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Welcome To Life

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Re: Welcome To Life

#181

Post by ericb »

sofal wrote: post #170
ericb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" bef…

Each running instance of me is a separate, alive, person. Forget about the memories for the moment. If you kill that person, they are dead. It doesn't matter who is the copy. I could be a clone for all I care. Doesn't matter. If you kill this body--the one I'm IN then my stream of thoughts ends. Other similar streams of thought offer me no comfort.

Re: Welcome To Life

#182

Post by nooneelse »

GreenNight wrote: post #160
nooneelse wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree that gradual replacement has the far better claim to preservation of identity. I would have hardly any desire to be uploaded any other way. However, the car of Theseus example allows for a worrisome wrinkle. What if you kept all the old parts during the process you describe, and then after, you re-assembled them? Which car has the superior claim to being identical with the old car? I think it obvious…

Not for me. For me that's a brand new old car. Yes, it has all the parts of the old car, and only those pieces, but it was assembled anew from zero. A more difficult dichotomy would be: what if we exchange parts between two cars until each one is the other one. That's hard to decide.

I find that first intuition odd. What if we alter to situation to not involve the new parts? Simply disassemble the old car parts and reassemble them, is that a brand new old-car?

Or how about we make all the new parts plastic so that no functioning "car" is produced by the gradual part-for-part substitution. We end up with two cars, one an all-plastic car model, and one consisting of all the old parts assembled and functioning. Which has the better claim to being the old car?

Yeah, part exchanges quickly leave me with even less salient intuitions about the proper use of old identity terms than these more "splitting" oriented cases. What should we say if a lion talked and all that.

Re: Welcome To Life

#183

Post by jlgreco »

olalonde wrote: post #159
jlgreco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I see no evidence whatsoever for a human being able to solve the halting problem. "recognizing" it is irrelevant and poorly defined.

Could you describe an algorithm that a human would fail to decide wether it will halt or not?

Show that a human can decide if an arbitrary program terminates. You are the one making an extraordinary claim (and make no mistake about it, the suggestion that humans can be used as oracle machines is an extraordinary claim.)

Simply assuming it is the case because you want it to be the case is not science, it is religion.

Re: Welcome To Life

#184

Post by baddox »

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.

For the digital copy to not notice the transition, there would probably have to be more going on—like a Matrix-esque simulation of the physical world or a realistic android to house the copy.

Re: Welcome To Life

#185

Post by olalonde »

jlgreco wrote: post #183
olalonde wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you describe an algorithm that a human would fail to decide wether it will halt or not?

Show that a human can decide if an arbitrary program terminates. You are the one making an extraordinary claim (and make no mistake about it, the suggestion that humans can be used as oracle machines is an extraordinary claim.) Simply assuming it is the case because you want it to be the case is not science, it is religion.

I'm just a bit skeptical since I have never encountered a program so far which I couldn't decide whether it would halt or not. You would completely convince me if you could describe such a program. Also, this is not an extraordinary claim. According to Wikipedia, it is an open question:

> It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a Turing machine, and in particular whether any such hypothetical process could usefully be harnessed in the form of a calculating machine (a hypercomputer) that could solve the halting problem for a Turing machine amongst other things. It is also an open question whether any such unknown physical processes are involved in the working of the human brain, and whether humans can solve the halting problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

Re: Welcome To Life

#186

Post by jlgreco »

olalonde wrote: post #185
jlgreco wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show that a human can decide if an arbitrary program terminates. You are the one making an extraordinary claim (and make no mistake about it, the suggestion that humans can be used as oracle machines is an extraordinary claim.) Simply assuming it is the case because you want it to be the case is not science, it is religion.

I'm just a bit skeptical since I have never encountered a program so far which I couldn't decide whether it would halt or not. You would completely convince me if you could describe such a program. Also, this is not an extraordinary claim. According to Wikipedia, it is an open question: > It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a T…

When you do that you are doing nothing more than applying heuristics, preforming limited simulation, looking for repeated states. All of these things are things that may be preformed by algorithmic computation. That we don't have IDEs already doing all of this for us is a reflection of nothing more than the current state of machine learning and the relative computational densities of today's electronic computers and the human brain.

Being able to solve the halting problem for programs generally seen in real life programming does not imply in the slightest that you can solve the halting problem for arbitrary programs. Can you look at arbitrary Turing machine tapes (large enough to eliminate the possibility that you are simulating it without realizing it of course) and non-algorithmically decide if they will terminate? Can you in fact do anything non-algorithmically? That is in essence what you are suggesting, the non-algorithmic nature of the human mind.

You are of course not the first to suggest a non-algorithmic mind. The likes of Roger Penrose have also suggested similar things (see his The Emperor's New Mind and later Shadows of the Mind). His reputation is enough to give me serious pause, and the fact that he does not seem to be a dualist further inclines me to listen to what he has to say.

If you want to delve further into this subject I suggest you check out Penrose's work, then read the criticism of it from his peers. Penrose has mounted the most qualified defence of the non-algorithmic mind of which I am aware, but even so acceptance of his thesis is rather rare in academia. It is not light subject matter but the general consensus among experts in the fields which he touches is that in order to support his thesis he made numerous errors. In absence of their expertise, I must defer to their assessment of Penrose's work.

Re: Welcome To Life

#187

Post by gojomo »

arethuza wrote: post #40
sodiumphosphate wrote: post #36

While it does make for some entertaining fiction, and may provide some benefits to the living, I do not believe that 'uploading' is a desirable experience. In fact, I don't believe that one can experience it at all. Imagine the procedure (for a conscious person): your brain is connected to a computer interface and a copy of your mind is taken. Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to…

Greg Egan's short story Closer has people implanted with a device, a "jewel", that learns to mimic the behaviour of their brain - to the point where people actually choose to switch from their biological brain controlling their body to their jewel.... http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&se...

Egan's story 'Learning to Be Me', available in the same collection as 'Closer' (Axiomatic), is also an exploration of this idea with relevance to sodiumphosphate's fear.

Re: Welcome To Life

#188

Post by bumbledraven »

olalonde wrote: post #185
jlgreco wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show that a human can decide if an arbitrary program terminates. You are the one making an extraordinary claim (and make no mistake about it, the suggestion that humans can be used as oracle machines is an extraordinary claim.) Simply assuming it is the case because you want it to be the case is not science, it is religion.

I'm just a bit skeptical since I have never encountered a program so far which I couldn't decide whether it would halt or not. You would completely convince me if you could describe such a program. Also, this is not an extraordinary claim. According to Wikipedia, it is an open question: > It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a T…

I have never encountered a program so far which I couldn't decide whether it would halt or not. You would completely convince me if you could describe such a program

Does this halt? Assume all variables are arbitrary precision integers.

/* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_number#Odd_perfect_numb... */

  void searchForOddPerfectNumber() {
    int n = 1, sumOfFactors, factor;

    while (1) {
      sumOfFactors = 0;
      for (factor = 1; factor
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