5 ms·

No, these questions are not interesting, or profound, or wise and I am sorry you find them still mysterious. If we cut out parts of the brain, the thing that i

by ctoth 5y ago

No, these questions are not interesting, or profound, or wise and I am sorry you find them still mysterious. If we cut out parts of the brain, the thing that is you changes. Your consciousness changes. If the brain were merely some sort of antenna, this would not be what we would expect to see. If there were some signal that your brain was picking up on, that signal would have to be detectable externally as your brain is a physical thing and if it can pick up on it, so can another antenna. All that you are is contained in a couple of pounds of goo inside your skull, your brain is not some sort of metaphysical transceiver

xvector 5y ago
It is so frustrating to me that people ponder these 'questions' and we as a species are so far behind the cultural drive necessary to actually solve the problem of death.
- ctoth 5y ago
  I think it would help if all the people with useless platitudes who love to pretend to be wise about these things would just get the heck out of the way and let us solve this already, but I know it makes you look a little crazy to normal people to say you want to stop death. They start bringing out the cached responses about how death makes life worth living and so-on it's literally insane. Shrugs. Maybe we'll be born somewhere more sane next time ;-)
  - xvector 5y ago
    Exactly, and then when they're on their deathbed they don't want to die. Seriously, I wish people could think the slightest bit ahead.
- nradov 5y ago
  Is death a problem? If a problem has no solution then it's not really a problem, just a fact to be accepted.
burnished 5y ago
Point of order, it's the whole body that composes the experience that is you. If your brain and body got separated I reckon the 'you' would change, not unlike how if you modified the goo 'you' would change.
- ctoth 5y ago
  Excellent point. There are some people trying to just freeze heads, and you're right this may have some terrifying and unforeseen consequences to the potential person who might pop out the other end of that process. Can you imagine the possible body horror even with a cloned body? That said, when discussing consciousness, abstractly, it's sort of a necessary vs. sufficient distinction. The brain may be sufficient to maintain identity even without the body. The inverse is certainly not true.
geitir 5y ago
I suppose if there was a hypothetical interface (in the programming sense) for the brain you could create an indistinguishable implementation from the perspective of your consciousness. But really your conscious awareness isn't "you" at all. Think about how differently people perceive you from how you perceive yourself, how your conscious intention can be misinterpreted, and how your conscious and unconscious actions constantly manipulate the world. In a super heady sense, I subscribe to the idea that "you" is everything as a whole. That isn't a super useful definition to us living creatures, but to spiritual ideas such as reincarnation; technically your atoms end up somewhere. I think the rub is when people try to fit preservation of the human consciousness to these ideas, and I'd agree there is no way that's happening.
mlyle 5y ago
> No, these questions are not interesting, or profound, or wise and I am sorry you find them still mysterious. This is incredibly abrasive and intolerant of other peoples' views and philosophical journeys.
_8j50 5y ago
The brain does not just store but also processes your consciousness. You're looking at it the other way, information inherently surpasses the tangible. If reality was a cgi simulation what you call physical would just be a bunch of pixels like in the Matrix, it is no less real because of how it is represented. The difference between random objects and our brain is that our brain store and operates software which regardless of representation is information that is computed and interpreted in a logical way, therefore if the processing and storage needs can be replicated there should be no reason why the data cannot be transferred, thus making the essence of our being information.

by ctoth 5y ago

xvector 5y ago

It is so frustrating to me that people ponder these 'questions' and we as a species are so far behind the cultural drive necessary to actually solve the problem of death.

ctoth 5y ago
I think it would help if all the people with useless platitudes who love to pretend to be wise about these things would just get the heck out of the way and let us solve this already, but I know it makes you look a little crazy to normal people to say you want to stop death. They start bringing out the cached responses about how death makes life worth living and so-on it's literally insane. Shrugs. Maybe we'll be born somewhere more sane next time ;-)
- xvector 5y ago
  Exactly, and then when they're on their deathbed they don't want to die. Seriously, I wish people could think the slightest bit ahead.
nradov 5y ago
Is death a problem? If a problem has no solution then it's not really a problem, just a fact to be accepted.

burnished 5y ago

Point of order, it's the whole body that composes the experience that is you. If your brain and body got separated I reckon the 'you' would change, not unlike how if you modified the goo 'you' would change.

ctoth 5y ago
Excellent point. There are some people trying to just freeze heads, and you're right this may have some terrifying and unforeseen consequences to the potential person who might pop out the other end of that process. Can you imagine the possible body horror even with a cloned body? That said, when discussing consciousness, abstractly, it's sort of a necessary vs. sufficient distinction. The brain may be sufficient to maintain identity even without the body. The inverse is certainly not true.

geitir 5y ago

I suppose if there was a hypothetical interface (in the programming sense) for the brain you could create an indistinguishable implementation from the perspective of your consciousness. But really your conscious awareness isn't "you" at all. Think about how differently people perceive you from how you perceive yourself, how your conscious intention can be misinterpreted, and how your conscious and unconscious actions constantly manipulate the world. In a super heady sense, I subscribe to the idea that "you" is everything as a whole. That isn't a super useful definition to us living creatures, but to spiritual ideas such as reincarnation; technically your atoms end up somewhere. I think the rub is when people try to fit preservation of the human consciousness to these ideas, and I'd agree there is no way that's happening.

mlyle 5y ago

> No, these questions are not interesting, or profound, or wise and I am sorry you find them still mysterious. This is incredibly abrasive and intolerant of other peoples' views and philosophical journeys.

_8j50 5y ago

The brain does not just store but also processes your consciousness. You're looking at it the other way, information inherently surpasses the tangible. If reality was a cgi simulation what you call physical would just be a bunch of pixels like in the Matrix, it is no less real because of how it is represented. The difference between random objects and our brain is that our brain store and operates software which regardless of representation is information that is computed and interpreted in a logical way, therefore if the processing and storage needs can be replicated there should be no reason why the data cannot be transferred, thus making the essence of our being information.