8 ms·

What a Digital Afterlife Might Be Like

44 points by diodorus 10y ago

rogerbinns 10y ago
Tom Scott did an excellent Welcome to the (After)life video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
grondilu 10y ago
The thing about the so-called "mind upload" is that it requires a particular view on concepts such as death and consciousness in order to consider that those who would undergo it would escape death in some sense, but ironically such view also implies a certain disregard towards death so that it becomes much less of a concern than it is for people who do not share this view.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
I don't think it will be a brain copying thing. I think we will have implants that connect us to a cyber body and a cyber neural network. We will come to rely on that part of our "brain" and we will spend part of our time in that body. As we age, we will spend more and more time attending to our cyber half. As it grows, our flesh half will atrophy. The brain cells will quiet, our muscles will grow weak. Eventually our heart will stop, long after we stopped using it for much. What is left will be purely digital, and to our friends it will seem like nothing has changed. But it won't be a clone. It will be more like a metamorphosis. The caterpillar gave way to the butterfly. It didn't die, but its body was used up and transformed into something else. I do wonder if it will feel like death. In that moment, when we draw our attention back to our last remaining brain cells, and our last remaining heart beats, will our cyborg half really feel like part of us, or will there still be a sense that the machine within us is Other? I suspect not. I suspect we will have long since spread our identity across the divide. But maybe that is a choice we will all have to make. Whether to see it as death or birth.
- grondilu 10y ago
  The underlying assumption behind the whole process is that artificial parts are capable of replicating whatever the brain and body do to produce a human consciousness in all its details, that is including all spectrum of emotions. Therefore yes, the cyborg part should be able to feel everything the fleshy part would, and the transition should be seemless.
- jrussino 10y ago
  If you haven't yet read it, I highly recommend Greg Egan's short story "Learning to Be Me" (http://will.tip.dhappy.org/revolution/Technoanarchist/plan/.../book/by/Greg%20Egan/Learning%20To%20Be%20Me/ http://will.tip.dhappy.org/revolution/Technoanarchist/plan/....), a story with a similar take on this topic.
  - zyxley 10y ago
    That's not really the same idea, though. The parent post is proposing more or less a ship-of-Theseus approach, while "Learning to Be Me" is more "make a new ship that's identical to the first one, then quietly destroy the first one and pretend the second one is a continuation of the first one".
danellis 10y ago
If you copy your brain digitally and let that run while you yourself die, there's no benefit to yourself. You still die. You don't get to experience longevity. What would live on is a copy of yourself that believes itself to be the same person as you were. Your yourself would have no continuity of thought. What would be needed is some way of merging yourself with a digital replica of your brain while you're still alive. I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like.
- derekp7 10y ago
  But doesn't that happen anyway through normal repairs that happen at the subcellular level? I have a feeling that I'm not really the same person as from years ago, I'm just some bloke who thinks he is.
- sparky_z 10y ago
  It would be as simple anesthetizing you, copying/uploading your brain, then euthanizing the body and "awakening" yourself in the computer. From your point of view, it would be no more discontinuous than waking up after surgery.
  - vkou 10y ago
    From the point of view of your body, it would be someone giving you anesthetic, and then killing you. The copy is in no way privileged. What about this experiment: 1. We copy your brain into a computer. 2. We turn the computer on. 3. We shoot you. Would you expect that when you get shot, you'll 'wake up' inside the computer? If so, by what mechanism? If not, how does this case differ from the first? Alternatively, what if we copy your consciousness into another sleeping organic brain, and wake up both of you. What makes the new copy, but not the old one 'you'?
    - kamaal 10y ago
      This is how I look at it. You go to sleep, some one take a snapshot of your brain 'as-is' and installs it into the electronic hardware. The hardware already runs a Matrix like software. You just wake up as you wake generally after sleep. You won't even notice you've lost your biological body. Or anything strange at all! Except for whatever you've asked for. If you've asked a private disney land for yourself, you might wake up there! At this time, your biological body is irrelevant.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
This idea of a soul that can actually be independent of the body is something that has been taught for millennia by various religions. It is interesting when science comes up with a previously religious idea. Actually, viewing the brain as hardware, and the self/soul as software running on the brain, makes sense of a lot of theology.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Not really. If destroying the body destroys the soul, it's not a soul, but a mind.
yarrel 10y ago
See William Gibson's "The Winter Market", which deals with these issues in a still-interesting way - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market
mklim 10y ago
Whedon's "Dollhouse" series was a pretty good take on this topic. The show opened with the premise that brains could be saved, generated, and overwritten digitally. The focus of the show was on a company that hired people to upload their consciousnesses to a drive, and then exist as "dolls" that had their minds written over with both synthesized and real consciousnesses and rented out to clients by the hour, as whoever the clients wanted them to be. Did a good job of exploring the broader implications of the tech from a relatively narrow application of it. Impressive acting from the main cast as well, each of the "dolls" had to demonstrate a huge range.
RockofStrength 10y ago
If a copy is allowed to live on, the ego will no longer fear oblivion, as nothing is lost in death.
structorg 10y ago
Bureaucracy wants to live forever as technocracy. And maybe the ones selling genetically modified food and intra-flesh GPS want to make it more acceptable.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Consciousness wants to live forever because it can't conceive of a world in which it doesn't exist - the thought is unthinkable and the idea is frightening. Brain uploading seems like a solution to that problem, until you realize there's no reason to assume that the uploaded copy once made is me any more, and any number of excellent reasons to assume it isn't.
  - netsharc 10y ago
    Jeron Lanier has an interesting essay. He started with MIDI files, they are digital representation of music, which is mostly good enough for our ears, but not identical to the real music. Even HD audio can only sample at some KHz, so it is still discrete and not analog. How will computer representations of the brain be the same as the human brain, and how will it differ?
  - mbfg 10y ago
    How do you know that you are not now, a simulation? In fact, once we have the technology to produce such a simulation, logically speaking, then, it is an overwhelming probability that we are a simulation, given that, you have at most one 'original' creature, and each subsequent creature can (eventually) create an artificial universe with artificial beings, for some definition of artificial. Thus you have (n-1)/n chances of being a simulation, which over time, as n-> infinity, means a certainty. Even our reasons for thinking we are 'real' are flimsy. We say we have our senses! We open our eyes and see a blue sky and green grass. We reach down and touch each individual blade of grass, surely not a simulation. But even that is bogus. There is no such thing as a blue sky, or green grass. That's all in your head. It's (at most) just different frequencies of energy. Same goes for this 'touching' bit. You don't touch anything, you just (again at most) have energy interactions. So get used to it, you likely are a simulation.
jxramos 10y ago
Wow, completely not what I thought. I thought it was going to be some commentary on something like a virtual memorial (http://virtual-memorials.com/ http://virtual-memorials.com/) or facebook accounts of the deceased keeping the memory of someone alive long since they past.
- kilroy123 10y ago
  I thought the same thing. I was very pleased though.
kilroy123 10y ago
Ok so if we can download our brains into some kind of system. Could we speed up time in there? What if we could live "one day" in a matter of milliseconds? I imagine a world where we have armies of dead scientists working on tough problems for us, in a simulation or fake world. They could have hundreds of years to figure out solutions. Then report back to use in the real world. All in the matter days. I could imagine some turmoil in this fake world though. Some would want to die or leave. Others wouldn't see the point in helping us in the real world. Fascinating idea.
cicero 10y ago
I think this interview with Ray Kurzweil[1] does a good job articulating this question. I know Kurzweil can get way out there, but in this case I think he makes sense. 1: https://youtu.be/v3f4pQOHKPA https://youtu.be/v3f4pQOHKPA

