7 ms·

I remain unconvinced that a transplanted consciousness would really be the same person as opposed to a new, identical person. What's worse, it might be impossib

by rue 16y ago

I remain unconvinced that a transplanted consciousness would really be the same person as opposed to a new, identical person. What's worse, it might be impossible to tell the difference since even the new consciousness wouldn't be able to know. … But it'd really suck to be the last generation before some significant increase in lifespan (say, up to 200) is reached.

arethuza 16y ago
Greg Egan's Permuation City has an interesting examination of what might happen to "copies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
- matthiaswh 16y ago
  On the same note, the Asgard race of aliens from Stargate SG-1 were also copies. Later episodes in the series address the same sort of scenario.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  And his short story "Learning to be me" (I think that's the one) present a slightly more horrifying take on it.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  I found David Brin's novel Kiln People to be an fun enough read and an interesting take on thoughts related to human consciousness copying. He uses an entirely different technical mechanism to get the copying, thus allowing a different angle in the thinking.
- mchouza 16y ago
  An interesting animation about this topic by John Weldon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
ugh 16y ago
That question always gets me. I tend to think that it doesn’t matter but I’m really not sure. It seems to me that for consciousness to be not permanent, additional systems or mechanisms are required. There would need to be some sort of external thing (external meaning something that is not scanned) which keeps track of our consciousness. How else would non-continuous consciousness work?
arethuza 16y ago
How do you know that the instance of you that awakes every morning is really the "same" consciousness as went to sleep the night before? :-)
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  If you find this question interesting then watch "The Prestige". Great film. http://amzn.to/iiaO5j http://amzn.to/iiaO5j - aff link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_%28film%29
- thomas11 16y ago
  Buddhists say it's not.
  - kenj0418 16y ago
    Yes, and a large number of people (fail to) follow rules handed down to them by a shrubbery - but how is that relevant?
    - arethuza 16y ago
      To be fair, it was a burning shrubbery.
- rue 16y ago
  I don't know, but it doesn't matter because this morning it was me who woke up. It could matter to the me who went to sleep last night but he's no longer here…
dfranke 16y ago
If even the new consciousness isn't able to know, then what does "same" mean and what part of that definition aren't you satisfying? More acutely, why should you care about satisfying it?
- DanI-S 16y ago
  It means you think you just spent $500m on your 'upload' when in reality you just committed some elaborate suicide, launching some other (very similar) chap into immortality. Selfless, but unintentional.
  - dfranke 16y ago
    This isn't responsive. You've only answered my question to the extent of defining "same" as the opposite of "other", which is not a lot of progress. So again, what makes this "other" chap "other", and why should anyone care about satisfying that criterion?
    - DanI-S 16y ago
      Since the process isn't necessarily destructive to the 'original', both entities could subsequently exist simultaneously and lead separate lives. They're now two separate individuals, with an identical memory up to a certain moment. The original will never experience what it is like to be the reproduction after that point, and the reproduction will never know what it is like to be the original after they were branched. It doesn't make the reproduction any less 'legitimate' as a consciousness, but they're definitely not the same. It'd be another thing entirely if you could join the 'threads' back together, though. Imagine forking yourself into 12 different entities, each living a separate life for 100 years, then reintegrating.
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    From the "other chap"'s point of view, he just spent $500m to kill a doppelganger.
- rue 16y ago
  This is an interesting question because as-is, I don't think anyone can really understand what it means to be someone else. For this purpose, I can say my consciousness is something that exists currently and has memories from before, but there is no way to verify that the memories were recorded by the same consciousness. There could have been a different person that no longer exists. Perhaps a good alternate angle is to consider the “copy” (rather than “replacement”) proposition someone else mentioned: let's say a perfect copy of you could be made (i.e. the entirety of a consciousness is somehow material). Are the two consciousnesses linked somehow? Or are they completely separate despite thinking exactly alike, having the same memories &c.? If they are separate, what happens if the original is killed? Then, the next logical step is to ask how that is different from a consciousness transplant. It's wild stuff. Or seems like it to a thus-far (presumed) single consciousness.
DanI-S 16y ago
It's really quite a horrible concept - not knowing that you aren't yourself. But if you hot-swap one 'unit' of the brain at a time, so that you gradually go from 100% brainware to 100% software - perhaps that would help.
nickpinkston 16y ago
