6 ms·

I don't believe "mind uploading" will ever go anywhere. There's a real Ship of Theseus philosophical problem here and it's never provable so I expect many peopl

by jmyeet 4y ago

I don't believe "mind uploading" will ever go anywhere. There's a real Ship of Theseus philosophical problem here and it's never provable so I expect many people would just think you've created a copy that superficially acts like the original while destroying the original. Technologically speaking, I'm not sure it's even possible to replicate the complex state of an entire nervous system. Maybe you could do this incrementally (ie by replacing parts of the brain with machines that can be replicated) but we're awfully sentimental about our own meat bags.

twblalock 4y ago
> so I expect many people would just think you've created a copy that superficially acts like the original while destroying the original. Prove otherwise. Star Trek transporters have the same issue.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  That episode of TNG where Barclay sees and even interacts with weird slug things that turn out to be people while transporting seems to indicate that there's a continuity of awareness, which really raises even more questions and should probably be best ignored.
imdsm 4y ago
That's my thought on Stargates. Wouldn't your consciousness just stop as you were ripped apart? And a clone of you would then continue but it wouldn't be your stream. The more I think about this, about what my stream of consciousness is, my "session" if you will, the weirder it all gets.
- bratbag 4y ago
  Especially when you consider sleeping. Do we die every night, with a copy continuing on tomorrow?
  - NateEag 4y ago
    I think dreams are evidence that consciousness has continuity across sleep.
    - naasking 4y ago
      You're not dreaming all of the time, so that doesn't work. Dreams only occur during REM sleep phases, which tend to cluster closer to the end of the sleep cycle.
      - NateEag 4y ago
        I wasn't trying to argue for constant consciousness, just saying that if we can be aware of and remember some things that happen during REM sleep, that suggests that perhaps there's more continuity there than was being suggested above.
    - jobigoud 4y ago
      Consider the case of drinking or drugs to the point of waking up not remembering what happened the night before. And then consider people who, knowing very well that they are going to be in a state of mind where they will do things that they will not remember the next day, still choose to do it. To me this is even crazier than mind uploading. They are lending their body to someone with which they don't have stream continuity.
      - NateEag 4y ago
        That's a relevant point. I'm right there with you on getting blackout drunk. I've never had any interest in mind-altering substances.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      It is a commonplace in surgery rooms that anesthetic is administered, and after it dissipates the patient continues speaking exactly where they left off, not noticing any gap. That has to mean something about the physics and chemistry of consciousness as manifested in our meat brains.
- Handytinge 4y ago
  I believe the stargate concept is that your atoms are ripped apart, transported via wormhole, then reintegrated in an identical state to how they were. From a continuity of your stream perspective, this is no different than being knocked out.
decebalus1 4y ago
> we're awfully sentimental about our own meat bags As much as I've enjoyed my meat bag and worked towards making it better through different means like diet or weightlifting, the older I get and the more ailments appear, the more I think about being able to live long enough to acquire my new and improved robot body, Chappie [0] style! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)
- metadaemon 4y ago
  I'm sorry sir, the Chappie™ bodies are on back order due to their superior hashing ability when mining crypto. Your consciousness will be uploaded to a toaster for the foreseeable future.
perihelions 4y ago
It doesn't matter what people think when they're philosophizing alone; peer pressure will win out. Do you want to be the luddite left behind when all your friends are zipping around the world on optical fibers, London to New Tokyo in 200 ms? Do you want to be the only delicate mortal in the room, where everyone else has a full mind backup on rsync.net? There's a lot of terrible stuff in today's technology world that no thinking person would accept, if they paused to make a deliberated choice. But no one has time to stop. You either go with the flow, and swallow your concerns, or you put massive friction between you and the rest of society. I think it will be the some going forwards: all the decisions will continue to be made collectively and blindly, and without realizing we're making great decisions until we've already made them.
- trowaLA 4y ago
  [dead]
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Badly paraphrasing "Rapture of the Nerds" (co-written by TFA's author): [Immortal uploads] did not have to win the debate against the anti-upload faction - they only had to outlive them
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  Yes, I want to be the only friend to not kill myself so that an online simulation can "go" to Tokyo. No I would not drink the Kool-Aid out of peer pressure.
lbriner 4y ago
Interestingly, many films depicting these future events tend to view things like nervous systems/pain etc. as things that are disadvantages and that technology would remove but humanity is built upon pain, fear, weakness and ultimately death so I wonder if some fully automated but artifical beings could ever be anything more than mundane, they would lack urgency and ambition because they wouldn't suffer the same desire for power and significance because it would be meaningless.
notsapiensatall 4y ago
There's a game called "SOMA" which does a great job of exploring this question. Ultimately it comes to the same conclusion, using the player character as a foil who spends most of the game refusing to understand what is going on.
- robotnikman 4y ago
  That game was amazing, one of the best horror games I ever played and leaves you thinking when finished. Highly recommend.
- eddd-ddde 4y ago
  Was looking for SOMA in the comments, I love the story it tells.
- Digit-Al 4y ago
  I was going to mention SOMA as well. I was thinking about the poor tormented person that was stuck in a robot body, but had no idea it was in a robot body.
jstanley 4y ago
Nobody is sure it's possible! But it might be.
trasz 4y ago
>I expect many people would just think you've created a copy that superficially acts like the original while destroying the original That is literally the same as moving the original. The way you describe it is different of course, but that’s where differences end.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  I don't think so. Imagine someone wrote an AI that is able to act exactly like you. To the point that no one you know can differentiate between you and the AI. Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? The point is, on the outside they look the same, but we don't understand enough about consciousness to possibly know if or how it can be transferred to another system.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    heh that's interesting to think about. Imagine the executioner leaves the room and then comes back. How would they know which version of you to kill?
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? No, because copying has created two individuals, so you're still killing an individual for no reason.
  - jobigoud 4y ago
    You fork a project on Github, is it ok to delete the original? No. Both will grow separately and slowly diverge / become their own personalities. Let both live on their own and after a while, if both you and the AI consent to it, merge the brain state back together.
  - trasz 4y ago
    >I don't think so. Imagine someone wrote an AI that is able to act exactly like you. To the point that no one you know can differentiate between you and the AI. Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? Everyone can tell the difference, because there's a dead body. Killing is killing. Doesn't matter that there's another instance living. Also making a clone of me would be a gross violation of my privacy rights. The situation in the previous post - the "transporter" - is different, because I'm agreeing to one of my instances to be killed. I wonder what would be the legal status of one's own instances ("clones"). I mean, they are all persons, but at the same time they are inherently connected, from DNA to memories.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
psyc 4y ago
If it’s a faithful copy, its acting like the original isn’t superficial.
theptip 4y ago
The problem with this argument is that some people obviously don’t care about the philosophical problem, and so they will use the mind uploader. Sure, many people will think “it’s not _me_ that lives on”. And the rest of the normal people will see their loved ones apparently (from the outside) living on in digital form, and ignore the philosophical questions entirely. Even if only .1% of people upload their minds, that still produces a massive sociological shift.
Symmetry 4y ago
Most people believe that they're the same person who went to bed last night despite all the changes that happened in their brain while they were asleep. They even believe that they'er the same person after a full decade despite the huge differences in behavior and memory that occur after such a large interval! So yeah, after seeing uploads act the same way as the original they'll end up being treated as the original just like we treat people as the same individual over periods of unconsciousness. For myself I don't think it's proper to answer questions like these with a binary but rather I prefer to think about how much alike two individuals are.

