The fact that this is uncontroversial to a lot of people mostly just shows how intellect-focused our society has become. Plenty of other value systems treat the Self as the entire body, not merely the head. Perhaps if we did too, we might not have so many issues with obesity and drug abuse. Dualism has consequences. I once read someone describe academics as “floating heads with bodies attached.” I think that could ap…
Consider how cyberpunk made people wish replacing body parts was possible. Adam Jensen “never asked for this”, but I bet many fantasized about having his see-through eyes and wall-breaking arms.
The idea that one can transplant a brain and thus a human's consciousness is based on erroneous concepts. Because humans currently have only physical senses they assume, naturally, that all of reality is based on matter. The situation however is that the brain just mirrors the reality of consciousness. Therefore the brain is not the center of consciousness, but only reflects the activities of mind. Just as looking in…
Aside from the moral aspects, it's also interesting to think about the results. Would a new brain have difficulty operating a different body? Would one's senses translate similarly? Would the person's idea of where their limbs are in space be all messed up?
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Apparently advanced aliens are trying to communicate with HN through my cell phone...
The idea that one can transplant a brain and thus a human's consciousness is based on erroneous concepts. Because humans currently have only physical senses they assume, naturally, that all of reality is based on matter. The situation however is that the brain just mirrors the reality of consciousness. Therefore the brain is not the center of consciousness, but only reflects the activities of mind. Just as looking in…
Could you expand with evidence to justify and further explain what you mean?
We all know there’s no real evidence, even though parent’s ideas have been floating around for millennia.
This equal part fascinating and terrifying. It reminds me of the concept of “stacks” in Altered Carbon, but keeping the original hardware instead of transferring the essence of you to storage device in another body. Given that there are enough dictators and ultra rich people who don’t want to die, I imagine that some of this research is being done in secret.
> there are enough dictators and ultra rich people who don’t want to die
I mean, who does? That’s why people have invented a myriad coping mechanisms.
> I imagine that some of this research is being done in secret.
Maybe if that was an engineering problem... But we lack so much fundamental knowledge. It’s the same as saying someone is working on time travel device. Good movie plot, completely implausible.
>It is also probably just conceptually wrong to think that our bodies are just a side accessory, especially when it comes to understanding how much of our actual intelligence comes from being embodied. There's not a single study to show this, so calling it 'probably wrong' is just disingenuous. All the current results simply say 'sensory data impacts our cognition', which people who think that the brain encompasses t…
> The real test would be whether 'faking' body parts by sending mock sensory data would lead to the same result as having the real body part. How about a test that fakes that body part which receives sensory data and triggers a response? Perhaps it can lead to the same results as having a real brain! /s (Sorry, couldn't resist!) On a serious note, articles about how for example the gut affects our mental state (all t…
> How about a test that fakes that body part which receives sensory data and triggers a response? Perhaps it can lead to the same results as having a real brain! /s
You're joking, but this "fake brain" would be an AGI, and building an AGI has many active fields of research and development around it. Of course most of these fields don't care about perfectly replicating human brains and embodying such artificial minds, because it's just extra work, and building a mind without a body is already hard enough.
> The real test would be whether 'faking' body parts by sending mock sensory data would lead to the same result as having the real body part. How about a test that fakes that body part which receives sensory data and triggers a response? Perhaps it can lead to the same results as having a real brain! /s (Sorry, couldn't resist!) On a serious note, articles about how for example the gut affects our mental state (all t…
>On a serious note, articles about how for example the gut affects our mental state (all the way to links with autism) were posted to HN many times. Of course, but that's because our gut is directly connected to the brain. Hardcore embodiment people will tell you that you're literally thinking with your gut . It's not like I'm saying you could just swap bodies and it wouldn't have an effect, it absolutely would, my p…
In a sense, everything you do, read, see, hear, experience, changes your personality. Usually the changes are so small that they can be observed only as they accumulate over the years. Sometimes, there are big changes (usually surrounding traumas of various kind, physical and mental). But the truth is, personality is a dynamic, ever-evolving construct.
Ethical and moral considerations aside, this also has some interesting philsophical implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
It doesn't really raise any interesting philosophical questions though: so long as we're moving at least an intact brain from body to body, nothing dramatic has really happened (and all the small stuff applies up and down the stack - you go under aneasthesia, we put a new part in, you wake up and get all sorts of different signalling from this part which is not genetically yours.
Someone here asked about gut-brain axis. The truth is that we don’t have even surface-level understanding of what truly shapes consciousness. Maybe it’s the whole package that makes you - you.