Assuming: We could make a complete physical copy of a brain with all state information (neural connections, blood & solute concentrations, etc.) - along with the exactly body of the person with that brain. Result: The copy wouldn't "feel" what's happening to the original. For example, if I fly the copy around the word and burn their hand - we wouldn't expect the other to feel it. Likewise, we may be able to copy the brain in a computer simulation but your initial self wouldn't "feel" what happens to your computer self. I think you're right in saying the copy-consciousness wouldn't know it wasn't "real". Something like hooking your brain to the computer (like The Matrix) seems like it'd probably be the only way to make you experience consciousness - but that's of course linked to our death. Unless perhaps we could slowly replace neurons with computer-based copies over time so that the effect would be slow enough that you could adapt. Then you could perhaps over-clock the brain when all of the cells are the computer ones? Just a thought...
nickpinkston 16y ago
Assuming: We could make a complete physical copy of a brain with all state information (neural connections, blood & solute concentrations, etc.) - along with the exactly body of the person with that brain. Result: The copy wouldn't "feel" what's happening to the original. For example, if I fly the copy around the word and burn their hand - we wouldn't expect the other to feel it. Likewise, we may be able to copy the brain in a computer simulation but your initial self wouldn't "feel" what happens to your computer self. I think you're right in saying the copy-consciousness wouldn't know it wasn't "real". Something like hooking your brain to the computer (like The Matrix) seems like it'd probably be the only way to make you experience consciousness - but that's of course linked to our death. Unless perhaps we could slowly replace neurons with computer-based copies over time so that the effect would be slow enough that you could adapt. Then you could perhaps over-clock the brain when all of the cells are the computer ones? Just a thought...
loup-vaillant 16y ago
Luckily, Quantum Mechanics has that covered: the notion of swapping 2 identical particles doesn't make physical sense (that statement has testable consequences). This notion of "no swap" can of course be extended to larger things, like a whole human body. Therefore, a sufficiently perfect copy of you _is_ you. For instance, if I freeze your body, copy it, then unfreeze the copy, it will not even end your conciousness and replace it by a new "identical" one. It simply does not make physical sense. Now, uploading may be a bit different, (you wouldn't run on biological neurons any more), but it still looks like it should work. First, if the upload is of sufficient quality to permit a later download (I expect it to be), then when you're back to your physical body, QM says that your conciousness didn't end, but merely lived something while in a computer. I therefore expect my conciousness not to end, even if I'm never downloaded back. Further, I strongly suspect that conciousness is nothing more than a not yet understood mathematical property of running software. For further reading, I strongly recommend the sequence on quantum physics by Eliezer Yudkowsky, on lesswrong. The introduction about philosophical zombies is also quite interesting. It's long, but you can absorb it in chunks. http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/
- Confusion 16y ago
  Those 'testable consequences' have only been verified to within experimental accuracy. However small the deviation: when scaling up, consequences of small deviations soon start overshadowing the original guiding principles. The unsolvable three body problem, the flow of sandpiles, turbulence in water. Chaos has been far from solved. Your argument will hold when you provide an actual, experimentally verifiable reduction of macroscopic laws to microscopic principles. Until then, it is all handwaving and make-belief. In short, your argument hinges on reductionist assertions that are easily debatable. They may even turn out to be impossible to prove correct. The hard problem of consciousness has not been solved and you should not pretend that it does not exist.
  - loup-vaillant 16y ago
    > Those 'testable consequences' have only been verified to within experimental accuracy. No, they have been verified up to perfect accuracy. That's because when 2 configurations are actually the same, the experimental measures are the squared modulus of complex numbers. If they are a tiny bit different (not the same), then the measures are the sum of the squared modulus of complex numbers. The two cases lead to very different results. > In short, your argument hinges on reductionist assertions that are easily debatable. It does hinges on reductionistic assumptions (there's only one territory out there, only maps are multi-level, and ontologically basic mental things don't exist). I doubt those are easily debatable, however. Up until now those assumptions worked, and I see no reason why they should break down some day. I am fully aware that the problem of conciousness has not been solved, but since we discovered that the mind is made of neurons, I think it is reasonable to believe it is solvable (though intractable at the moment).
cosmicray 16y ago
> But it'd really suck to be the last generation before some significant increase in lifespan (say, up to 200) is reached. If you read the Mars trilogy, the subject of excessive long life spans is discussed (at least from a sci-fi fictional perspective). The characters do indeed live out lives that exceed 200 years. One of the questions that then arises is: can the human brain (or as being hypothesized here, a synthetic brain) be able to handle 200 years worth of memories ? I can remember a couple of things from when I was 3. I am now over 50. As the years pass, some of those older memories become slightly fuzzy. I do wonder about the capacity to deal with 200 years worth.

