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Assuming it is possible (which I don't think), would you really want to be a disembodied computer program? (Being in a robot doesn't count, since you'd merely

by prewett 10y ago

Assuming it is possible (which I don't think), would you really want to be a disembodied computer program? (Being in a robot doesn't count, since you'd merely be exchanging one body for another.) [The following is intended philosophically, not religiously] There is an old, I believe Jewish, tradition that demons are spirits without a body. Their whole goal is to regain a body (hence demonic possession). In one interpretation of Mark 5, when Jesus tells the demons to leave the Gerasene man, they ask for permission to go into the pigs nearby. [1] I guess a pig body is better than none (but it doesn't work, the pigs rush off the cliff and drown, leaving the demons bodyless again). I've thought about that interpretation over the years as a philosophical exercise. If you are only spirit and no body, then maybe you cannot interact with the world. That would be a bummer... You'd be stuck trying to get spirits with bodies to use them for you. So if you are a disembodied computer program, how would you see? How would you communicate? How would you repair yourself? How would you influence world events? You'd be stuck experiencing things vicariously, by snooping on Google images and people's FB accounts and reading their emails, and hacking their computers/Google glass/VR/cars/robots. If you couldn't find someone to do your bidding willingly, you would have to start manipulating people to get them to do what you want. You manipulate people through fear and through temptation. All this is starting to sound rather demonic. You'd end up as a digital demon... [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+5&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+5&version=...

drinkjuice 10y ago
For me the whole "uploading people into computers" and other immortality pipe dreams are really just playing for time. Even if it was possible and desirable, which I have my doubts about, that's not how it will play out. That's the carrot, not the road, and I think the destination will be more tiled and dimly lit rather than a sunny meadow where we all dance and create in. It's like saying you have to burn everything to start building... but burning really everything, including the will and the means to build. If we threw the Earth into the sun, and the sun managed to dissolve all of us and all we have made, would that mean we ascended, that a molten sea is a higher stage of evolution because it "won"? Of course not. We're like a magician who makes himself disappear.. okay fine, neat trick, now what? If there was anyone to applaud, we wouldn't hear it anyway. Am I too cynical? But I'm biting my tongue! Though I don't really mean the body, I think that's kind of orthogonal. Someone can be paralyzed from their neck down and still think straight, while others walk about, go to the gym regularly, and still don't see the woods for all the trees. What really strikes me is that reading intelligent people had more interesting things to say about automation decades and if you squint hard maybe even centuries ago, than we have today. We are at the court of the king exchanging platitudes so to speak, not in the halls of scholars describing that king freely and in depth.
mulmen 10y ago
Interesting take that I had not considered. I was not familiar with the story from Mark. I have thought about this topic as well but from a completely different direction. My question about uploading consciousness is in the transition point. As I sit here in front of my computer could I click a button and upload my memories and consciousness to a computer? Would they for some reason leave my body at the same time? Would it be instantly fatal? Why? Wouldn't I really just be forking my consciousness? One version of me would continue forward inside a computer with the memory of the transition and the corporeal me would continue wondering if it even worked. The corporeal me would still die at some point but I could die with the satisfaction(?) that I created a copy of myself at some point in time. I'm not sure that's much different than writing a book and having children.
- pluma 10y ago
  There's no reason to believe anything happens with your consciousness if you "upload" it to a computer. There's no reason to believe we'll find a way to transfer the consciousness rather than make a copy of it (or something that is indistinguishable from it to an outside observer). When you upload your consciousness, you're left behind to die. When you use a transporter, the transporter kills you. Your consciousness ends with your body. Lt Barclay in Star Trek was right to be afraid of the cloning death machines. The question, I guess is, whether the knowledge that an exact replica of yourself will live on for eternity is good enough for you. Or whether you're religious enough to forego our understanding of the physical world and believe in the existence of a non-physical "soul" that will automatically attach itself to the copy when the host is destroyed (though this creates all kinds of questions if the host isn't instantly destroyed during the process of the "upload").
ianmcgowan 10y ago
How does my brain (me!) see, communicate or experience things? Through sense organs; and there's no reason if I could somehow upload my consciousness into a computer that it couldn't do those things too. I tend to agree that the upload part might be a bit tricky, but if you could port my mind (or spirit) out of my flesh computer into another form, then I don't see why it couldn't interact with the world. http://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html http://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html is a great read on the concept. We probably don't agree that mind is a program running in the brain, and is equivalent to spirit. But it's always fun to debate ;-)

by prewett 10y ago

drinkjuice 10y ago

For me the whole "uploading people into computers" and other immortality pipe dreams are really just playing for time. Even if it was possible and desirable, which I have my doubts about, that's not how it will play out. That's the carrot, not the road, and I think the destination will be more tiled and dimly lit rather than a sunny meadow where we all dance and create in. It's like saying you have to burn everything to start building... but burning really everything, including the will and the means to build. If we threw the Earth into the sun, and the sun managed to dissolve all of us and all we have made, would that mean we ascended, that a molten sea is a higher stage of evolution because it "won"? Of course not. We're like a magician who makes himself disappear.. okay fine, neat trick, now what? If there was anyone to applaud, we wouldn't hear it anyway. Am I too cynical? But I'm biting my tongue! Though I don't really mean the body, I think that's kind of orthogonal. Someone can be paralyzed from their neck down and still think straight, while others walk about, go to the gym regularly, and still don't see the woods for all the trees. What really strikes me is that reading intelligent people had more interesting things to say about automation decades and if you squint hard maybe even centuries ago, than we have today. We are at the court of the king exchanging platitudes so to speak, not in the halls of scholars describing that king freely and in depth.

mulmen 10y ago

Interesting take that I had not considered. I was not familiar with the story from Mark. I have thought about this topic as well but from a completely different direction. My question about uploading consciousness is in the transition point. As I sit here in front of my computer could I click a button and upload my memories and consciousness to a computer? Would they for some reason leave my body at the same time? Would it be instantly fatal? Why? Wouldn't I really just be forking my consciousness? One version of me would continue forward inside a computer with the memory of the transition and the corporeal me would continue wondering if it even worked. The corporeal me would still die at some point but I could die with the satisfaction(?) that I created a copy of myself at some point in time. I'm not sure that's much different than writing a book and having children.

pluma 10y ago
There's no reason to believe anything happens with your consciousness if you "upload" it to a computer. There's no reason to believe we'll find a way to transfer the consciousness rather than make a copy of it (or something that is indistinguishable from it to an outside observer). When you upload your consciousness, you're left behind to die. When you use a transporter, the transporter kills you. Your consciousness ends with your body. Lt Barclay in Star Trek was right to be afraid of the cloning death machines. The question, I guess is, whether the knowledge that an exact replica of yourself will live on for eternity is good enough for you. Or whether you're religious enough to forego our understanding of the physical world and believe in the existence of a non-physical "soul" that will automatically attach itself to the copy when the host is destroyed (though this creates all kinds of questions if the host isn't instantly destroyed during the process of the "upload").

ianmcgowan 10y ago

How does my brain (me!) see, communicate or experience things? Through sense organs; and there's no reason if I could somehow upload my consciousness into a computer that it couldn't do those things too. I tend to agree that the upload part might be a bit tricky, but if you could port my mind (or spirit) out of my flesh computer into another form, then I don't see why it couldn't interact with the world. http://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html http://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html is a great read on the concept. We probably don't agree that mind is a program running in the brain, and is equivalent to spirit. But it's always fun to debate ;-)