by jmyeet 4y ago

twblalock 4y ago

> so I expect many people would just think you've created a copy that superficially acts like the original while destroying the original. Prove otherwise. Star Trek transporters have the same issue.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
That episode of TNG where Barclay sees and even interacts with weird slug things that turn out to be people while transporting seems to indicate that there's a continuity of awareness, which really raises even more questions and should probably be best ignored.

imdsm 4y ago

That's my thought on Stargates. Wouldn't your consciousness just stop as you were ripped apart? And a clone of you would then continue but it wouldn't be your stream. The more I think about this, about what my stream of consciousness is, my "session" if you will, the weirder it all gets.

bratbag 4y ago
Especially when you consider sleeping. Do we die every night, with a copy continuing on tomorrow?
- NateEag 4y ago
  I think dreams are evidence that consciousness has continuity across sleep.
  - naasking 4y ago
    You're not dreaming all of the time, so that doesn't work. Dreams only occur during REM sleep phases, which tend to cluster closer to the end of the sleep cycle.
    - NateEag 4y ago
      I wasn't trying to argue for constant consciousness, just saying that if we can be aware of and remember some things that happen during REM sleep, that suggests that perhaps there's more continuity there than was being suggested above.
  - jobigoud 4y ago
    Consider the case of drinking or drugs to the point of waking up not remembering what happened the night before. And then consider people who, knowing very well that they are going to be in a state of mind where they will do things that they will not remember the next day, still choose to do it. To me this is even crazier than mind uploading. They are lending their body to someone with which they don't have stream continuity.
    - NateEag 4y ago
      That's a relevant point. I'm right there with you on getting blackout drunk. I've never had any interest in mind-altering substances.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It is a commonplace in surgery rooms that anesthetic is administered, and after it dissipates the patient continues speaking exactly where they left off, not noticing any gap. That has to mean something about the physics and chemistry of consciousness as manifested in our meat brains.
Handytinge 4y ago
I believe the stargate concept is that your atoms are ripped apart, transported via wormhole, then reintegrated in an identical state to how they were. From a continuity of your stream perspective, this is no different than being knocked out.

