101–110 of 186 posts
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
Chip of Theseus
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
Are "you" a "you" at all?
What if "you" is just a prediction machine linked to prediction capability + history + planning + objectives + online learning? Your memories are just seasoning for the weights?
Personality, nostalgia and frisson are just hallucinations of experience. Biochemical complexity feels alive and conscious in large numbers and at scale, but it's all simple physics.
Microtubule dynamic instability etc. etc. is just how evolution stumbled upon a runtime learning algorithm. It's not the only solution.
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
Plenty of people (not tons, but many) experience loss of neurons through injury, disease, or aging. We generally consider the person to be the same person, even if their personality changes. Likewise, as you grow in childhood, you create many many neurons. Again, you are still you throughout the experience of growing up. I suspect in your thought experiment you'd remain you throughout. Honestly, a community I bet doe…
(Of course I still consider her my grandma and she is being cared for just as much as she would have been years ago. It just saddens me that I cannot have the same or similar interactions as I could have some time back.)
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
This part here forces the answer. What is necessary for equivalent functionality? If you ask this question of someone who believes in immaterial souls, they can simply deny that equivalent functionality is possible in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call that degrees of change but degrees of damage. The thing is, past a certain degree of damage people stop having opinions, so how would you know the individual is comfortable with it? In this case, the damage is total. The degrees end here, it reaches a binary state: from alive to dead. And then something else entirely says they are the dead person and they are alive. The question is, does society accep…
> I wouldn't call that degrees of change but degrees of damage. If you define any change from a previous state that loses some state as damage, then that's a tautology, not an argument. > The thing is, past a certain degree of damage people stop having opinions, so how would you know the individual is comfortable with it? We don't. I didn't say everyone was ok with every change. Some people aren't ok with being mildl…
No. That's the definition of damage. "Change" doesn't imply loss. Damage does. With change you can add and/or subtract characteristics. Damage subtracts, it is a more precise term for the examples you gave. Using such a broad term as "change" makes it a euphemism for damage. A bit dishonest really.
>I didn't say everyone was ok with every change.
Neither did I.
>"different strokes for different folks" take.
Dead folks included? That's absurd. Also, who is comfortable losing a decade of memories? Is "comfort" a euphemism for "acceptance due to not having a choice on the matter"?
>Different people how (have) different opinions on what constitutes the self.
Because no one asks the dead guy! (tongue in cheek)
>You're equivocating
How can you be so sure? I have has much right to have an opinion on what constitutes the self as much as you do. Equivocating would imply that my opinion on what constitutes the self is based on an error, a misunderstanding. But you don't even know my opinion on that, we haven't got to it yet.
>Society has generally been
If that were the case then there would be no argument. All opinions opposed to accepting whatever comes out of this process as the same person are hereby dismissed due to tradition. Society has generally been such and such. It's settled then.
>Again, you're assuming
No, it is you who's assuming you know my opinion on this.
Glad you asked, here's my opinion:
Continuity. The ship of Theseus (with all planks and everything replaced) will always be the same ship. The copy of the ship of Theseus built right next to the original won't become the original ship of Theseus just because the original is destroyed.
The process destroys the original. This does not promote the copy to original status. It breaks continuity. If the original wasn't destroyed, the copied person and the original are easily distinguished by the people who witnessed the process since both cannot occupy the same space at the same time, one of them is definitely more to the left than the other, at least.
Now for the original and the copy, both will think they are the original if there's no information that satisfies them both about who's who. I would consider that lying to either one of them about their status is a serious crime.
But in this process, there's definitely a corpse left behind. Probably not complete since the copying is destructive to the brain. But the existence of a corpse will definitely convince the copy is the copy. The copy might stubbornly refuse to accept it as such, but that's on them and they are responsible for the consequences that stance might bring.