by rue 16y ago

arethuza 16y ago

Greg Egan's Permuation City has an interesting examination of what might happen to "copies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

matthiaswh 16y ago
On the same note, the Asgard race of aliens from Stargate SG-1 were also copies. Later episodes in the series address the same sort of scenario.
jokermatt999 16y ago
And his short story "Learning to be me" (I think that's the one) present a slightly more horrifying take on it.
nooneelse 16y ago
I found David Brin's novel Kiln People to be an fun enough read and an interesting take on thoughts related to human consciousness copying. He uses an entirely different technical mechanism to get the copying, thus allowing a different angle in the thinking.
mchouza 16y ago
An interesting animation about this topic by John Weldon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

ugh 16y ago

That question always gets me. I tend to think that it doesn’t matter but I’m really not sure. It seems to me that for consciousness to be not permanent, additional systems or mechanisms are required. There would need to be some sort of external thing (external meaning something that is not scanned) which keeps track of our consciousness. How else would non-continuous consciousness work?

arethuza 16y ago

How do you know that the instance of you that awakes every morning is really the "same" consciousness as went to sleep the night before? :-)

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
If you find this question interesting then watch "The Prestige". Great film. http://amzn.to/iiaO5j http://amzn.to/iiaO5j - aff link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_%28film%29
thomas11 16y ago
Buddhists say it's not.
- kenj0418 16y ago
  Yes, and a large number of people (fail to) follow rules handed down to them by a shrubbery - but how is that relevant?
  - arethuza 16y ago
    To be fair, it was a burning shrubbery.
rue 16y ago
I don't know, but it doesn't matter because this morning it was me who woke up. It could matter to the me who went to sleep last night but he's no longer here…

dfranke 16y ago

If even the new consciousness isn't able to know, then what does "same" mean and what part of that definition aren't you satisfying? More acutely, why should you care about satisfying it?

DanI-S 16y ago
It means you think you just spent $500m on your 'upload' when in reality you just committed some elaborate suicide, launching some other (very similar) chap into immortality. Selfless, but unintentional.
- dfranke 16y ago
  This isn't responsive. You've only answered my question to the extent of defining "same" as the opposite of "other", which is not a lot of progress. So again, what makes this "other" chap "other", and why should anyone care about satisfying that criterion?
  - DanI-S 16y ago
    Since the process isn't necessarily destructive to the 'original', both entities could subsequently exist simultaneously and lead separate lives. They're now two separate individuals, with an identical memory up to a certain moment. The original will never experience what it is like to be the reproduction after that point, and the reproduction will never know what it is like to be the original after they were branched. It doesn't make the reproduction any less 'legitimate' as a consciousness, but they're definitely not the same. It'd be another thing entirely if you could join the 'threads' back together, though. Imagine forking yourself into 12 different entities, each living a separate life for 100 years, then reintegrating.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  From the "other chap"'s point of view, he just spent $500m to kill a doppelganger.
rue 16y ago
This is an interesting question because as-is, I don't think anyone can really understand what it means to be someone else. For this purpose, I can say my consciousness is something that exists currently and has memories from before, but there is no way to verify that the memories were recorded by the same consciousness. There could have been a different person that no longer exists. Perhaps a good alternate angle is to consider the “copy” (rather than “replacement”) proposition someone else mentioned: let's say a perfect copy of you could be made (i.e. the entirety of a consciousness is somehow material). Are the two consciousnesses linked somehow? Or are they completely separate despite thinking exactly alike, having the same memories &c.? If they are separate, what happens if the original is killed? Then, the next logical step is to ask how that is different from a consciousness transplant. It's wild stuff. Or seems like it to a thus-far (presumed) single consciousness.

