Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Welcome To Life

tomscott.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 188 posts

Re: Welcome To Life

#111

Post by chc »

pbw wrote: post #110
nsxwolf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why bother? Unless you really think the world is worse off without you and your contributions, why would you participate in a service like this? It's not going to do you any good or let you live a day longer. Your copy will go on having a perfectly happy life being the new you, but why should any of us be excited about that?

You're discounting the experience of the copy and identifying solely with the original biological human. Instead you have to really internalize that both experiences are equally yours. That said, I wouldn't get excited about it. Uploading is a bald afterlife myth with the same capacity to beguile as the religious versions. Better to focus on the here and now.

I may as well internalize that Warren Buffett's experiences are equally mine, or a strain of bacteria. If we're not defining "self" through any real continuity and instead just making it an arbitrary label, there's no reason everybody can't be me. It becomes a bit meaningless.

Re: Welcome To Life

#112

Post by chernevik »

feral wrote: post #92
sodiumphosphate wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted that consciousness is not fully understood, can we not agree that it is entirely manifest in the brain? I mean, you don't believe that human consciousness somehow survives the body after brain death, do you? Even if the cloned memories could be streamed from your brain into a running simulation, allowing a memory of crossing the threshold from the physical world to the digital one to be created in the simulat…

I'm not sure. Your body changes all the time. Your mind is always running on different hardware than it was just a few moments before. The changes are just small at each step. >I'm sorry, but I still do not think that the patient will experience being uploaded into a computer. If the copy/delete process was (perceptually, hence effectively) instantaneous, what is the difference? Lets say your biological body was goin…

The question goes to consciousness, and our special identification with our own perspective.

We can posit that our "consciousness", as we experience it, resides entirely in our physical bodies, and that exact duplication of some subset of those bodies can create a consciousness exactly the same as ours. So any observer outside our body will be indifferent to whether they deal with the original or the copy.

But unless there is some communication between the two consciousnesses, you will experience the copy as something outside yourself. You won't have its memories after the moment of duplication, and you won't experience continuation. If your body dies, your consciousness dies. So while the world can have endless copies of you, and perhaps each copy feels like you, you still experience mortality. Your consciousness ends with the particular physical construct sustaining it.

At least, in the posited model.

The gholas of Dune are aware of this, and don't imagine themselves immortal though they know copies of themselves will be made after their departure.

Re: Welcome To Life

#113

Post by batista »

feral wrote: post #92
sodiumphosphate wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted that consciousness is not fully understood, can we not agree that it is entirely manifest in the brain? I mean, you don't believe that human consciousness somehow survives the body after brain death, do you? Even if the cloned memories could be streamed from your brain into a running simulation, allowing a memory of crossing the threshold from the physical world to the digital one to be created in the simulat…

I'm not sure. Your body changes all the time. Your mind is always running on different hardware than it was just a few moments before. The changes are just small at each step. >I'm sorry, but I still do not think that the patient will experience being uploaded into a computer. If the copy/delete process was (perceptually, hence effectively) instantaneous, what is the difference? Lets say your biological body was goin…

>Whats the problem with that? How is it any different than what happens to your body on a day-to-day basis, now, anyway?

Or how is it different that going into sleep and waking up?

Re: Welcome To Life

#114

Post by baddox »

sodiumphosphate wrote: post #85
oskarth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that human metamorphosis is extremely interesting, but this line I really don't get: > Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made. I don't understand how you can put out a statement like that, like it's taken for granted or something. It's far from granted, and I've never heard of something remotely approaching a proof for thi…

Granted that consciousness is not fully understood, can we not agree that it is entirely manifest in the brain? I mean, you don't believe that human consciousness somehow survives the body after brain death, do you? Even if the cloned memories could be streamed from your brain into a running simulation, allowing a memory of crossing the threshold from the physical world to the digital one to be created in the simulat…

I believe that human consciousness is entirely manifest in the brain (and, of course, it's effected by other nerves elsewhere in the body). But moreover, I believe that brain is performing "normal computation," by which I mean Turing complete computation. Because of that, there is no real reason why the same computation responsible for human consciousness couldn't run equivalently on other Turing complete hardware.

