We Don’t Have to Die • Hacker News Board

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#11

Post by achillesheels » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #6

> Alas, this scenario can’t work if your brain is burned or eaten by worms soon. But the info that specifies you is now only a tiny fraction of all the info in your brain and is redundantly encoded. So if we freeze all the chemical processes in your brain, either via plastination or liquid nitrogen, quite likely enough info can be found there to make a brain emulation of you. So “all” that stands between you and this…

Don't think of it as a copy but a continuation of you. And why do you think I can't continue to live in a new body, brain included, cloned from my proprietary genome, with a digitally transmitted cache of my proprietary self which is electromechanically diagrammed from how my self has extended into my personal body over time?

And by the way, your judgment of permanent death is ignorant of the ancient Hellenic state of mind which actually germinated the European Scientific Revolution which your scientific thoughts are predicated upon. They didn't believe in death; indeed the Christian religious concept of the resurrection is paragonal to enlightenment scientific pursuits; in that the titans of Europe believed Heaven is justified. The "random-walk" experience of human cellular life which you are inferring is actually a century's old aberration in this great ascension of man towards everlasting life.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#12

Post by beaconstudios » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

achillesheels wrote: post #11

KronisLV wrote: post #6

> Alas, this scenario can’t work if your brain is burned or eaten by worms soon. But the info that specifies you is now only a tiny fraction of all the info in your brain and is redundantly encoded. So if we freeze all the chemical processes in your brain, either via plastination or liquid nitrogen, quite likely enough info can be found there to make a brain emulation of you. So “all” that stands between you and this…

Don't think of it as a copy but a continuation of you. And why do you think I can't continue to live in a new body, brain included, cloned from my proprietary genome, with a digitally transmitted cache of my proprietary self which is electromechanically diagrammed from how my self has extended into my personal body over time? And by the way, your judgment of permanent death is ignorant of the ancient Hellenic state o…

there's a very easy thought experiment to make against a copy of you implying experiential continuity, in the sense of experiencing qualia: make two copies. Do you experience two perspectives simultaneously? This defies both reality and intuition, because you could separate the copies by a light year and experiencing the two perspectives simultaneously would violate physics.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#13

Post by nzmsv » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

I have to ask: but why? The author correctly concludes that the human mind is software, but then their survival instinct gets the better of them and they don't carry this thought to its logical conclusion. And that is: death is a feature, not a bug.

The planet-wide human computer happens to run its computation by transferring some state from the current generation of humans to the next via a mixture of lip flapping, squiggles on paper, and backlit screens panels. In doing so it performs pruning of the state: every detail is not transferred.

In essence, a person pushing for immortality is a single selfish genome with a singular purpose: replicate to the detriment of maximizing the global utility of the system. The system by design will try its best to thwart this effort.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#14

Post by nyokodo » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

nzmsv wrote: post #13

I have to ask: but why? The author correctly concludes that the human mind is software, but then their survival instinct gets the better of them and they don't carry this thought to its logical conclusion. And that is: death is a feature, not a bug. The planet-wide human computer happens to run its computation by transferring some state from the current generation of humans to the next via a mixture of lip flapping,…

> the human mind is software

It’s an understatement to say this has yet to be established. The human body is very much hardware and includes our incredible cognitive system that we haven’t and may never be able to simulate accurately. Everything from quantum interactions of particles composing neurons to physically interacting with the world etc may prove irreducibly complex to intelligence so as to make simulation essentially just cloning. The “mind as software” meme really needs to have better evidence for its arrogant presentation.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#15

Post by Maursault » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

nyokodo wrote: post #14

nzmsv wrote: post #13

I have to ask: but why? The author correctly concludes that the human mind is software, but then their survival instinct gets the better of them and they don't carry this thought to its logical conclusion. And that is: death is a feature, not a bug. The planet-wide human computer happens to run its computation by transferring some state from the current generation of humans to the next via a mixture of lip flapping,…

> the human mind is software It’s an understatement to say this has yet to be established. The human body is very much hardware and includes our incredible cognitive system that we haven’t and may never be able to simulate accurately. Everything from quantum interactions of particles composing neurons to physically interacting with the world etc may prove irreducibly complex to intelligence so as to make simulation e…

> The “mind as software” meme really needs to have better evidence

It never will because it is fundamentally a bad metaphor in reverse. The proper metaphor doesn't apply in reverse to mind and brain. Mind is not an algorithm or a series of instructions that gets executed on brain, the notion is absurd.

