4 ms·

I don't know but my bigger issue will be that before the scan this means 99% of my future subjective experience that I can expect to have will be while working

by Tenoke 6y ago

I don't know but my bigger issue will be that before the scan this means 99% of my future subjective experience that I can expect to have will be while working without remembering any of it which I am not into given that a much smaller fraction of my subjective experience will be in reaping the gains.

jiofih 6y ago
Is it “your” experience though? Those never make their way back to the original brain.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  From the point of view of me going to sleep before the simulation procedure, with 1 simulation I am just as likely to wake up inside than outside of it. I should be equally prepared for either scenario. With thousands of uploads I should expect a much higher chance for the next thing I experience to be waking up simulated.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    The real you is beyond that timeline already. None of those simulations is “you”, so comparing the simulation runtimes to actual life experience (the 99% you mentioned) makes little sense.
    - Tenoke 6y ago
      We simply differ on what we think as 'you'. If there's going to be an instance with my exact same brain pattern who thinks exactly the same as me with continuation of what I am thinking now then that's a continuation of being me. After the split is a different story.
    - kubanczyk 6y ago
      For 56 minutes this wasn't downvoted to hell on HN. This means that humans as currently existing are morally unprepared to handle any uploading.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      What is "you", then? Let's say that in addition to the technology described in the story, we can create a completely simulated world, with all the people in it simulated as well. You get your brain scanned an instant before you die (from a non-neurological disease), and then "boot up" the copy in the simulated world. Are "you" alive or dead? Your body is certainly dead, but your mind goes on, presumably with the ability to have the same (albeit simulated) experiences, thoughts, and emotions your old body could. Get enough people to do this, and over time your simulated world could be populated entirely by people whose bodies have died, with no "computer AIs" in there at all. Eventually this simulated world maybe even has more people in it than the physical world. Is this simulated world less of a world than the physical one? Are the people in it any less alive than those in the physical world? Let's dispense with the simulated world, and say we also have the technology to clone (and arbitrarily age) human bodies, and the ability to "write" a brain copy into a clone (obliterating anything that might originally have been there, though with clones we expect them to be blank slates). You go to sleep, they make a copy, copy it into your clone, and then wake you both up simultaneously. Which is "you"? How about at the instant they wake up the clone, they destroy your "original" body. Did "you" die? Is the clone you, or not-you? Should the you that remains have the same rights and responsibilities as the old you? I would hope so; I would think that this might become a common way to extend your life if we somehow find that cloning and brain-copying is easier than curing all terminal disease or reversing the aging process. Think about Star-Trek-style transporters, which -- if you dig into the science of the sci-fi -- must destroy your body (after recording the quantum state of every particle in it), and then recreate it at the destination. Is the transported person "you"? Star Trek seems to think so. How is that materially different from scanning your brain and constructing an identical brain from that scan, and putting it in an identical (cloned) body? While I'm thinking about Star Trek, the last few episodes of season one of Star Trek Picard deal with the idea of transferring your "consciousness" to an android body before/as you die. They clearly seem to still believe that the "you"-ness of themselves will survive after the transfer. At the same time, there is also the question of death being possibly an essential part of the human condition; that is, can you really consider yourself human if you are immortal in an android body? (A TNG episode also dealt with consciousness transfer, and also the added issue of commandeering Data's body for the purpose, without his consent.) One more Star Trek: in a TNG episode we find that, some years prior, a transporter accident had created a duplicate of Riker and left him on a planet that became inaccessible for years afterward, until a transport window re-opened. Riker went on with his life off the planet, earning promotions, later becoming first officer of the Enterprise, while another Riker managed to survive as the sole occupant of a deteriorating outpost on the planet. After the Riker on the planet is found, obviously we're going to think of the Riker that we've known and followed for several years of TV-show-time as the "real" Riker, and the one on the planet as the "copy". But in (TV) reality there is no way to distinguish them (as they explain in the episode); neither Riker is any more "original" than the other. One of them just got unluckily stuck on a planet, alone, for many years, while the other didn't. Going back to simulated worlds for a second, if we get to the point where we can prove that it's possible to create simulated worlds with the ability to fool a human into believing the simulation is real, then it becomes vastly more probable that our reality actually is a simulated world than a physical one. If we somehow were to learn that is true, would we suddenly believe that we aren't truly alive or that our lives are pointless? These are some (IMO) pretty deep philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness and reality, and people will certainly differ in their feelings and conclusions about this. For my part, every instance above where there's a "copy" involved, I see that "copy" as no less "you" than the original.
_Microft 6y ago
Interesting that you object because I am pretty certain that it was you who was eager to use rat brains to run software on them. What's so different about this? In both cases a sentient being is robbed of their existence from my point of view.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  Have I? I don't remember the context but here I am particularly talking about what I'd expect to experience if I am in this situation. I do value myself and my experience more than a rat's, and if presented with the choice of the torture of hundred rats or me, I'll chose for them to be tortured. If we go to the trillions of rats I might very well chose for myself to be tortured instead as I do value their experience just significantly less. I also wouldn't be happy if everything is running off rats' brains who are experiencing displeasure but will be fine with sacrificing some number of rats for technological progress which will improve more people's lives in the long run. I imagine whatever I've said on the topic before is consistent with the above.
AgentME 6y ago
I wonder a lot about the subjective experience of chance around copying. Say it's true that if you copy yourself 99 times, then you have a 99% chance of finding yourself as one of the copies. What if you copy yourself 99 times, you run all the copies deterministically so they don't diverge, then you pick 98 copies to merge back into yourself (assuming you're also a software agent or we just have enough control to integrate a software copy's memories back into your original meat brain): do you have a 1% chance of finding yourself as that last copy and a 99% chance of finding yourself as the merged original? Could you do this to make it arbitrarily unlikely that you'll experience being that last copy, and then make a million duplicates of that copy to do tasks with almost none of your original subjective measure? ... This has to be nonsense. I feel like I must be very confused about the concept of subjective experience for this elaborate copying charade to sound useful. And then it gets worse: in certain variations of this logic, then you could buy a lottery ticket, and do certain copying setups based on the result to increase your subjective experience of winning the lottery. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y7jZ9BLEeuNTzgAE5/the-anthropic-trilemma https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y7jZ9BLEeuNTzgAE5/the-anthro.... I wonder whether I should take that as an obvious contradiction or if maybe the universe works in an alien enough way for that to be valid.
- peheje 6y ago
  Not sure I fully understand you. This is of course all hypothetical but if you make 1 copy of yourself there's not 50 % that you "find yourself as the copy". Unless the copying mechanism was somehow designed for this. You'll continue as is, there's just another you there and he will think he's the source initially, as that was the source mind-state being copied. Fortunately the copying-machine color-coded the source headband red and the copy headband blue, which clears the confusion for the copy. At this point you will start diverge obviously, and you must be considered two different sentient beings that cannot ethically be terminated. It's just as ethically wrong to terminate the copy as the souce at this point, you are identical in matter, but two lights are on, twice the capability for emotion. This also means that mind-uploading (moving) from one medium (meat) to another (silicon?) needs to be designed as a continuous-journey as experienced from the source-perception if it needs to become commercially viable (or bet on people not thinking about this hard enough, because the copy surviving wouldn't mind) without just being a COPY A TO B, DELETE A experience for the source, which would be like death.
tshaddox 6y ago
Of course, that's already the case, unless you believe that this technology will never be created and used, or that your own brain's relevant contents can and will be made unusable.