DanI-S 16y ago

It's really quite a horrible concept - not knowing that you aren't yourself. But if you hot-swap one 'unit' of the brain at a time, so that you gradually go from 100% brainware to 100% software - perhaps that would help.

nickpinkston 16y ago

Assuming: We could make a complete physical copy of a brain with all state information (neural connections, blood & solute concentrations, etc.) - along with the exactly body of the person with that brain. Result: The copy wouldn't "feel" what's happening to the original. For example, if I fly the copy around the word and burn their hand - we wouldn't expect the other to feel it. Likewise, we may be able to copy the brain in a computer simulation but your initial self wouldn't "feel" what happens to your computer self. I think you're right in saying the copy-consciousness wouldn't know it wasn't "real". Something like hooking your brain to the computer (like The Matrix) seems like it'd probably be the only way to make you experience consciousness - but that's of course linked to our death. Unless perhaps we could slowly replace neurons with computer-based copies over time so that the effect would be slow enough that you could adapt. Then you could perhaps over-clock the brain when all of the cells are the computer ones? Just a thought...

nickpinkston 16y ago

loup-vaillant 16y ago

Luckily, Quantum Mechanics has that covered: the notion of swapping 2 identical particles doesn't make physical sense (that statement has testable consequences). This notion of "no swap" can of course be extended to larger things, like a whole human body. Therefore, a sufficiently perfect copy of you _is_ you. For instance, if I freeze your body, copy it, then unfreeze the copy, it will not even end your conciousness and replace it by a new "identical" one. It simply does not make physical sense. Now, uploading may be a bit different, (you wouldn't run on biological neurons any more), but it still looks like it should work. First, if the upload is of sufficient quality to permit a later download (I expect it to be), then when you're back to your physical body, QM says that your conciousness didn't end, but merely lived something while in a computer. I therefore expect my conciousness not to end, even if I'm never downloaded back. Further, I strongly suspect that conciousness is nothing more than a not yet understood mathematical property of running software. For further reading, I strongly recommend the sequence on quantum physics by Eliezer Yudkowsky, on lesswrong. The introduction about philosophical zombies is also quite interesting. It's long, but you can absorb it in chunks. http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/

Confusion 16y ago
Those 'testable consequences' have only been verified to within experimental accuracy. However small the deviation: when scaling up, consequences of small deviations soon start overshadowing the original guiding principles. The unsolvable three body problem, the flow of sandpiles, turbulence in water. Chaos has been far from solved. Your argument will hold when you provide an actual, experimentally verifiable reduction of macroscopic laws to microscopic principles. Until then, it is all handwaving and make-belief. In short, your argument hinges on reductionist assertions that are easily debatable. They may even turn out to be impossible to prove correct. The hard problem of consciousness has not been solved and you should not pretend that it does not exist.
- loup-vaillant 16y ago
  > Those 'testable consequences' have only been verified to within experimental accuracy. No, they have been verified up to perfect accuracy. That's because when 2 configurations are actually the same, the experimental measures are the squared modulus of complex numbers. If they are a tiny bit different (not the same), then the measures are the sum of the squared modulus of complex numbers. The two cases lead to very different results. > In short, your argument hinges on reductionist assertions that are easily debatable. It does hinges on reductionistic assumptions (there's only one territory out there, only maps are multi-level, and ontologically basic mental things don't exist). I doubt those are easily debatable, however. Up until now those assumptions worked, and I see no reason why they should break down some day. I am fully aware that the problem of conciousness has not been solved, but since we discovered that the mind is made of neurons, I think it is reasonable to believe it is solvable (though intractable at the moment).

cosmicray 16y ago

> But it'd really suck to be the last generation before some significant increase in lifespan (say, up to 200) is reached. If you read the Mars trilogy, the subject of excessive long life spans is discussed (at least from a sci-fi fictional perspective). The characters do indeed live out lives that exceed 200 years. One of the questions that then arises is: can the human brain (or as being hypothesized here, a synthetic brain) be able to handle 200 years worth of memories ? I can remember a couple of things from when I was 3. I am now over 50. As the years pass, some of those older memories become slightly fuzzy. I do wonder about the capacity to deal with 200 years worth.