Mind is also not something else, it is not some thing, as it has no substance, has no weight, color, smell, etc. Though we are certain the brain is the seat of the mind, you can slice up brain as many ways as possible and never find the mind. Near as experts can figure, mind is a phenomenon of personal experience that arises from healthy brain.

Conversely, Strong AI, a living but artificial mind in a digital machine, is unattainable and will remain the domain of science fiction, though it is easy enough to have a convincing enough AI fool us into believing an AI has personal experience, it is simply physically and logically impossible, at least until two things occur: 1) we actually fully understand mind (unlikely to occur) and 2) we attain the ability to create neurons at the scale of what makes neurons (may be impossible). But if it ever occurs, what a horrendous and cruel thing to create. Imagine being consciousness under those conditions.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#16

Post by garmaine » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 6:46 AM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #7

KronisLV wrote: post #6

> Alas, this scenario can’t work if your brain is burned or eaten by worms soon. But the info that specifies you is now only a tiny fraction of all the info in your brain and is redundantly encoded. So if we freeze all the chemical processes in your brain, either via plastination or liquid nitrogen, quite likely enough info can be found there to make a brain emulation of you. So “all” that stands between you and this…

this is a pervasive issue with LessWrong-oriented life extension ideas. They seem to take the position that a simulation of you, IS you, and that your attitude towards it should be the same as your attitude towards your experienced self. This makes no sense to me whatsoever - a simulation of me would not, in fact, be me, because I would not experience its perspective. I've never gotten around to reading about why the…

There isn’t, so don’t waste your time looking. I spent far too long trying to find the disconnect and came up empty. Don’t waste your time like I did.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#17

Post by garmaine » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

nzmsv wrote: post #13

I have to ask: but why? The author correctly concludes that the human mind is software, but then their survival instinct gets the better of them and they don't carry this thought to its logical conclusion. And that is: death is a feature, not a bug. The planet-wide human computer happens to run its computation by transferring some state from the current generation of humans to the next via a mixture of lip flapping,…

So should we gas the elderly as soon as they’re past child rearing age?

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#18

Post by reducesuffering » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #10

KronisLV wrote: post #6

> Alas, this scenario can’t work if your brain is burned or eaten by worms soon. But the info that specifies you is now only a tiny fraction of all the info in your brain and is redundantly encoded. So if we freeze all the chemical processes in your brain, either via plastination or liquid nitrogen, quite likely enough info can be found there to make a brain emulation of you. So “all” that stands between you and this…

You've hit upon an ongoing debate about continuity of consciousness. The best answer I've heard is to replace your brain with artificial neurons one at a time in order to create a gradual transfer but even that seems unsatisfying.

Why does it seem unsatisfying? Hanson makes the point that what makes us today, our X billion cells, all are not a part of us 20 years later. We are constantly replacing our individual components and yet still have the same stream of conscious. I suspect that over the next few decades, our understanding of biology and neuroscience will get much much better in explaining this phenomena and giving us the proper single-consciousness way of replacing our individual components likewise.

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#19

Post by achillesheels » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #12

achillesheels wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think of it as a copy but a continuation of you. And why do you think I can't continue to live in a new body, brain included, cloned from my proprietary genome, with a digitally transmitted cache of my proprietary self which is electromechanically diagrammed from how my self has extended into my personal body over time? And by the way, your judgment of permanent death is ignorant of the ancient Hellenic state o…

there's a very easy thought experiment to make against a copy of you implying experiential continuity, in the sense of experiencing qualia: make two copies. Do you experience two perspectives simultaneously? This defies both reality and intuition, because you could separate the copies by a light year and experiencing the two perspectives simultaneously would violate physics.

No one wouldn’t, because can one be electro conductive in both?

Re: We Don’t Have to Die

#20

Post by beaconstudios » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #18

hotpotamus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've hit upon an ongoing debate about continuity of consciousness. The best answer I've heard is to replace your brain with artificial neurons one at a time in order to create a gradual transfer but even that seems unsatisfying.

Why does it seem unsatisfying? Hanson makes the point that what makes us today, our X billion cells, all are not a part of us 20 years later. We are constantly replacing our individual components and yet still have the same stream of conscious. I suspect that over the next few decades, our understanding of biology and neuroscience will get much much better in explaining this phenomena and giving us the proper single-…

We actually have no way to know that our stream of consciousness is continuous, because all we have of the past is memory, and memory is not consciousness. There's quite a few unnerving ideas in this space, like that we can't really know whether we wake up the same "us" after we sleep. The only thing we really experience is the present moment.