by Tenoke 6y ago

jiofih 6y ago

Is it “your” experience though? Those never make their way back to the original brain.

Tenoke 6y ago
From the point of view of me going to sleep before the simulation procedure, with 1 simulation I am just as likely to wake up inside than outside of it. I should be equally prepared for either scenario. With thousands of uploads I should expect a much higher chance for the next thing I experience to be waking up simulated.
- jiofih 6y ago
  The real you is beyond that timeline already. None of those simulations is “you”, so comparing the simulation runtimes to actual life experience (the 99% you mentioned) makes little sense.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    We simply differ on what we think as 'you'. If there's going to be an instance with my exact same brain pattern who thinks exactly the same as me with continuation of what I am thinking now then that's a continuation of being me. After the split is a different story.
  - kubanczyk 6y ago
    For 56 minutes this wasn't downvoted to hell on HN. This means that humans as currently existing are morally unprepared to handle any uploading.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    What is "you", then? Let's say that in addition to the technology described in the story, we can create a completely simulated world, with all the people in it simulated as well. You get your brain scanned an instant before you die (from a non-neurological disease), and then "boot up" the copy in the simulated world. Are "you" alive or dead? Your body is certainly dead, but your mind goes on, presumably with the ability to have the same (albeit simulated) experiences, thoughts, and emotions your old body could. Get enough people to do this, and over time your simulated world could be populated entirely by people whose bodies have died, with no "computer AIs" in there at all. Eventually this simulated world maybe even has more people in it than the physical world. Is this simulated world less of a world than the physical one? Are the people in it any less alive than those in the physical world? Let's dispense with the simulated world, and say we also have the technology to clone (and arbitrarily age) human bodies, and the ability to "write" a brain copy into a clone (obliterating anything that might originally have been there, though with clones we expect them to be blank slates). You go to sleep, they make a copy, copy it into your clone, and then wake you both up simultaneously. Which is "you"? How about at the instant they wake up the clone, they destroy your "original" body. Did "you" die? Is the clone you, or not-you? Should the you that remains have the same rights and responsibilities as the old you? I would hope so; I would think that this might become a common way to extend your life if we somehow find that cloning and brain-copying is easier than curing all terminal disease or reversing the aging process. Think about Star-Trek-style transporters, which -- if you dig into the science of the sci-fi -- must destroy your body (after recording the quantum state of every particle in it), and then recreate it at the destination. Is the transported person "you"? Star Trek seems to think so. How is that materially different from scanning your brain and constructing an identical brain from that scan, and putting it in an identical (cloned) body? While I'm thinking about Star Trek, the last few episodes of season one of Star Trek Picard deal with the idea of transferring your "consciousness" to an android body before/as you die. They clearly seem to still believe that the "you"-ness of themselves will survive after the transfer. At the same time, there is also the question of death being possibly an essential part of the human condition; that is, can you really consider yourself human if you are immortal in an android body? (A TNG episode also dealt with consciousness transfer, and also the added issue of commandeering Data's body for the purpose, without his consent.) One more Star Trek: in a TNG episode we find that, some years prior, a transporter accident had created a duplicate of Riker and left him on a planet that became inaccessible for years afterward, until a transport window re-opened. Riker went on with his life off the planet, earning promotions, later becoming first officer of the Enterprise, while another Riker managed to survive as the sole occupant of a deteriorating outpost on the planet. After the Riker on the planet is found, obviously we're going to think of the Riker that we've known and followed for several years of TV-show-time as the "real" Riker, and the one on the planet as the "copy". But in (TV) reality there is no way to distinguish them (as they explain in the episode); neither Riker is any more "original" than the other. One of them just got unluckily stuck on a planet, alone, for many years, while the other didn't. Going back to simulated worlds for a second, if we get to the point where we can prove that it's possible to create simulated worlds with the ability to fool a human into believing the simulation is real, then it becomes vastly more probable that our reality actually is a simulated world than a physical one. If we somehow were to learn that is true, would we suddenly believe that we aren't truly alive or that our lives are pointless? These are some (IMO) pretty deep philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness and reality, and people will certainly differ in their feelings and conclusions about this. For my part, every instance above where there's a "copy" involved, I see that "copy" as no less "you" than the original.

