4 ms·

Cue the "are you still you?" crowd

by bserge 5y ago

Nursie 5y ago
Is that not a valid avenue of thought? If a fork or a copy can be made and run on a computer of some sort, it would be a technological marvel. But it’s not the sort of immortality I’d be interested in, if little old biological me still shuffles off and dies somewhere.
- WJW 5y ago
  Interesting thought experiment: Could there be some future form of therapy available that teaches to associate "you" with not just your biological form but also the wider set of AI-enhanced parts of your existence? I think it would be a very difficult thing to teach people to associate normal machines (like a phone or tablet) with themselves, but cybernetic implants and perhaps mind/machine interfaced stuff would be able to trick the mind into thinking that they are really parts of itself.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    I think it's quite likely you still wind up "dying" a lot, but you have a very positive answer to the question of "is there life after death?" Consider it this way: we duplicate you, and in an eyeblink you're either still in your body or still in VR. Subjectively to your body (because your still there) - there's a version of you which dies forever. But there's also a version which remembers duplication worked. Life after death is assured. So now every version which spins off from that has the surety: duplication means continuance. Much beyond that point I think it all very much becomes as you say, a psychotherapy problem: who's in the box and who's on the stage doesn't really matter provided you knock yourself out before doing the transfer and don't wake up later. Easy enough to arrange. Of course, if you were really worried you can hang out till the high-tech "neuron by neuron replacement" process happens, but I think you'd wind up with a lot of people realizing it made very little difference as they moved over to a pure VR existence without quite realizing it had happened till it was done.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      > who's in the box and who's on the stage doesn't really matter provided you knock yourself out before doing the transfer and don't wake up later. It might not matter to the new entity, it might not matter to an observer, but in that situation you've just killed the human, who is very much dead. > Of course, if you were really worried you can hang out till the high-tech "neuron by neuron replacement" process happens I think that's the only way that I would consider it a real transition, rather than a copy and a death.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  It is a valid avenue of thought, but the longer you think about it the less sense it'll make because you'll find that what you think of as "you" is not as singular and confined as you like to think it is.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Please explain further, I believe it is quite singular, not from any sort of religious root, but because I experience myself as a continuous, singular being. The idea that I should consider a copy as the same thing as myself is entirely alien, and seems quite unreasonable.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      The continuity is an illusion. What is continuous? The matter in your body? The way your brain is wired? Your memories? All of these things are in a more or less constant state of change. That's without getting in to things like the concept that you might just be a Boltzmann Brain. The only "you" that you can be certain of is the one experiencing its existence in the immediate moment. Perform this thought experiment: identify things that make you "you". Now, one by one, ask yourself "if that was stripped from me, would I still be me?". Are you still you without each of your memories? Without each of your talents? Your opinions? Your body? Your genes? Continue long enough and I believe you will see that there is literally nothing you can't strip away. Consider things like Alien Hand Syndrome, or that people can live with half their brain removed and it doesn't even matter which half. Which hemisphere is the one that contains "you"? Consider why people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others. Why do people voluntarily end their own existence for the betterment of their children, their community, their nation, or their ideals? There are literally thousands of years of philosophical writing on the concept that I cannot hope to do justice to.
      - Nursie 5y ago
        > The continuity is an illusion. That is an assertion. > Your body? No, my body is part of me, it makes little sense to try to divorce what appears to be the emergent phenomenon of consciousness from the wetware that it runs on. There is no sense in which I am not tied to my brain. > Your genes? No, I likely would be different without my particular genetic makeup. It's an odd question to ask, there's not really a way to separate me from that. > Consider things like Alien Hand Syndrome, or that people can live with half their brain removed and it doesn't even matter which half People can live, but damage to parts of the brain very much changes them, and can change all aspects of their personality. At that point the "you" is very much changed or (usually) diminished. But that doesn't speak to continuity of experience or singularity either. None of this makes any difference or even much sense in the context of my consciousness being continuous or singular. It's subject to change and physical damage. That doesn't mean if you copy my brain into a computer somehow that it's anything other than a copy, I will not experience its experiences, live its life. > Consider why people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others This seems entirely orthogonal to any question about whether consciousness is continuous or singular. There are many reasons that people may choose to do this, none of them maintains their conscious experience.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  The problem with this argument is that this is effectively happening every time you fall asleep or get knocked out. Your consciousness shuts off during both and you rely on memories to preserve the illusion of continuity. In a very real sense, you are dying every day and having your previous state restored - albeit with some behind the scenes processing of the day's experiences during sleep.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    > The problem with this argument is that this is effectively happening every time you fall asleep or get knocked out I think that's quite a huge assertion to make, personally. > In a very real sense, you are dying every day I don't agree with this view, it would take some pretty hard science there to change my mind, to show that sleep and death are really equivalent, and I don't think we have that given the definition of consciousness is a little fuzzy in the first place. This seems to be more a philosophical conjecture than any sort of hard fact.
    - vimacs2 5y ago
      >I think that's quite a huge assertion to make, personally. Not really, especially in the context of the discussion which is privileging the continuity of experience which objectively breaks when you lose consciousness during sleep or anesthesia.
tjpnz 5y ago
I wish that crowd were bigger. I see the idea of brain uploading discussed rather frequently among cryonicists and other futurists for instance. But the majority when posed the question (at least from what I've observed) just assume the answer to be yes. I would assume that they would be expecting some form of "continuity" in the process (especially the former group). Yet I struggle to see how that would even be possible, at least with the little we understand of consciousness as it is.
- XorNot 5y ago
  "Continuity" is a strange thing to have as a requirement. General anesthesia, in so far as your conscious experience goes, is distinctly not a continuous experience.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    Just add sleep to that list. For 8 hours a day my conscious brain checks out and a different set of programs seems to run that I am generally unaware of, except when one dreams up an axe murderer chasing me causing a rapid return to consciousness.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      Which it's worth noting: happens in like, 20 minutes before you wake up.
- mbg721 5y ago
  As another thought experiment, if someone else decides one day to start impersonating you, what is it that makes them not actually you? Their memories? Just the fact that you're still there?

Cue the "are you still you?" crowd

by bserge 5y ago

Cue the "are you still you?" crowd

Is that not a valid avenue of thought? If a fork or a copy can be made and run on a computer of some sort, it would be a technological marvel. But it’s not the sort of immortality I’d be interested in, if little old biological me still shuffles off and dies somewhere.

WJW 5y ago
Interesting thought experiment: Could there be some future form of therapy available that teaches to associate "you" with not just your biological form but also the wider set of AI-enhanced parts of your existence? I think it would be a very difficult thing to teach people to associate normal machines (like a phone or tablet) with themselves, but cybernetic implants and perhaps mind/machine interfaced stuff would be able to trick the mind into thinking that they are really parts of itself.
- XorNot 5y ago
  I think it's quite likely you still wind up "dying" a lot, but you have a very positive answer to the question of "is there life after death?" Consider it this way: we duplicate you, and in an eyeblink you're either still in your body or still in VR. Subjectively to your body (because your still there) - there's a version of you which dies forever. But there's also a version which remembers duplication worked. Life after death is assured. So now every version which spins off from that has the surety: duplication means continuance. Much beyond that point I think it all very much becomes as you say, a psychotherapy problem: who's in the box and who's on the stage doesn't really matter provided you knock yourself out before doing the transfer and don't wake up later. Easy enough to arrange. Of course, if you were really worried you can hang out till the high-tech "neuron by neuron replacement" process happens, but I think you'd wind up with a lot of people realizing it made very little difference as they moved over to a pure VR existence without quite realizing it had happened till it was done.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    > who's in the box and who's on the stage doesn't really matter provided you knock yourself out before doing the transfer and don't wake up later. It might not matter to the new entity, it might not matter to an observer, but in that situation you've just killed the human, who is very much dead. > Of course, if you were really worried you can hang out till the high-tech "neuron by neuron replacement" process happens I think that's the only way that I would consider it a real transition, rather than a copy and a death.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
It is a valid avenue of thought, but the longer you think about it the less sense it'll make because you'll find that what you think of as "you" is not as singular and confined as you like to think it is.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Please explain further, I believe it is quite singular, not from any sort of religious root, but because I experience myself as a continuous, singular being. The idea that I should consider a copy as the same thing as myself is entirely alien, and seems quite unreasonable.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    The continuity is an illusion. What is continuous? The matter in your body? The way your brain is wired? Your memories? All of these things are in a more or less constant state of change. That's without getting in to things like the concept that you might just be a Boltzmann Brain. The only "you" that you can be certain of is the one experiencing its existence in the immediate moment. Perform this thought experiment: identify things that make you "you". Now, one by one, ask yourself "if that was stripped from me, would I still be me?". Are you still you without each of your memories? Without each of your talents? Your opinions? Your body? Your genes? Continue long enough and I believe you will see that there is literally nothing you can't strip away. Consider things like Alien Hand Syndrome, or that people can live with half their brain removed and it doesn't even matter which half. Which hemisphere is the one that contains "you"? Consider why people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others. Why do people voluntarily end their own existence for the betterment of their children, their community, their nation, or their ideals? There are literally thousands of years of philosophical writing on the concept that I cannot hope to do justice to.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      > The continuity is an illusion. That is an assertion. > Your body? No, my body is part of me, it makes little sense to try to divorce what appears to be the emergent phenomenon of consciousness from the wetware that it runs on. There is no sense in which I am not tied to my brain. > Your genes? No, I likely would be different without my particular genetic makeup. It's an odd question to ask, there's not really a way to separate me from that. > Consider things like Alien Hand Syndrome, or that people can live with half their brain removed and it doesn't even matter which half People can live, but damage to parts of the brain very much changes them, and can change all aspects of their personality. At that point the "you" is very much changed or (usually) diminished. But that doesn't speak to continuity of experience or singularity either. None of this makes any difference or even much sense in the context of my consciousness being continuous or singular. It's subject to change and physical damage. That doesn't mean if you copy my brain into a computer somehow that it's anything other than a copy, I will not experience its experiences, live its life. > Consider why people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others This seems entirely orthogonal to any question about whether consciousness is continuous or singular. There are many reasons that people may choose to do this, none of them maintains their conscious experience.
vimacs2 5y ago
The problem with this argument is that this is effectively happening every time you fall asleep or get knocked out. Your consciousness shuts off during both and you rely on memories to preserve the illusion of continuity. In a very real sense, you are dying every day and having your previous state restored - albeit with some behind the scenes processing of the day's experiences during sleep.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > The problem with this argument is that this is effectively happening every time you fall asleep or get knocked out I think that's quite a huge assertion to make, personally. > In a very real sense, you are dying every day I don't agree with this view, it would take some pretty hard science there to change my mind, to show that sleep and death are really equivalent, and I don't think we have that given the definition of consciousness is a little fuzzy in the first place. This seems to be more a philosophical conjecture than any sort of hard fact.
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    >I think that's quite a huge assertion to make, personally. Not really, especially in the context of the discussion which is privileging the continuity of experience which objectively breaks when you lose consciousness during sleep or anesthesia.

tjpnz 5y ago

I wish that crowd were bigger. I see the idea of brain uploading discussed rather frequently among cryonicists and other futurists for instance. But the majority when posed the question (at least from what I've observed) just assume the answer to be yes. I would assume that they would be expecting some form of "continuity" in the process (especially the former group). Yet I struggle to see how that would even be possible, at least with the little we understand of consciousness as it is.

XorNot 5y ago
"Continuity" is a strange thing to have as a requirement. General anesthesia, in so far as your conscious experience goes, is distinctly not a continuous experience.
- pixl97 5y ago
  Just add sleep to that list. For 8 hours a day my conscious brain checks out and a different set of programs seems to run that I am generally unaware of, except when one dreams up an axe murderer chasing me causing a rapid return to consciousness.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Which it's worth noting: happens in like, 20 minutes before you wake up.
mbg721 5y ago
As another thought experiment, if someone else decides one day to start impersonating you, what is it that makes them not actually you? Their memories? Just the fact that you're still there?