44 points by diodorus 10y ago

Tom Scott did an excellent Welcome to the (After)life video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

grondilu 10y ago

The thing about the so-called "mind upload" is that it requires a particular view on concepts such as death and consciousness in order to consider that those who would undergo it would escape death in some sense, but ironically such view also implies a certain disregard towards death so that it becomes much less of a concern than it is for people who do not share this view.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

I don't think it will be a brain copying thing. I think we will have implants that connect us to a cyber body and a cyber neural network. We will come to rely on that part of our "brain" and we will spend part of our time in that body. As we age, we will spend more and more time attending to our cyber half. As it grows, our flesh half will atrophy. The brain cells will quiet, our muscles will grow weak. Eventually our heart will stop, long after we stopped using it for much. What is left will be purely digital, and to our friends it will seem like nothing has changed. But it won't be a clone. It will be more like a metamorphosis. The caterpillar gave way to the butterfly. It didn't die, but its body was used up and transformed into something else. I do wonder if it will feel like death. In that moment, when we draw our attention back to our last remaining brain cells, and our last remaining heart beats, will our cyborg half really feel like part of us, or will there still be a sense that the machine within us is Other? I suspect not. I suspect we will have long since spread our identity across the divide. But maybe that is a choice we will all have to make. Whether to see it as death or birth.

grondilu 10y ago
The underlying assumption behind the whole process is that artificial parts are capable of replicating whatever the brain and body do to produce a human consciousness in all its details, that is including all spectrum of emotions. Therefore yes, the cyborg part should be able to feel everything the fleshy part would, and the transition should be seemless.
jrussino 10y ago
If you haven't yet read it, I highly recommend Greg Egan's short story "Learning to Be Me" (http://will.tip.dhappy.org/revolution/Technoanarchist/plan/.../book/by/Greg%20Egan/Learning%20To%20Be%20Me/ http://will.tip.dhappy.org/revolution/Technoanarchist/plan/....), a story with a similar take on this topic.
- zyxley 10y ago
  That's not really the same idea, though. The parent post is proposing more or less a ship-of-Theseus approach, while "Learning to Be Me" is more "make a new ship that's identical to the first one, then quietly destroy the first one and pretend the second one is a continuation of the first one".

danellis 10y ago

If you copy your brain digitally and let that run while you yourself die, there's no benefit to yourself. You still die. You don't get to experience longevity. What would live on is a copy of yourself that believes itself to be the same person as you were. Your yourself would have no continuity of thought. What would be needed is some way of merging yourself with a digital replica of your brain while you're still alive. I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like.