Re: Welcome To Life

#115

Post by nova »

jterce wrote: post #109
nova wrote: post #100

There is a lot of the classical discussion on personal identity here. The argument about a copy being "identical to me but it's not me" is a very natural and intuitive reaction, but it's probably wrong. A very illuminating explanation is http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms and related posts. I'll try a personal approach: imagine a country with no computers, no photocopiers, no presses, and a ve…

Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original…

Words fail me.

Imagine I have a magical device with which I can "stop time", or more precisely, stop movement of all particles except mine. In the beginning I am at our right. I stop time, move leisurely to your left and resume time.

What you see is me teleporting from your right to your left. You don't feel "trapped in a body who can't move", because your neurons are also magically frozen. Your consciousness feel continuous, even is you have been "suspended" for a while, because your memories are properly structured. Consciousness is not "something else", it is a property of your memories. (The blog post on lesswrong.com about timeless physics is important to see this point of view, I think, even if you don't buy the theory).

So if my copy is mathematically identical then there is nothing else left. There is no extra consciousness stuff that the "original" has and the "copy" does not.

Sorry, I really can't explain myself better. I'd suggest reading the link provided.

Re: Welcome To Life

#116

Post by pbw »

chc wrote: post #111
pbw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're discounting the experience of the copy and identifying solely with the original biological human. Instead you have to really internalize that both experiences are equally yours. That said, I wouldn't get excited about it. Uploading is a bald afterlife myth with the same capacity to beguile as the religious versions. Better to focus on the here and now.

I may as well internalize that Warren Buffett's experiences are equally mine, or a strain of bacteria. If we're not defining "self" through any real continuity and instead just making it an arbitrary label, there's no reason everybody can't be me. It becomes a bit meaningless.

Sleep and anesthesia break continuity, as has be reported elsewhere in this thread, so self is not about moment to moment continuity.

The reason your copy is equally you vs. Warren Buffet is that your copy shared every molecule in your body and every thought in your head for your entire life up until the moment of splitting off.

Re: Welcome To Life

#117

Post by blake8086 »

jterce wrote: post #109
nova wrote: post #100

There is a lot of the classical discussion on personal identity here. The argument about a copy being "identical to me but it's not me" is a very natural and intuitive reaction, but it's probably wrong. A very illuminating explanation is http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms and related posts. I'll try a personal approach: imagine a country with no computers, no photocopiers, no presses, and a ve…

Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original…

If you copy yourself, you will be creating two originals. They will both "wake up" and be "you".

Re: Welcome To Life

#118

Post by [deleted] »

pbw wrote: post #116
chc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may as well internalize that Warren Buffett's experiences are equally mine, or a strain of bacteria. If we're not defining "self" through any real continuity and instead just making it an arbitrary label, there's no reason everybody can't be me. It becomes a bit meaningless.

Sleep and anesthesia break continuity, as has be reported elsewhere in this thread, so self is not about moment to moment continuity. The reason your copy is equally you vs. Warren Buffet is that your copy shared every molecule in your body and every thought in your head for your entire life up until the moment of splitting off.

[deleted]

Re: Welcome To Life

#119

Post by zmj »

sodiumphosphate wrote: post #105
Dn_Ab wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets go over this carefully as the concepts are slippery. Lack of continuous experience of an event does not mean you died, it is merely memory loss. Assuming the very reasonable theory that consciousness is classical and emergent from the network structure and interactions of neurons and glia then it should be possible to encode this consciousness on a turing machine. If we go a step further and replace certain coll…

You not only misstate my assumptions, but seem to miss my point entirely. Here is my point: the original human will not experience continuity, therefore it's instinct for self-preservation will not be satisfied. The best it can hope for is to take comfort in knowing that a copy will survive. Personally, this does not comfort me. I don't doubt the possibility of a very high fidelity copy and supporting simulation, for…

Which one is the original? Both have the same memories; I think they both have a good claim to that identity.

Re: Welcome To Life

#120

Post by mcmire »

blake8086 wrote: post #117
jterce wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original…

If you copy yourself, you will be creating two originals. They will both "wake up" and be "you".

Sure, but does your consciousness comprise of both you's or just one?
Post reply on HN