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Welcome To Life

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Re: Welcome To Life

#161

Post by nova »

koide wrote: post #157
nova wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensation of identity is part of your memories and goes with them when copied.

Yes, but it will create a new sensation of identity on the copy, which would be equal but separate to yours. That's the gist of the point. See my other answers around this subthread.

I only object to the privileging of "your" consciousnes. I don't know how to express it. Yes, of course when the copy is made each person-thread evolves on its own. My point is that you can't distinguish one being "the original" and the other "the copy".

Just imagine that, in the normal course of things, a person at time t is constantly being copied into a slightly different new person at t+dt and then destroyed. There is a causal connection and thus an inheritance of memories, but not single "essence about yourself" being conserved.

With current technology we only have a directed linear graph, like o -> o -> o -> ... . With uploading tech this graph will fork into two paths, but neither of them can claim to be "the original", because there is no such thing.

I mean, maybe this concept of "personal identity" is simply wrong. It's an illusion because currently threads of causality on people are linear, but that's just a technological limitation.

Re: Welcome To Life

#162

Post by pbw »

koide wrote: post #134
pbw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep and anesthesia break continuity, as has be reported elsewhere in this thread, so self is not about moment to moment continuity. The reason your copy is equally you vs. Warren Buffet is that your copy shared every molecule in your body and every thought in your head for your entire life up until the moment of splitting off.

Let's imagine you run the simulation when you are still alive. Are both copies you? Wouldn't each copy believe it's a full consciousness and not half a consciousness? Assume you do a regular (or even automatic and continuous) sync between the copies. Which copy would you prefer survived, if one of them were to die?

Both copies would claim to be you, and would have equal right to that claim. Yet each copy would be a fully conscious person and would immediately diverge into its own individual from the shared point on.

This of course sounds like a contradiction, both are you and both are individuals? That's because our language and concepts just don't have the muscle for this situation. "Both are you" is short-hand since the wold "you" becomes ill-defined or at least radically transformed. Consider Hofstadter's "twin world" concept from his "I am a Strange Loop" for how a single "individual" could really be made up of multiple individuals.

From an objective point of a view it's much better if the digital version survives, because we're assuming the biological original has a shorter life span.

Re: Welcome To Life

#163

Post by Lockyy »

feral wrote: post #92
sodiumphosphate wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted that consciousness is not fully understood, can we not agree that it is entirely manifest in the brain? I mean, you don't believe that human consciousness somehow survives the body after brain death, do you? Even if the cloned memories could be streamed from your brain into a running simulation, allowing a memory of crossing the threshold from the physical world to the digital one to be created in the simulat…

I'm not sure. Your body changes all the time. Your mind is always running on different hardware than it was just a few moments before. The changes are just small at each step. >I'm sorry, but I still do not think that the patient will experience being uploaded into a computer. If the copy/delete process was (perceptually, hence effectively) instantaneous, what is the difference? Lets say your biological body was goin…

It's he same problem as teleportation (star trek teleportation specifically)

They scan you, break you down, then transmit and create a new you. Now if you re-order this a little. Scan, transmit, create and then break down the original. There are two of you, then the original is killed. This shows that during the original process the first is scanned and killed, then a new person created. This is exactly how mind uploading would work in terms of continuity for the person being uploaded. (It's also why I would never ever use a teleporter.)

This is exactly what mind uploading is, they scan you and upload you. Creating a new you. Then you die and the other you lives on. This is very clearly shown if you scanned and activated the copy before the first person died. Are you trying to imply that you would suddenly, as a single entity, be experiencing two perspectives at once? Because that just wouldn't be possible.

It is technically immortality for your memories, but not the specific physical instance of you.

Re: Welcome To Life

#164

Post by ericb »

sofal wrote: post #140
ericb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is great for the copy, but not helpful for me. Death of my consciousness can't inflict a new identity on the copy. The copy is a copy--he's awesome, just like me, but not me because I am dead.

What if you wake up as the copy? Are you going to be depressed that you're not you?

It wouldn't be me that woke up as a copy. It would be a copy that feels just like me. However, since he would have my intellect, he would reason that he is not the original, and if it had died, he would feel sad. On the other hand, he might be excited if he were in a machine body as that fate might not befall him for a very, very long time.

Re: Welcome To Life

#165

Post by Lockyy »

batista wrote: post #151
ingenium wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to sleep does not cause the brain to actually power off. It's still running, your consciousness is just different. You still wake up from loud noises and light, and external stimuli can still influence your dreams.

>Going to sleep does not cause the brain to actually power off. It's still running, your consciousness is just different. You still wake up from loud noises and light, and external stimuli can still influence your dreams. Anesthesia, then, or fainting. You cannot wake up from loud noises, and you have no consciousness. One can also image a transfer process that is just like what naturally happens with regular body ce…

That is what the person above describes when they say they want to be injected with nano-bots to be converted. And that would, I believe, give a seamless transition with no break in the stream of consciousness.