_Microft 6y ago

Interesting that you object because I am pretty certain that it was you who was eager to use rat brains to run software on them. What's so different about this? In both cases a sentient being is robbed of their existence from my point of view.

Tenoke 6y ago
Have I? I don't remember the context but here I am particularly talking about what I'd expect to experience if I am in this situation. I do value myself and my experience more than a rat's, and if presented with the choice of the torture of hundred rats or me, I'll chose for them to be tortured. If we go to the trillions of rats I might very well chose for myself to be tortured instead as I do value their experience just significantly less. I also wouldn't be happy if everything is running off rats' brains who are experiencing displeasure but will be fine with sacrificing some number of rats for technological progress which will improve more people's lives in the long run. I imagine whatever I've said on the topic before is consistent with the above.

AgentME 6y ago

I wonder a lot about the subjective experience of chance around copying. Say it's true that if you copy yourself 99 times, then you have a 99% chance of finding yourself as one of the copies. What if you copy yourself 99 times, you run all the copies deterministically so they don't diverge, then you pick 98 copies to merge back into yourself (assuming you're also a software agent or we just have enough control to integrate a software copy's memories back into your original meat brain): do you have a 1% chance of finding yourself as that last copy and a 99% chance of finding yourself as the merged original? Could you do this to make it arbitrarily unlikely that you'll experience being that last copy, and then make a million duplicates of that copy to do tasks with almost none of your original subjective measure? ... This has to be nonsense. I feel like I must be very confused about the concept of subjective experience for this elaborate copying charade to sound useful. And then it gets worse: in certain variations of this logic, then you could buy a lottery ticket, and do certain copying setups based on the result to increase your subjective experience of winning the lottery. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y7jZ9BLEeuNTzgAE5/the-anthropic-trilemma https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y7jZ9BLEeuNTzgAE5/the-anthro.... I wonder whether I should take that as an obvious contradiction or if maybe the universe works in an alien enough way for that to be valid.

peheje 6y ago
Not sure I fully understand you. This is of course all hypothetical but if you make 1 copy of yourself there's not 50 % that you "find yourself as the copy". Unless the copying mechanism was somehow designed for this. You'll continue as is, there's just another you there and he will think he's the source initially, as that was the source mind-state being copied. Fortunately the copying-machine color-coded the source headband red and the copy headband blue, which clears the confusion for the copy. At this point you will start diverge obviously, and you must be considered two different sentient beings that cannot ethically be terminated. It's just as ethically wrong to terminate the copy as the souce at this point, you are identical in matter, but two lights are on, twice the capability for emotion. This also means that mind-uploading (moving) from one medium (meat) to another (silicon?) needs to be designed as a continuous-journey as experienced from the source-perception if it needs to become commercially viable (or bet on people not thinking about this hard enough, because the copy surviving wouldn't mind) without just being a COPY A TO B, DELETE A experience for the source, which would be like death.

tshaddox 6y ago

Of course, that's already the case, unless you believe that this technology will never be created and used, or that your own brain's relevant contents can and will be made unusable.