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The author of the article is asking a bit of a different question than the the authors of the articles he cites. The cited are more about "what is consciousness
by noonespecial 10y ago
The author of the article is asking a bit of a different question than the the authors of the articles he cites. The cited are more about "what is consciousness" in the context of can a computer be. The author is asking "what am I" That's a little harder isn't it?
He's asking if he got copied instantly and sent to Mars which one of the copies would still be me? Well, they both would wouldn't they? Each having a continuous experience leading up to the point they were copies and stepped out of the machine.
The fun part is that, barring quantum hooey that the articles bring up, there seems to be no scientific reason to doubt the physical possibility of this eventually occurring. If you can get copied, and both copies are you, what happens to the underpinnings of most world religions? Delightfully subversive thought right there.
- didgeoridoo 10y ago"And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?" -- Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"
- noonespecial 10y agoLook at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"