the next day, all my problems are still my own. I doubt that if someone makes a clone of me, and I go to sleep, that I'm going to wake up as them and that other clone. How would that even work if there's two of us? There's only one of "me" to go around.
Oh, it's very awkward, yes, because it implies there's something else going on here that is required to hold this information, but we're all supposed to think that's impossible...
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 if someone said they'd shoot you in your sleep, but replace you with a clone with your memories and give that clone $100. You'd do it?
No, that's not even what they're saying.
They're basically saying killing them in their sleep is not a problem. That's where that logic goes. Because you die when you go to sleep.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#344In 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? 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 pr…
This is really NOT the topic that most people are OK handwaving away simply because the evidence isn't there, because this topic is older than the concept of science itself and it's the #1 thing that gives anything around here any meaning whatsoever.
Inventing the scientific method doesn't mean you get a carte blanche to call invalid everything you haven't gotten around to understanding with it.
This is not a solved problem and if someone gets this tech it's going to become an issue. A political issue, not a scientific one, because this one is in the region of politics, science doesn't know what's going on here.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#345This 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.
How then do you explain how physical injuries and external stimulation to the brain affect the brain's operation in ways that we increasingly understand? Not saying we're anywhere close to having it all figured out. But this is the sort of question you have to address to accept dualism. I'd certainly like to believe there's something more to my conscious existence than this perishable gray matter. I prefer to believe…
> At worst,
You're just an NPC
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#346Why are there so many people excited to do this? Don't they realize it'll be a copy/digital clone of them? Even if they could upload a digital representation of a person's brain without the person dying, it would still be a copy. This isn't immortality, this is a company killing you then promising to create a clone of you with your memories at a later time.
> Why are there so many people excited to do this?
Because science doesn't have evidence for the presence of "you"s, and it's fashionable among intellectuals these days to only believe scientific ideas have validity.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that way on the surface. Both will wake up with the view that they are the true consciousness. Another variant is the concept that every decision we make we actually split into two universes, one making one decision and the other making the other decision. But, anyway the scenario is set up, the question is why does that particular brain have that particular consciousness? It is easier to see in the splittin…
You sound like you've thoroughly confused yourself. If the mind is software then it can be duplicated. There is no dilemma here, and it's irrelevant what the copies think of it.
It's definitely relevant to me, if one copy is sent to the mines and another copy goes to paradise, it'd be very important to "me" to know which one that is.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Computers have yet to match many of the capabilities of the brain. Heck I have better image recognition when I’m drunk than all of Google’s image recognition nodes combined. Could a computer host a human mind to its full capacity?
Did you forget that any technology publicly known and available is about 20 years old? Im sure they are systems that can recognize image faster and more accurate than humans but its sort of a “product” you wont find by googling.
Sounds unlikely. Is there any evidence of this?
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#349Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal chance of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.or…
This is a main element of DeLillo's latest book Zero K . A state-of-the-art secret facility is built in a middle of nowhere former Soviet bloc country. It's financed by ultra wealthy people whose bodies are disassembled and frozen with the hopes they will be reanimated in the future. There is a short chapter that is narrated by the detached consciousness of one of the patrons. She has lost all sense of self and is tr…
I had something similar happen to me once and didn't know how long it was going to last and it really was that terrifying, except instead of questioning what I was, I could remember everything I normally could. I just couldn't sense anything but my own thoughts and memories. Luckily I came out of it, but it would be an awful hell.
Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a very unfavorable and disingenuous reading of my comment. The portion of kaizendad’s comment that I replied to specifically mentioned “output”. I interpret this to mean economic benefit or “value”. The time students spend in school is time they are not working. Children generate almost zero economic benefit until they are out of school and the type of person kaizendad references is likely to spend a lot of ti…
Your position on this is a little disturbing, and ignores every child/young adult who either grew up poor and had to work, or worked part time because their parents didnt buy them a car or every other thing they wanted as a teen. Or, they just actually wanted a job. I mean, in the US you can go anywhere and there's 15 and 16 year olds working as clerks, restaurant employees, etc. I got my first legally taxed job in I…
My position on this is not disturbing at all. My position on this is that education improves the future productivity of our youth. We trade economic productivity today for increases in future production.
You have cited a problem. The fact that we make children work to support their families holds them back from being the ones who kaizendad refers to.
Children who have the benefit of education early on are more likely to be productive later in life.
I also had my first paying job at a young age. My economic benefit today is much larger in comparison and continues to increase year over year. My maximum economic contribution has yet to occur even though my youthful employment was decades in the past.