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Here's a thought experiment for all Singularitarians. If a modern-day Music Man appeared in your town with virtual everlasting life in a box, and all the mirac
by tboyd47 10y ago
Here's a thought experiment for all Singularitarians.
If a modern-day Music Man appeared in your town with virtual everlasting life in a box, and all the miraculous brain-uploading equipment attached, then started selling tickets and "uploading" your neighbors... how would you be able to tell whether he's actually migrating their consciousnesses, or just using a deep network to train simulations of their minds inside the virtual world while concurrently euthanizing them?
- mattnewton 10y agoNot a singularitarian myself but personally, I don't care as long as the simulation is sufficiently good (waves hands vigorously). Though I would prefer in the case of a duplicate that I wasn't euthanized.
- vkou 10y agoWhat does it matter to you that a copy of you is uploaded, but you are left to wither away in meatspace? That's nice for the copy, I guess, but how will it benefit you?
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoI think you could at least make the argument your copy has a similar sort of relationship to you that a child does, so you might reasonably be a little more invested in its happiness than some other random AI (not that I am optimistic about the prospects for uploading consciousness).
- grondilu 10y agoIt matters because the original and the copy belong to the same reference class[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sampling_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sampling_assumption
- mattnewton 10y agoSimilar to how I want people to remember me, and how I would like children of mine to live on and prosper. We are all, on some level, replicating machines who want to organize the world for more of ourselves. Edit: Even our bodies are completely renewed over time, and any sense of self similarity that relies on the particular arrangement of matter seems fraught with problems to me.
- azeirah 10y agoPhilosophical zombie problem.
- jandrese 10y agoWhy would you need to kill the original person in the first place? Couldn't there just be a copy of me running around in their fancy version of the Sims? Also, what is the difference between a simulation of a conscious person vs. actual consciousness?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- grondilu 10y ago> he's actually migrating their consciousnesses, What exactly do you mean by that?
- JBReefer 10y agoIsn't that top 5 greatest questions? I don't think anyone has an answer - I'd say for the purpose of the exercise, you have to just suspend disbelief.