derekp7 10y ago
But doesn't that happen anyway through normal repairs that happen at the subcellular level? I have a feeling that I'm not really the same person as from years ago, I'm just some bloke who thinks he is.
sparky_z 10y ago
It would be as simple anesthetizing you, copying/uploading your brain, then euthanizing the body and "awakening" yourself in the computer. From your point of view, it would be no more discontinuous than waking up after surgery.
- vkou 10y ago
  From the point of view of your body, it would be someone giving you anesthetic, and then killing you. The copy is in no way privileged. What about this experiment: 1. We copy your brain into a computer. 2. We turn the computer on. 3. We shoot you. Would you expect that when you get shot, you'll 'wake up' inside the computer? If so, by what mechanism? If not, how does this case differ from the first? Alternatively, what if we copy your consciousness into another sleeping organic brain, and wake up both of you. What makes the new copy, but not the old one 'you'?
  - kamaal 10y ago
    This is how I look at it. You go to sleep, some one take a snapshot of your brain 'as-is' and installs it into the electronic hardware. The hardware already runs a Matrix like software. You just wake up as you wake generally after sleep. You won't even notice you've lost your biological body. Or anything strange at all! Except for whatever you've asked for. If you've asked a private disney land for yourself, you might wake up there! At this time, your biological body is irrelevant.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago

This idea of a soul that can actually be independent of the body is something that has been taught for millennia by various religions. It is interesting when science comes up with a previously religious idea. Actually, viewing the brain as hardware, and the self/soul as software running on the brain, makes sense of a lot of theology.

throwanem 10y ago
Not really. If destroying the body destroys the soul, it's not a soul, but a mind.

yarrel 10y ago

See William Gibson's "The Winter Market", which deals with these issues in a still-interesting way - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market

mklim 10y ago

Whedon's "Dollhouse" series was a pretty good take on this topic. The show opened with the premise that brains could be saved, generated, and overwritten digitally. The focus of the show was on a company that hired people to upload their consciousnesses to a drive, and then exist as "dolls" that had their minds written over with both synthesized and real consciousnesses and rented out to clients by the hour, as whoever the clients wanted them to be. Did a good job of exploring the broader implications of the tech from a relatively narrow application of it. Impressive acting from the main cast as well, each of the "dolls" had to demonstrate a huge range.

RockofStrength 10y ago

If a copy is allowed to live on, the ego will no longer fear oblivion, as nothing is lost in death.

structorg 10y ago

Bureaucracy wants to live forever as technocracy. And maybe the ones selling genetically modified food and intra-flesh GPS want to make it more acceptable.

throwanem 10y ago
Consciousness wants to live forever because it can't conceive of a world in which it doesn't exist - the thought is unthinkable and the idea is frightening. Brain uploading seems like a solution to that problem, until you realize there's no reason to assume that the uploaded copy once made is me any more, and any number of excellent reasons to assume it isn't.
- netsharc 10y ago
  Jeron Lanier has an interesting essay. He started with MIDI files, they are digital representation of music, which is mostly good enough for our ears, but not identical to the real music. Even HD audio can only sample at some KHz, so it is still discrete and not analog. How will computer representations of the brain be the same as the human brain, and how will it differ?
- mbfg 10y ago
  How do you know that you are not now, a simulation? In fact, once we have the technology to produce such a simulation, logically speaking, then, it is an overwhelming probability that we are a simulation, given that, you have at most one 'original' creature, and each subsequent creature can (eventually) create an artificial universe with artificial beings, for some definition of artificial. Thus you have (n-1)/n chances of being a simulation, which over time, as n-> infinity, means a certainty. Even our reasons for thinking we are 'real' are flimsy. We say we have our senses! We open our eyes and see a blue sky and green grass. We reach down and touch each individual blade of grass, surely not a simulation. But even that is bogus. There is no such thing as a blue sky, or green grass. That's all in your head. It's (at most) just different frequencies of energy. Same goes for this 'touching' bit. You don't touch anything, you just (again at most) have energy interactions. So get used to it, you likely are a simulation.

jxramos 10y ago

Wow, completely not what I thought. I thought it was going to be some commentary on something like a virtual memorial (http://virtual-memorials.com/ http://virtual-memorials.com/) or facebook accounts of the deceased keeping the memory of someone alive long since they past.

kilroy123 10y ago
I thought the same thing. I was very pleased though.

kilroy123 10y ago

Ok so if we can download our brains into some kind of system. Could we speed up time in there? What if we could live "one day" in a matter of milliseconds? I imagine a world where we have armies of dead scientists working on tough problems for us, in a simulation or fake world. They could have hundreds of years to figure out solutions. Then report back to use in the real world. All in the matter days. I could imagine some turmoil in this fake world though. Some would want to die or leave. Others wouldn't see the point in helping us in the real world. Fascinating idea.

cicero 10y ago

I think this interview with Ray Kurzweil[1] does a good job articulating this question. I know Kurzweil can get way out there, but in this case I think he makes sense. 1: https://youtu.be/v3f4pQOHKPA https://youtu.be/v3f4pQOHKPA