3 ms·

The "physical you" changes too. Your cells are constantly being replaced resulting in a "whole new physical you" roughly every year. [0] "You" must be a state.

by c22 7y ago

The "physical you" changes too. Your cells are constantly being replaced resulting in a "whole new physical you" roughly every year. [0] "You" must be a state. If carried to a complex enough substrate my state may continue while the old substrate dies. What concern to me is the nature of this substrate so long as it adequately exists to run my state machine? It is true that the substrate holding my state may have its operations sabotaged to update my state in strange non-standard ways, but this appears also to be the situation now, in the physical realm. There are untold conditions I can apply to my body and brain that would have marked affect on the unfolding state of my mind. The concept of multiple mes is confusing, as would be the potential to merge mes and access memories of my own "death(s)". Techniques for confirming consciousness in others are largely non-existent. These are deep and still open questions that cannot be so easily dismissed with a claim that all that's artificial must be artifice. [0] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-atoms-in-your-body-to-be-replaced-by-others https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-...

pushpop 7y ago
That’s pretty much what the GP said as well and platitudes about how we are constantly changing are fine but change isn’t the same as copy and destroy; which is what the upload process would be. That distinction is critically important. You can change an original and it will still be the original. But taking a copy and making that your primary copy means destroying the original. Which is fine if you’re talking purely about dumb digital bits like we normally do. However when those bits become self-aware programs executing, destroying the original is a literal death sentence. I guess a prolonged “merger” with the internet where the artificial mediums were used, at first, as an external processing unit. Then gradually you switch over. I guess that might solve the problem of “switching off” the original. However that’s not how the process is typically described.

by c22 7y ago

pushpop 7y ago

That’s pretty much what the GP said as well and platitudes about how we are constantly changing are fine but change isn’t the same as copy and destroy; which is what the upload process would be. That distinction is critically important. You can change an original and it will still be the original. But taking a copy and making that your primary copy means destroying the original. Which is fine if you’re talking purely about dumb digital bits like we normally do. However when those bits become self-aware programs executing, destroying the original is a literal death sentence. I guess a prolonged “merger” with the internet where the artificial mediums were used, at first, as an external processing unit. Then gradually you switch over. I guess that might solve the problem of “switching off” the original. However that’s not how the process is typically described.