5 ms·

"Advanced artificial intelligence, they hope, will allow us to make exact copies of our minds that will live indefinitely in networked computer systems." I've

"Advanced artificial intelligence, they hope, will allow us to make exact copies of our minds that will live indefinitely in networked computer systems." I've never understood this mindset. If I asked you: "hey, here's proof that all the data that comprise your personality, memories, etc. have been copied to a computer, may I now give you a lethal injection?", why on earth would you say "yes"? It's not the particulars of what I'm experiencing (my memories, my personality, the sensations I call "my body" etc.) that are interesting to me; it's the sheer fact that I experience. I fear this will degenerate into an unproductive debate about what consciousness is or is not, so maybe it's better to just nod politely.

arebop 9y ago
The sensations you call your body change over time, until there's nothing but fatigue and pain left. If someone offered to let you resume consciousness on artificial hardware after your body had ceased to function, you might take them up on it. In fact, some of my eldest relatives are in high spirits but also looking forward to death, because they have religious convictions about a wonderful, energetic, pain-free afterlife.
- vkou 9y ago
  If I make a perfectly identical clone of you, and then shoot you dead, will you resume your consciousness in that clone? Why? Alternatively, if I shoot the clone, will the clone resume its consciousness in you? By what process?
  - arebop 9y ago
    I wasn't attempting to realize the top commenter's fear of > unproductive debate about what consciousness is or is not I'm just addressing the question of why you'd say yes: you might be ready to be put of your misery, and at that point, why would you say "no"? The resumption of "you" gets an afterlife, and nothing gets worse for the you that's about to die either way.
  - theothermkn 9y ago
    The strange places this leads arrive almost immediately. Are you the same person after you take a nap? Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and then reconstitute itself when "you" wake? What about from second to second, between moments of inattention? Are we relying on the "stability" of your constituent atoms? On some "arrangement" of them? On a particular locus of sensation (the goo in your brain pan)? What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone, leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you? This way lies madness. Possibly twice.
    - nwah1 9y ago
      Look into open individualism as one possible resolution.
    - henrikschroder 9y ago
      > Are you the same person after you take a nap? Yes. > Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and then reconstitute itself when "you" wake? Yes. > What about from second to second, between moments of inattention? Yes. > Are we relying on the "stability" of your constituent atoms? Yes. > On some "arrangement" of them? Yes. > On a particular locus of sensation (the goo in your brain pan)? Yes. > What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone, leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you? My father replaced the handle, and I replaced the blade, but it's still my grandfather's axe? Neither. You ripped my brain in half, I am dead.
  - szemet 9y ago
    If you wake up from deep sleep in the morning your consciousness from yesterday is resumed? What makes it the same consciousness as the yesterday one, if not all your memories, and past experiences? If my pure consciousness wakes up tomorrow in your body, with all your memories, will it be your consciousness then?
  - chr1 9y ago
    The question in this case is "what is a perfectly identical clone" and what is time. If the thing works like a computer, that is clone is truly identical, and time is just a counter, then there is nothing to resume the clone won't know that it was cloned, and the whole thing won't be much different from the normal passage of time, (except for seeing yourself killed won't be pleasant). But if there is something else that you can't clone, like quantum state being impossible to clone perfectly, or a soul, then the clone is not you but that's because the assumption of a `perfectly identical clone` is wrong
- monktastic1 9y ago
  "Resume your consciousness" does not apparently mean to me what it does to others -- hence the thought experiment I gave. Just because there's a computer out there churning out bits that match mine (for some acceptable definition), in what sense would my consciousness "resume" if you killed me? Whatever sense that is, it doesn't interest me in the slightest. If I proved to you that such a machine already exists for you somewhere, would you feel fine being put to death?
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    I like the Star Trek teleporter angle, because it shows us how we're susceptible to narrative explanations over actual explanations. The way the Star Trek teleporter works is that you step into it, and then you are dismantled, picked apart atom-by-atom. You cease to exist. You die. You are gone. But immediately afterwards, elsewhere, atoms-by-atoms are put together again, to form a thing that looks like you and talks like you and has your memories. To outside observers, there's no difference between the you that stepped into the teleporter, and the thing that stepped out of it on the other side. The narrative tricks us, first you're here, and then you're over there. Of course it's still you! But the reality of the thing doesn't in any way guarantee the transfer of an unbroken consciousness. And I'm quite attached to mine, thank you very much. I see the arguments downthread about how sleeping or going unconscious aren't guarantees of your unbroken consciousness, and the rabbit-hole of existential dread that entails. But come on. The fact that the matter that makes up me is pretty static, makes it pretty reasonable that my consciousness is unbroken after a nap. But anything that involves movement of my consciousness without also moving the matter that my consciousness emerges in, has to have some serious fucking rationale for me to believe that it will lead to an unbroken consciousness. And, of course, asking the philosophical zombie if it really is me in there, doesn't count.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > I see the arguments downthread about how sleeping or going unconscious aren't guarantees of your unbroken consciousness, and the rabbit-hole of existential dread that entails. It's not a matter of guarantees; “unbroken consciousness” is, itself, only a “narrative” for the experience of memory; insofar as it denotes anything that exists at all it is nothing but present consciousness plus memory, and any other explanation veers into the realm of magical metaphysics.
philipkglass 9y ago
A lot of what I fear about death isn't the end of my experiences but the fact that the things I was doing while alive will cease. I won't be able to earn a living to support my loved ones any more. I won't know if anyone will continue the lines of research that I consider interesting. I can't be sure that the investments I have will still be managed well. A "backup" of myself that retained my memories and abilities would solve these problems and others even though it wouldn't solve my personal existential dread over cessation-of-experience. (Though if someone did develop gradual replacement mind uploading I'd get to maintain continuity of experience too.)
- monktastic1 9y ago
  Thanks, that's an angle I hadn't considered before. (I still don't follow the argument about continuity of experience by gradual mind upload, but we can probably chalk that up to different intuitions about consciousness).
  - spditner 9y ago
    Maybe think of it less as a one-time transfer from one singular place to another, and more a redistribution of a workload whose larger outcome is consciousness. After a migration period, that consciousness would find it's not using the meat-resources anymore.
RealityVoid 9y ago
I just thought of a little thought experiment. Let's say you have the option to be revived after you die. Same body, just... you die and you come back. Pretty convenient, right? What if you have the same opton to be revived but you loose... one day, one month, one year of your memories. Still, pretty cool, right? You get to yet live. But what if your body gets completly destroyed and your consciousness gets placed in a completely different body? The end result is the same as the same other 2 cases. Why would you be bothered by the difference in process if the reseult is the same? I see two options - we either place too much emphasis on the continuuity of our body or the continuiti is actually an important aspect of living - maybe because of the power of natural habbit, nature doesn't usually reconstruct what it destroys.