However this is completely different from the concept of mind uploading where your brain is scanned and simulated separately.

Re: Welcome To Life

#166

Post by beernutz »

I like the idea i read somewhere about "Spinning off" versions of "you" to go do/learn something, then re-integrating that version of you back into yourself! I still agree with sodiumphosphate however, in that i prefer immortality and dodging the "end" of this mind. I MUCH prefer the idea that nanites can make us better, rather than "uploading" ourselves totally.

This is also why i don't like the idea of a Star Trek style transporter. At what point do you stop being you? I'd much rather stay alive and in one piece thank you. 8)

Re: Welcome To Life

#167

Post by spupy »

sofal wrote: post #138
nsxwolf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know that if you made a bunch of copies of me right now, I wouldn't expect to walk around seeing a superimposed image of my original self in Chicago, a copy walking around in New York, etc. I'd be totally disconnected from my copies, and that is reasonable proof to me that I should not expect to ever have a continuity of experience through a backup copy after my own death.

Are you making the unlikely assumption that you would actually be the original? More likely you'd black out during the brain scan and wake up as one of the copies. You have no good reason to simply assume that you are going to be the original process right after making that fork() call. How might your thoughts about this process change if you woke up as a copy?

If a scientist asks you, "Was the upload successful?", you (the original) will answer "No". The copy you will answer "Yes". That's my view, at least. Same answers for teleportation Star Trek style.

Re: Welcome To Life

#168

Post by spupy »

koide wrote: post #132
baddox wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that human consciousness is entirely manifest in the brain (and, of course, it's effected by other nerves elsewhere in the body). But moreover, I believe that brain is performing "normal computation," by which I mean Turing complete computation. Because of that, there is no real reason why the same computation responsible for human consciousness couldn't run equivalently on other Turing complete hardware.

I could imagine how a suficiently advanced machine could simulate one or more consciousnesses. What I can't imagine is how you, the person sitting in front of the computer will somehow wake up in the computer. I can only see copies waking up. Even if you are dead. For the people who love you, having a copy would be great, but you will still be dead.

I can't believe I'm bringing this up, but the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "The 6th Day" really matches my views on the subject, and also matches your views.

(Obvious spoilers for the movie)

In the movie Arnold is cloned, wakes up later, and goes about to find out what's going on. At one point he finds out HE is the clone! Back to our discussion. From the point of view of the Copy, the procedure was successful - the consciousnesses was transferred to the machine and the copy continues existence. From his POV he does wake up in the computer after the procedur. For you, though, it's a copy that wakes up. Perhaps your brain is destroyed during the upload process and you stop to exist. For the copy you (that is, him) continue to exist and avoid brain death. If a scientist asks you, "Was the upload successful?", you (the original) will answer "No". The copy you will answer "Yes".

Re: Welcome To Life

#169

Post by maxerickson »

koide wrote: post #131
zmj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one is the original? Both have the same memories; I think they both have a good claim to that identity.

The claim to the identity is not the issue, the issue is that the person who got copied will die and experience that death. The existence of a copy does not make the original person to resucitate or otherwise keep perceiving and thinking. To express it in a bad analogy: you can have a bit by bit backup copy of a harddrive, but when a power surge burns the CPU and the disk, you have to throw both away. You can buy a n…

If consciousness is a very simple emergent phenomenon, is the distinction between one instance and the other still interesting?

Re: Welcome To Life

#170

Post by sofal »

ericb wrote: post #164
sofal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you wake up as the copy? Are you going to be depressed that you're not you?

It wouldn't be me that woke up as a copy. It would be a copy that feels just like me. However, since he would have my intellect, he would reason that he is not the original, and if it had died, he would feel sad. On the other hand, he might be excited if he were in a machine body as that fate might not befall him for a very, very long time.

It wouldn't be me that woke up as a copy.

Here is where you're wrong. You presuppose the "he" and "I" when they are perfectly interchangeable right up until the cloning process. You can't presume that because you're the original now that you will be after the cloning process, because that has a 50% chance of being wrong. Right now, you and the clone are one and the same. Any reasoning you do about "me versus him" before the cloning is shortsighted. You have to reason like this: "If I wake up as the clone, then X. If not, then Y." It's like calling fork() in your code and then writing the code after that to presuppose that you're the parent process without even checking the return code. You don't know that you're the original after the cloning unless you see evidence that you are.

Think of it this way: let's say instead of a brain copy it is a full body copy. You walk into a dark room where you can't see anything. They knock you unconscious, and then you wake up lying next to what appears to be you. How do you know if you're the original? Because you were the original before? Sorry, but no.

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