4 ms·

Nice Arram, thanks. I was just thinking the other day about how nice it would be if more people spent time once in a while refining their thoughts into an essa

by jwecker 17y ago

Nice Arram, thanks. I was just thinking the other day about how nice it would be if more people spent time once in a while refining their thoughts into an essay rather than barfing up conjectures as blog posts. Interestingly, it may be that Heisenberg uncertainly requires that if you extract all of the information out of Riker in order to reform him, you must necessarily destroy the original Riker, saving you a bullet. (IANAP, _obviously_).

arram 17y ago
Agreed that you couldn't actually get a perfect copy (e.g. exchanging accuracy in momentum information for accuracy in position information), but it really doesn't matter. You change on a more dramatic scale when you go from a cold room to a warm room, or when you scrape your elbow, etc. Details at that scale are pretty irrelevant to you.
- abstractbill 17y ago
  Details at that scale are pretty irrelevant to you. Sorry, but [citation needed]. Penrose, for one, thinks details on that scale are the essence of you.
  - arram 17y ago
    You're talking about his quantum tubules theory of consciousness. Honestly, I think it's coming from the same emotional agenda that made Geocentrism and later Vitalism so popular. It's just the latest philosophical secret sauce. Besides, that's just trying to explain qualia. Pretty sure no one thinks memories are quantum phenomena.
    - abstractbill 17y ago
      Actually Penrose isn't so much interested in qualia as he is in things mathematicians can do, but which Turing machines cannot (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind - "Penrose is not interested in explaining phenomenal consciousness, qualia, generally regarded as the most mysterious feature of consciousness, but instead focuses mainly on the cognitive powers of mathematicians").
      - jplewicke 17y ago
        If I have closed timelike curves, an oracle for the halting problem, or the ability to perform arbitrary computations on real numbers in my brain, I would certainly like to know how to use them.
- jwecker 17y ago
  Actually I think it moves away from philosophy at this point and becomes a question of practicality- at what point in a detailed copy is it "close enough to be you"? As humans (and with the rest of life) we're in that weird state between being totally static (like a frozen crystal) and being completely chaotic (like the center of the sun) - at the "edge of chaos" so to speak. Life is in that border-land where it's just stable enough and yet just chaotic enough. So when the temperature of the room changes there are atoms and systems that adjust within us in order that certain critical atomic structures stay in-tact. It's like a controlled slide into chaos- chunks being stable enough for just long enough to create other small islands of somewhat-stability. If it turns out that the thing critical to our being is deep within our neurons, and that the computations that take place are similar to quantum computing and rely on sub-atomic processes, and that the rest of the body (among other things) keeps its environment stable enough to "keep state," then the machine needed to copy the mind would end up destroying the original. Or, if it doesn't read atomic information at that level of detail, the "copy" will have a similar infrastructure but will instantly be divergent from the original because the "current" thoughts of the original will not have copied. I mean, putting aside philosophy and actually getting down to the brass tacks so we can start building this machine. (:

by jwecker 17y ago

arram 17y ago

Agreed that you couldn't actually get a perfect copy (e.g. exchanging accuracy in momentum information for accuracy in position information), but it really doesn't matter. You change on a more dramatic scale when you go from a cold room to a warm room, or when you scrape your elbow, etc. Details at that scale are pretty irrelevant to you.

abstractbill 17y ago
Details at that scale are pretty irrelevant to you. Sorry, but [citation needed]. Penrose, for one, thinks details on that scale are the essence of you.
- arram 17y ago
  You're talking about his quantum tubules theory of consciousness. Honestly, I think it's coming from the same emotional agenda that made Geocentrism and later Vitalism so popular. It's just the latest philosophical secret sauce. Besides, that's just trying to explain qualia. Pretty sure no one thinks memories are quantum phenomena.
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    Actually Penrose isn't so much interested in qualia as he is in things mathematicians can do, but which Turing machines cannot (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind - "Penrose is not interested in explaining phenomenal consciousness, qualia, generally regarded as the most mysterious feature of consciousness, but instead focuses mainly on the cognitive powers of mathematicians").
    - jplewicke 17y ago
      If I have closed timelike curves, an oracle for the halting problem, or the ability to perform arbitrary computations on real numbers in my brain, I would certainly like to know how to use them.
jwecker 17y ago
Actually I think it moves away from philosophy at this point and becomes a question of practicality- at what point in a detailed copy is it "close enough to be you"? As humans (and with the rest of life) we're in that weird state between being totally static (like a frozen crystal) and being completely chaotic (like the center of the sun) - at the "edge of chaos" so to speak. Life is in that border-land where it's just stable enough and yet just chaotic enough. So when the temperature of the room changes there are atoms and systems that adjust within us in order that certain critical atomic structures stay in-tact. It's like a controlled slide into chaos- chunks being stable enough for just long enough to create other small islands of somewhat-stability. If it turns out that the thing critical to our being is deep within our neurons, and that the computations that take place are similar to quantum computing and rely on sub-atomic processes, and that the rest of the body (among other things) keeps its environment stable enough to "keep state," then the machine needed to copy the mind would end up destroying the original. Or, if it doesn't read atomic information at that level of detail, the "copy" will have a similar infrastructure but will instantly be divergent from the original because the "current" thoughts of the original will not have copied. I mean, putting aside philosophy and actually getting down to the brass tacks so we can start building this machine. (: