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‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#231

Post by kelnos »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #199
danparsonson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if we copy you into a robot and the copying process leaves you unharmed and awake, are they both you?

Yes, they are both me. It is admittedly a weird conclusion, but that doesn't make it false- we did a weird thing and got a weird result. Objectively, there is no case for saying either is not you.

I agree that they'd both be you, but I don't think that's what's at stake. "You" would only get to experience one of the two lives at that point: either the original's or the robot's. Presumably whatever consciousness was present before the duplication still resides with the original.

So there's certainly an argument to be made that if someone created a copy of "you" and put it in a robot, and then destroyed your organic body, that consciousness wouldn't "move" to the robot; it would stay in the organic body and be killed. The robot would be a completely new consciousness, but with all of your memories and behaviors and attitudes.

I'm honestly not sure what I believe around this. Perhaps we will discover "consciousness" as a physical thing and learn how to transfer that as well. Or not. Who knows.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#232

Post by HideousKojima »

namrog84 wrote: post #14
NickM wrote: post #11

I used to buy into this kind of stuff, but I've become more and more skeptical of the idea that you would still be yourself if your brain could be preserved/emulated/transplanted/whatever. Our nervous system extends into our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. People with certain kinds of brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotions normally also experience trouble making rational decisions. More recent…

There is a bit of research and effort into a head transplants. I wonder if and when that is successful to see how it impacts the individual. Possibly having memories of the body or changing personality.

Can't wait for C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength to become a reality

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#233

Post by wutwutwat »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #186
wutwutwat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if I died tonight and a copy of me took over tomorrow, what good did that do for me personally? I'm still dead. Selfishly, I don't care if a copy of me continues on, I only care that I don't.

You are 'caring' objectively, we live subjectively, so your caring is of purely academic interest, even, dare I say it, to you. Subjective continuity is illusionary, you placing import on this illusion is up to you of course, but there is no substantive difference between the discontinuity experienced by your 'copy' in the cloud and what you experience yourself moment to moment.

A copy of me continuing on not knowing or caring that it's a copy of me is of little importance to me. That's not my point. My point is that I will not be continuing on. Sure, a copy that thinks it's me will, and to the world, that would be me. It would have my memories and make decisions based on those memories in a way that would be the same as I would. But that wouldn't be me, literally. My mind, my inner voice, my experience of reality through my mind's eye, would not exist. I wouldn't exist. A copy of who I was continuing on doesn't help me, literally.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#234

Post by kimixa »

prometheus76 wrote: post #225
ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense if you believe in a non-materialist self, like a soul. That model wouldn't be falsifiable- we can't measure it, so it can have whatever properties are convenient. You could then rule out the possibility that your soul would inhabit the copied 'you' by fiat. Scientifically, though: of course an exact copy of you is you. If you don't believe in souls but still feel like this is not the case, that indic…

If I copy the contents of an Apple II disk onto my pc and try to "run" it...nothing happens. Isn't mapped to the new hardware. So who is going to write the "human mind/consciousness" emulator that will map onto a hard drive? Will they simulate all the inputs from your body, nervous system, senses, etc.?

And will they perfectly emulate the dynamic situation that is the brain?

You've mapped every neuron perfectly, you've even captured every ongoing signal and the whole thing is recreated perfectly. But that's not the entire story - connections are created and broken all the time, that's what memory is after all. Is it the "same person" if that snapshot is put into an emulator with slightly different results there? They clearly won't be having the same thoughts in a pretty short timescale even if the inputs are perfectly the same.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#236

Post by prometheus76 »

wutwutwat wrote: post #171
robbomacrae wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all makes sense. But let's run with this way beyond the foreseeable tech. What if you can replace each neuron in situ one by one up to X%. Then what if it was reversible (the neurons were initially just bypassed, commented out). Someone could then dial it up to 5%.. 50% and if they still felt the same throughout and then went up to 100%. In that scenario would they have copied themselves? I find it fascinatingly…

You're asking a question that we've asked ourselves for a millennia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus Technically, we are not the same people that we were when we were born. The cells in our body have one by one been replaced with new ones and the old ones have died off. The things that make up my body are 100% different than when I was born, so I literally am not the same person, physically. Maybe this i…

Categories, numbers, logic, grammar, etc. all map onto physical systems, but aren't necessarily directly linked. This is "metaphysics" in philosophy, and is essential in order to even reason about physical systems. Just the concept of a "physical system" is actually metaphysical, but without metaphysics, you can say nothing to anyone about anything. Metaphysics is just generally taken as a "given", but is worth evaluating itself.

Then you'll run into the "realism" vs. "nominalism" debate and you'll understand the philosophical underpinnings of the current culture wars in America.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#237

Post by kelnos »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #213
suzzer99 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you died every night in your sleep and were replaced in the morning with a perfect copy of yourself with all your memories intact. Would you know the difference?

How do you think Star Trek transporters would work?

Star Trek's lore includes some technobabble about transporters operating in "quantum" mode to assuage concerns that the person at the transporter destination is not the same as at the source.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#238

Post by wutwutwat »

yuppiemephisto wrote: post #190
wutwutwat wrote: post #141

“Take very high resolution scans of brain structure to characterise how someone’s neurons work, recreate it in a digital format then put it in another robotic, virtual or biological body.” This isn't preserving, it's copying. A copy of your brain/personality/you... isn't you... it's a copy. It's a cassette tape playing back the radio you recorded onto it. It's really kind of odd that people talk about brain transplan…

Of all things, The Venture Bros convinced me otherwise that the copies “are” me, enough to matter anyway.

quiet, Dean

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#239

Post by owlbynight »

Part of personality lives inside of our stomachs as well, apparently, and so much of who were are is driven by our interaction with our nerve endings. I think even with a perfect copy of consciousness, it's pointless without a perfect copy of our bodies as well.

I think that AGI, when and if we ever reach that stage of technological innovation, will enable us to live in a utopian world where our bodies are impervious to biological defects or age and we have little to no reliance on food and water — where we can control all aspects of how we feel with a slider, or a thought.

Like the Lotus-eaters from Homer's Odyssey, some alien tribe will eventually show up and decide we're imperiled instead of living a perfect life in blissful stasis, and kill us to stop whatever afflicts us from spreading to them.

Anyway, I don't want the brain preservation thing, thank you.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#240

Post by audunw »

giantg2 wrote: post #128

I don't want to live more than 100 years and I don't want to come back from the dead either. Make way for the next generation and their wants.

Yeah, I find the need to live forever kind of.. juvenile? You can’t let go of your ego for long enough to realise that at some point it’s better to make room for a new human with new perspectives and new ideas?

I like to think of it this way: if life was a game would you want to play the same character forever? No.. if you’re gonna keep playing the game it’s more interesting to start from scratch now and then. I don’t believe in reincarnation. There’s no need to. What you really are deep down is an instance of humanity. Almost all your genes and all your culture comes from and is shared with other humans. Any new instance (new human) is you playing a new character, essentially. If you’ve contributed to shaping the world you’re leaving behind this is even more true.

Unless you’re believe in a soul in the christian/jewish/muslim sense I guess, but then why would you fear death?

IMO the pursuit of immortality is far more dangerous and far more likely to kill humanity than AI. At least it may make us deteriorate to insignificance. Humanity is a super organism and we have a name for the phenomenon where parts of an organism figures out how to die and yet still replicates: cancer

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