361–370 of 499 posts
As usual, it must be warned that living forever means you can be tortured forever. Interesting that an article on Dante is getting upvotes today...
Catholic theology actually justifies the belief in Hell by arguing that an eternity of suffering in Hell is a blessing, because it admits the one benefit of existence itself, while total annihilation has no redeeming factors whatsoever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 indicates your model of 'you' is incorrect. How is that "scientifically" an "of course"? How is it more "an exact copy of you is you" than the alternative claim, "an exact copy of you is 'you (1)'" (to borrow from file manager nomenclature). The trivial example of that seems to…
An identical copy necessarily cannot be measured in a way that distinguishes itself from the original. So "scientifically" because we're restricting the space to measurements of the physical world, and "of course" because the conclusion falls almost tautologously out of the definitions, no experiment needed. How can the thing scientifically not be you if it is not materially different from you? To your example- I am…
It certainly can measured be from the perspective of the “original” i.e. the person presumably making the decision to be copied or not.
As usual, it must be warned that living forever means you can be tortured forever. Interesting that an article on Dante is getting upvotes today...
Catholic theology actually justifies the belief in Hell by arguing that an eternity of suffering in Hell is a blessing, because it admits the one benefit of existence itself, while total annihilation has no redeeming factors whatsoever.
Not after Vatican II anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you're saying...but... Most people are alive right now. The population historically has been much lower, so odds are you would be born around the time high technology would support a high population.
I think that “most people are alive now” is not true (although it is often repeated). https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579 > So what are the figures? There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. > This means that we are nowhere near close to having more alive than dead. In fact, there are 15 dead people for ever…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, the relationship is non-transitive. If you tell me this will happen tonight, I would right now call both "me". Both of them after the event would agree that I am them. Both of them would agree they are different people to each other, even if they say so in perfect stereo unison.
Cue the "We are Bob" series, aka Bobiverse, by Dennis E. Taylor!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> your consciousness shuts down. Consciousness not a single isolated process and describing a lull in activity as "shutting down" is incorrect. > So, each morning is a copy of you wakes up? Obviously not. Many of these processes also happen in reverse when you are awake. So when I go to sleep I'm tired and in a different mood. When did that "copy" get made exactly? > Or do you draw a line in the sand and say that is…
> Consciousness not a single isolated process and describing a lull in activity as "shutting down" is incorrect. but there is indeed a discontinuity in your consciousness when you sleep. This discontinuity cannot be distinguished from the discontinuity arising from a copy of your brain on first "restart". So how do you reconcile this discontinuity?
Yet you dream and can remember your dreams. Your dreams can be influenced by things occurring around you in your sleep. Some people do this on purpose and find that they are more reliably able to do it with practice. So how are you defining "discontinuity?" I don't see one at all.
> arising from a copy of your brain on first "restart".
You're rather certain of the semantics of something that does not exist and that you haven't described any sort of process for. What if you can initiate a copy while I'm awake? Am I required to be asleep or sedated into an artificial coma in order to make this copy? Why is that so? Are my short term memories excluded? Is my stomach equally full? Do I have the same wounds? Do I need to pee?
> So how do you reconcile this discontinuity?
How do you explain sleep walking? Or narcolepsy. In your model of discontinuities?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's almost as if your thought patterns and language are a product of your experience of being the only copy of you... if having copies of you walking around was a normal thing, our language and expectations would reflect that. right now if another copy of you comes by and claims your wife and your house, you'd be miffed. but the whole concept of one of you owning the house is just an artefact of how individuality an…
Hopefully IP and copyright laws will evolve in parallel to prevent or highly penalize stuff like that.
“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…
Easy to prove/disprove once you can actually copy a human being, as he should then report to be simultaneously aware of both bodies.
Other than that it's possible that by the same logic of you not being the same as your copy, you're not being the same after you sleep: the continuity of your consciousness is interrupted, and the new you in the morning thinks he is the old guy, having all the memories, but he actually isn't. Think about this: what if you were replaced with a clone while you sleep? No one would ever know and scientifically speaking both scenarios are equivalent because they lead to the same result. Maybe enjoy today a little bit longer, now knowing you're actually going to die in that bed, and as your "clone" will wake up in the morning completely oblivious of not actually continuing your consciousness, you don't even get a witness to your tragic death, as was the case with thousands of your predecessors.
Or maybe it's even worse, because the consciousness is interrupted tens or hundreds of times during the day. Or maybe those are thousands of separate, overlapping consciousness bubbles and really you should worry only about your identity, as the consciousness is just short-lived fireworks on top of the actual you.
I guess it would be nice to know what consciousness even is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly whose consciousness would it be, if not theirs?
Let’s say you clone yourself l 1:1 who would you see thru?
In my view, there would now be two separate instances of "my" consciousness simultaneously. "I" would continue to see through the original one, but the copy would essentially feel the same as me, although increasingly diverging as our experiences would not be the same from that point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’…
We don't need to live forever as shown by the fact we've got by without it so far but death is kind of depressing. I've never really got the distinction that say killing millions in the holocaust is terrible but similar millions dying through age is desirable.