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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’

#411

Post by rclairville »

coldtea wrote: post #393
gowld wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need to be more clear in your last sentence. If you are cloned while you are sleeping, and both the original and the copy are moved into different rooms before you wake up, both of you think themself is you, and both of you think the other is not you. So, who is correct?

> If you are cloned while you are sleeping, and both the original and the copy are moved into different rooms before you wake up, both of you think themself is you, and both of you think the other is not you. So, who is correct? Obviously the original one is. Whether the clone also things that it's me doesn't make it any more so, than if a paranoid person thought it was Napoleon would make them Napoleon.

Yes, but we're suggesting a clean mental break in some senses from your cognitions POV. Both of you would be the real you, except to each other. The Hermetic tradition has some texts that delve into how God cannot be contained within the universe because he exists outside of it. In some senses, it would be downright insane to ponder the ramifications of this.

After the first 'Clone Settlement' and the pains of splitting someone's belongings between the same person; it would have to be made illegal. No other way around it.

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

#412

Post by DougN7 »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #173
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…

Every time you go to sleep your consciousness shuts down. What wakes up is something slightly different due to biological processes. You are not tired, your mood is different, part of cells in your brain got replaced, memories become more stable and maybe linked to other similar memories, etc... This is way more pronounced for people waking up from a coma. Philosophers thought of this for a while, see https://philoso…

I believe, if we could be copied to the cloud, that “me” is much more than neurons, and affected and defined quite a lot by the particular physical body we’re housed in. You can say losing an arm doesn’t change who you are, but it definitely does at some levels. Changes in health affect personality, mood, outlook, hope, enjoyment, etc, etc - that would all change when copied.

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

#413

Post by JeremyNT »

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…

Perhaps we could just "Ship of Theseus" our consciousness? Slowly augment with cybernetics, then replace the meat over time.

It's all just hypothetical without knowing what consciousness/qualia really "is," and as far as I can discern we've basically moved no closer to understanding that since the very beginnings of neurological research.

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

#414

Post by sagolikasoppor »

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…

That's easy to solve. Just make the copy while you are still alive, make it so that you can control both brains ans bodies. That way you should be able to shut down the old body and keep on living?

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

#415

Post by ianburrell »

coldtea wrote: post #393
gowld wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need to be more clear in your last sentence. If you are cloned while you are sleeping, and both the original and the copy are moved into different rooms before you wake up, both of you think themself is you, and both of you think the other is not you. So, who is correct?

> If you are cloned while you are sleeping, and both the original and the copy are moved into different rooms before you wake up, both of you think themself is you, and both of you think the other is not you. So, who is correct? Obviously the original one is. Whether the clone also things that it's me doesn't make it any more so, than if a paranoid person thought it was Napoleon would make them Napoleon.

Which one is the original? Say we aren't making a computer copy but duplicate of your body. And we might have messed up the labels.

How do you tell which one is the original? Atoms don't have labels. But atom-level copy isn't possible. Say we made the scan at large enough scale that has fidelity but it isn't identical.

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

#416

Post by hannofcart »

roland35 wrote: post #265

Alastair Reynolds wrote some great books which touch on this concept - the Perfect series has a AI character who originally started out as a fatal brain scan of a person who eventually escaped...

Also in 'House of Suns' by Alistair Reynolds.

The most revelatory idea for me in it was the idea of how a human being could plausibly become a near god-like entity.

This isn't even the real premise of the book but a brief detour over a few pages where the author expounds this idea.

The man, Valmik, starts off as a human much like any other. As the first stage in his metamorphosis he replaces his brain neuron by neuron, with mechanical parts.

Once this is done he no longer needs his body.

This now frees him from his mortal shell which he discards. He now lives purely as an electro-mechanical device for centuries. He shuns all his human contacts since they are unable to keep up with him.

At this point he starts adding more artificial neurons till his count surpasses several orders of magnitude of his starter human brain.

But he realises that he is still subject to the vicissitudes of the planet that the machine that's him is located in.

This he couldn't abide by.

At this next stage, the already superhuman intelligence formerly known as Valmik sets off on a space faring vehicle.

The endlessness of space is no bother to this entity, because he has no bounds on his longevity.

And so he travels the cosmos for millennia in this state, free from the erstwhile shackles binding him to Earth.

But he realises that even this is not enough. Just one well aimed shot would destroy him.

Not good enough for an immortal.

So he transforms each of his neurons into an independent self-sustaining machine. Each of these machines communicates with each other via light/EM beams.

The formerly comet sized machine that housed his consciousness was now split across these self sustaining machines.

These machines can now drift apart. As far apart as he wanted.

His brain was now a cloud consciousness that could span the size of solar systems.

But this expansion came at a cost.

The cost was this: transmission between his independent neuron nodes, now each far apart from one another, took time, limited by the speed of light.

Thoughts that would formerly take him micro seconds would now consume days. But that was no matter to this entity that had left all his companions behind and only needed to talk to himself.

And thus, Valmik, once man, now a cloud consciousness came to disperse himself all across the Oort cloud.

An immortal who can outlive the sun.

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

#417

Post by akira2501 »

rcxdude wrote: post #372
akira2501 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there is indeed a discontinuity in your consciousness when you sleep. 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…

>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. Dreams aren't continuous throughout sleep, so this seems pretty irrelevant to whether there's a discontinuity in the first place, you're…

> Dreams aren't continuous throughout sleep

What do you base this assertion on?

> so this seems pretty irrelevant to whether there's a discontinuity in the first place

Have you proven there is one? Or are you just saying "sleep is really weird so that must be a 'conscious discontinuity.'" I'm pointing out the obvious flaws in this logic.

> you're just saying there may be multiple during a given night's sleep.

No, you're saying that, and I'm asking you to define it.

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

#418

Post by dinfinity »

geye1234 wrote: post #244
dinfinity wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's inevitably going to be a mere copy of you. You don't get to experience any of it. You can make the same argument for 'you before you went to sleep' and 'you after you woke up'. The only real link you have to that previous consciousness are memories of experiences, which are all produced by your current body/brain. Think about this: For every consciousness (including you right now) it is _impossible_ to experie…

>> It's inevitably going to be a mere copy of you. You don't get to experience any of it. > You can make the same argument for 'you before you went to sleep' and 'you after you woke up'. The only real link you have to that previous consciousness are memories of experiences, which are all produced by your current body/brain. Except I know, empirically, that people go to sleep all the time and wake up, and remain the s…

> that people go to sleep all the time and wake up, and remain the same person

You have absolutely no way of knowing that last part is true. You can only see their behavior, which is identical whether they are the same consciousness or a different one from the one it was yesterday. You don't even know whether they have any conscious experience at all.

> And I know (for practical purposes) I do the same.

You do not. The "for practical purposes" points at your _body_. There is no evidence that an organic body is in any way special. If you upload your consciousness and the resulting computer 'body' works as a normal body, it _will_ generate a consciousness and that consciousness _will_ feel that it is 'you' (itself). Note that we're talking about hypothetical practically perfect computer bodies (which may be completely virtual, as longs as its sensors and actuators live fully in that virtual world).

You can spin the illusion of a continuous conscious experience every way you want. It is still just that, an illusion.

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

#420

Post by nickisnoble »

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…

Some people never learned about pointers / pass by value vs reference and it shows
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