This proposed technology is messy. They don't even advertise a copy. Just a scan that could one day maybe used to make a "copy"(within questionable standards of what constitutes a copy in the future). That makes things easy for me, really. If it was a teletransportation paradox (without the killing part) then I'd have to accept that the original and the copy are the same, atom for atom, and now there's simply two of them, like a string of bytes on a computer, neither is the original or the copy and they are just the same individual that start diverge due to the impossibility of both occupying the same space at the same time, yada yada yada. But this isn't that, it's the cheap, oh so cheap knock off that only a sad few will settle for. If ever.
So no, I'm not equivocating death with the end of the self. This is just not a teletransportation paradox situation. The technology the article presents is not even close to make an atom for atom copy of a person. Furthermore, I figure if we ever reach that level of technology, we won't need to let the original die to make a copy, we could just cure whatever they are suffering from.
And finally, I would settle for a not so perfect copy of a brain scenario. Magic "Nanobots" replacing the neurons of a subject in vivo, gradually over the span of a few days/weeks/months. The new neurons can be non-biological, but must work identically to the original ones and obviously the connectome should be identical. The subject would be asked if they feel ok with this process regularly and the general part of the brain that is responsible for answering that question would be the last part to be replaced, otherwise it would be cheating wouldn't it? On completion, I would assume it's the same person and if it was me I would assume I'm the same person. This preserves continuity (of the self) to my personal satisfaction. Anything less than that is cryonics-level of bull**.
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
Start at the color green and gradually add in some blue. As long as there are no sharp discontinuities there is no such thing as the color green.
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
More of a digital copy scenario. The article says the process involves toxic chemicals that lock everything in place so the connectome can be examined. There's no known way to reverse the chemical process in the biological brain. https://archive.is/SMcX5
Not that I think this is anywhere close in actuality, but It's reminding me of MMAcevedo. ( https://qntm.org/mmacevedo ) What server will I wake up on? Who is running the infrastructure? What will be asked of me to be allowed to continue to exist on that server? Given our current societal trends, I can't imagine I would enjoy any existence where a copy of me is spun back up. And of course, my original thread of consc…
A thought experiment: One by one your neurons are replaced by their digital counterpart as a nano-scale computer in-place, with equivalent functionality. After which neuron number are you no longer you? You remain conscious throughout the process, the process may last however long with pauses for sleep. After the replacement is complete, one by one these neurons are switched off with their functionality offloaded to…
I'll just copy/paste the relevant part so no one needs to follow the other comment* if they don't want to:
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And finally, I would settle for a not so perfect copy of a brain scenario. Magic "Nanobots" replacing the neurons of a subject in vivo, gradually over the span of a few days/weeks/months. The new neurons can be non-biological, but must work identically to the original ones and obviously the connectome should be identical. The subject would be asked if they feel ok with this process regularly and the general part of the brain that is responsible for answering that question would be the last part to be replaced, otherwise it would be cheating wouldn't it? On completion, I would assume it's the same person and if it was me I would assume I'm the same person. This preserves continuity (of the self) to my personal satisfaction. Anything less than that is cryonics-level of bull*.
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Edit:
> clone instantiated in a computer.
Oh and as far as clones go, I would assume it is the same identity. There would be no original or copy after this, all copies and original are the same as a string of bytes in memory. But... Only at inception. Then as more life experiences each one accumulates, the more they diverge and cannot be treated as the same person. And as such, I wouldn't let a clone like this, nowhere near my imaginary partner for life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I think this is anywhere close in actuality, but It's reminding me of MMAcevedo. ( https://qntm.org/mmacevedo ) What server will I wake up on? Who is running the infrastructure? What will be asked of me to be allowed to continue to exist on that server? Given our current societal trends, I can't imagine I would enjoy any existence where a copy of me is spun back up. And of course, my original thread of consc…
You will not wake up on any server. At best possible theoretical far future scenario better or worse copy of yours will. If you would survive such process, you yourself, the human instance that wrote that will be just looking at somebody else living their now-fully-digital (prison) life. I don't understand why people don't get this simple fact. We are all gonna die, make inner peace with that (it isn't that hard, dep…
It's an element of faith, not fact. If you simulate a human body from quarks up, the physics won't know if it's running on base reality or in a computer.