This is cool. And terrifying.
Welcome To Life
81–90 of 188 posts
Re: Welcome To Life
#82Hmm, if this was possible, I'd rather rig up an autonomous backup machine that I would periodically backup to and which would start automatically if I miss a scheduled backup (which would mean I'm dead). It would be like using hosted vs self-hosted, buying CTO or pre-built computers.
Re: Welcome To Life
#83While 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…
"Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it"
I take it you would find it very hard to meet your copy, then? If for some reason your copy goes live and you don't die, I bet you two would get into a fight :-).
As it is now, if I'm alive and I meet my exact copy, he'd agree to die ("just do it quickly") until I really die.
And then the copy would become me - it's that simple. Maybe later it'd be possible to download myself into a body again, in which case I would retain all the knowledge that I acquired inside the virtual world.
Re: Welcome To Life
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, I think of it more as a thought experiment than an engineering proposal.
It hinges not on engineering (the mechanism for inserting an artificial cell and it communicating with an external computer) but whether consciousness is computable in a Turing machine. The new "you" might be deterministic.
I am very confident that humans do not represent nor contain a model of computation greater than Turing Machines.
Re: Welcome To Life
#85While 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…
I agree that human metamorphosis is extremely interesting, but this line I really don't get: > Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made. I don't understand how you can put out a statement like that, like it's taken for granted or something. It's far from granted, and I've never heard of something remotely approaching a proof for thi…
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 simulation, the 'patient' will not have this experience. The patient will still have to experience death.
Going further, let's imagine that we want it really, really badly. Let's destroy each neuron immediately after taking it's state and pushing it into the stream, so that the whole process of uploading and death are completely synchronized and nothing of the patient's consciousness remains afterward.
I'm sorry, but I still do not think that the patient will experience being uploaded into a computer. It will only experience having it's brain fried until death. For the clone, the memory might just be glorious, like some Hollywood special effect sequence, but personally I find this wholly unsatisfying.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, either. I'm only saying that I suspect some people may have the wrong perspective about it. If you sign up for this procedure, you are not signing up for immortality, but merely to donate a copy of your memories to whomever is running the simulation.
You would be like an organ donor, but instead of saving a life, you'd be feeding your mind to the new Zombie Second Life.
It would not benefit you, but it might benefit someone else.
As for me, I'm a selfish, arrogant bastard with a desire for physical immortality and superhuman capabilities.
Re: Welcome To Life
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It hinges not on engineering (the mechanism for inserting an artificial cell and it communicating with an external computer) but whether consciousness is computable in a Turing machine. The new "you" might be deterministic.
I am very confident that humans do not represent nor contain a model of computation greater than Turing Machines.
Can a human solve the Halting Problem (without necessarily being able to express that solution as a program)? Does even recognizing the Halting Problem take us out of what is computable?
Re: Welcome To Life
#87While 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…
> Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to die. You get to do both. The concept of "you" changes once there is a copy, see the Ship of Theseus [1]. Each post-you entity has a legitimate claim to being pre-you. The copy woke up that morning, ate your breakfeast, went to the uploading clinic, and went to sleep as a digital being. The copy has perfect continuity. The biological you on t…
I think that the experience of continuity is what makes these things entirely different.
It is the experience of continuity that satisfies my hard-wired desire for self-preservation.
Re: Welcome To Life
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am very confident that humans do not represent nor contain a model of computation greater than Turing Machines.
Can a human solve the Halting Problem (without necessarily being able to express that solution as a program)? Does even recognizing the Halting Problem take us out of what is computable?
No, I see no evidence whatsoever for a human being able to solve the halting problem.
"recognizing" it is irrelevant and poorly defined.
Re: Welcome To Life
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
"No man ever steps in the same river twice" Replacement with the subtly different is interpreted by our minds as "change". You no more "die" when the cells or atoms in your brain are replaced than a river dries up when all the water molecules you could see at one point in time flow away.
Exactly. "You no more "die" when the cells or atoms in your brain are replaced than a river dries up when all the water molecules you could see at one point in time flow away." when we find a way to measure this little death relative to the bigger more permanent one we can make interesting arguments. My advice, assume the transporter/uploading-machine will kill you. You will use it anyway for the same reason you use…
If you want to define change to be a type of death, go ahead. As far as I can tell your position is philosophically sound though I disagree that it is makes for interesting discussion.
Re: Welcome To Life
#90Brilliant!