arebop 9y ago

The sensations you call your body change over time, until there's nothing but fatigue and pain left. If someone offered to let you resume consciousness on artificial hardware after your body had ceased to function, you might take them up on it. In fact, some of my eldest relatives are in high spirits but also looking forward to death, because they have religious convictions about a wonderful, energetic, pain-free afterlife.

vkou 9y ago
If I make a perfectly identical clone of you, and then shoot you dead, will you resume your consciousness in that clone? Why? Alternatively, if I shoot the clone, will the clone resume its consciousness in you? By what process?
- arebop 9y ago
  I wasn't attempting to realize the top commenter's fear of > unproductive debate about what consciousness is or is not I'm just addressing the question of why you'd say yes: you might be ready to be put of your misery, and at that point, why would you say "no"? The resumption of "you" gets an afterlife, and nothing gets worse for the you that's about to die either way.
- theothermkn 9y ago
  The strange places this leads arrive almost immediately. Are you the same person after you take a nap? Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and then reconstitute itself when "you" wake? What about from second to second, between moments of inattention? Are we relying on the "stability" of your constituent atoms? On some "arrangement" of them? On a particular locus of sensation (the goo in your brain pan)? What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone, leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you? This way lies madness. Possibly twice.
  - nwah1 9y ago
    Look into open individualism as one possible resolution.
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    > Are you the same person after you take a nap? Yes. > Doesn't your consciousness basically dissolve and then reconstitute itself when "you" wake? Yes. > What about from second to second, between moments of inattention? Yes. > Are we relying on the "stability" of your constituent atoms? Yes. > On some "arrangement" of them? Yes. > On a particular locus of sensation (the goo in your brain pan)? Yes. > What if we "clone" you by copying every other atom into a "left" clone, leaving the original in the right, and doing the reverse on the alternating atoms? Which resulting "clone" is you? My father replaced the handle, and I replaced the blade, but it's still my grandfather's axe? Neither. You ripped my brain in half, I am dead.
- szemet 9y ago
  If you wake up from deep sleep in the morning your consciousness from yesterday is resumed? What makes it the same consciousness as the yesterday one, if not all your memories, and past experiences? If my pure consciousness wakes up tomorrow in your body, with all your memories, will it be your consciousness then?
- chr1 9y ago
  The question in this case is "what is a perfectly identical clone" and what is time. If the thing works like a computer, that is clone is truly identical, and time is just a counter, then there is nothing to resume the clone won't know that it was cloned, and the whole thing won't be much different from the normal passage of time, (except for seeing yourself killed won't be pleasant). But if there is something else that you can't clone, like quantum state being impossible to clone perfectly, or a soul, then the clone is not you but that's because the assumption of a `perfectly identical clone` is wrong
monktastic1 9y ago
"Resume your consciousness" does not apparently mean to me what it does to others -- hence the thought experiment I gave. Just because there's a computer out there churning out bits that match mine (for some acceptable definition), in what sense would my consciousness "resume" if you killed me? Whatever sense that is, it doesn't interest me in the slightest. If I proved to you that such a machine already exists for you somewhere, would you feel fine being put to death?
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  I like the Star Trek teleporter angle, because it shows us how we're susceptible to narrative explanations over actual explanations. The way the Star Trek teleporter works is that you step into it, and then you are dismantled, picked apart atom-by-atom. You cease to exist. You die. You are gone. But immediately afterwards, elsewhere, atoms-by-atoms are put together again, to form a thing that looks like you and talks like you and has your memories. To outside observers, there's no difference between the you that stepped into the teleporter, and the thing that stepped out of it on the other side. The narrative tricks us, first you're here, and then you're over there. Of course it's still you! But the reality of the thing doesn't in any way guarantee the transfer of an unbroken consciousness. And I'm quite attached to mine, thank you very much. I see the arguments downthread about how sleeping or going unconscious aren't guarantees of your unbroken consciousness, and the rabbit-hole of existential dread that entails. But come on. The fact that the matter that makes up me is pretty static, makes it pretty reasonable that my consciousness is unbroken after a nap. But anything that involves movement of my consciousness without also moving the matter that my consciousness emerges in, has to have some serious fucking rationale for me to believe that it will lead to an unbroken consciousness. And, of course, asking the philosophical zombie if it really is me in there, doesn't count.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I see the arguments downthread about how sleeping or going unconscious aren't guarantees of your unbroken consciousness, and the rabbit-hole of existential dread that entails. It's not a matter of guarantees; “unbroken consciousness” is, itself, only a “narrative” for the experience of memory; insofar as it denotes anything that exists at all it is nothing but present consciousness plus memory, and any other explanation veers into the realm of magical metaphysics.

philipkglass 9y ago

A lot of what I fear about death isn't the end of my experiences but the fact that the things I was doing while alive will cease. I won't be able to earn a living to support my loved ones any more. I won't know if anyone will continue the lines of research that I consider interesting. I can't be sure that the investments I have will still be managed well. A "backup" of myself that retained my memories and abilities would solve these problems and others even though it wouldn't solve my personal existential dread over cessation-of-experience. (Though if someone did develop gradual replacement mind uploading I'd get to maintain continuity of experience too.)

monktastic1 9y ago
Thanks, that's an angle I hadn't considered before. (I still don't follow the argument about continuity of experience by gradual mind upload, but we can probably chalk that up to different intuitions about consciousness).
- spditner 9y ago
  Maybe think of it less as a one-time transfer from one singular place to another, and more a redistribution of a workload whose larger outcome is consciousness. After a migration period, that consciousness would find it's not using the meat-resources anymore.

RealityVoid 9y ago

I just thought of a little thought experiment. Let's say you have the option to be revived after you die. Same body, just... you die and you come back. Pretty convenient, right? What if you have the same opton to be revived but you loose... one day, one month, one year of your memories. Still, pretty cool, right? You get to yet live. But what if your body gets completly destroyed and your consciousness gets placed in a completely different body? The end result is the same as the same other 2 cases. Why would you be bothered by the difference in process if the reseult is the same? I see two options - we either place too much emphasis on the continuuity of our body or the continuiti is actually an important aspect of living - maybe because of the power of natural habbit, nature doesn't usually reconstruct what it destroys.