decebalus1 4y ago

> we're awfully sentimental about our own meat bags As much as I've enjoyed my meat bag and worked towards making it better through different means like diet or weightlifting, the older I get and the more ailments appear, the more I think about being able to live long enough to acquire my new and improved robot body, Chappie [0] style! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)

metadaemon 4y ago
I'm sorry sir, the Chappie™ bodies are on back order due to their superior hashing ability when mining crypto. Your consciousness will be uploaded to a toaster for the foreseeable future.

perihelions 4y ago

It doesn't matter what people think when they're philosophizing alone; peer pressure will win out. Do you want to be the luddite left behind when all your friends are zipping around the world on optical fibers, London to New Tokyo in 200 ms? Do you want to be the only delicate mortal in the room, where everyone else has a full mind backup on rsync.net? There's a lot of terrible stuff in today's technology world that no thinking person would accept, if they paused to make a deliberated choice. But no one has time to stop. You either go with the flow, and swallow your concerns, or you put massive friction between you and the rest of society. I think it will be the some going forwards: all the decisions will continue to be made collectively and blindly, and without realizing we're making great decisions until we've already made them.

trowaLA 4y ago
[dead]
sangnoir 4y ago
Badly paraphrasing "Rapture of the Nerds" (co-written by TFA's author): [Immortal uploads] did not have to win the debate against the anti-upload faction - they only had to outlive them
maximus-decimus 4y ago
Yes, I want to be the only friend to not kill myself so that an online simulation can "go" to Tokyo. No I would not drink the Kool-Aid out of peer pressure.

lbriner 4y ago

Interestingly, many films depicting these future events tend to view things like nervous systems/pain etc. as things that are disadvantages and that technology would remove but humanity is built upon pain, fear, weakness and ultimately death so I wonder if some fully automated but artifical beings could ever be anything more than mundane, they would lack urgency and ambition because they wouldn't suffer the same desire for power and significance because it would be meaningless.

notsapiensatall 4y ago

There's a game called "SOMA" which does a great job of exploring this question. Ultimately it comes to the same conclusion, using the player character as a foil who spends most of the game refusing to understand what is going on.

robotnikman 4y ago
That game was amazing, one of the best horror games I ever played and leaves you thinking when finished. Highly recommend.
eddd-ddde 4y ago
Was looking for SOMA in the comments, I love the story it tells.
Digit-Al 4y ago
I was going to mention SOMA as well. I was thinking about the poor tormented person that was stuck in a robot body, but had no idea it was in a robot body.

jstanley 4y ago

Nobody is sure it's possible! But it might be.

trasz 4y ago

>I expect many people would just think you've created a copy that superficially acts like the original while destroying the original That is literally the same as moving the original. The way you describe it is different of course, but that’s where differences end.

vlunkr 4y ago
I don't think so. Imagine someone wrote an AI that is able to act exactly like you. To the point that no one you know can differentiate between you and the AI. Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? The point is, on the outside they look the same, but we don't understand enough about consciousness to possibly know if or how it can be transferred to another system.
- chasd00 4y ago
  heh that's interesting to think about. Imagine the executioner leaves the room and then comes back. How would they know which version of you to kill?
- naasking 4y ago
  > Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? No, because copying has created two individuals, so you're still killing an individual for no reason.
- jobigoud 4y ago
  You fork a project on Github, is it ok to delete the original? No. Both will grow separately and slowly diverge / become their own personalities. Let both live on their own and after a while, if both you and the AI consent to it, merge the brain state back together.
- trasz 4y ago
  >I don't think so. Imagine someone wrote an AI that is able to act exactly like you. To the point that no one you know can differentiate between you and the AI. Would it be OK at that point if they just killed you? No one can tell the difference, right? Everyone can tell the difference, because there's a dead body. Killing is killing. Doesn't matter that there's another instance living. Also making a clone of me would be a gross violation of my privacy rights. The situation in the previous post - the "transporter" - is different, because I'm agreeing to one of my instances to be killed. I wonder what would be the legal status of one's own instances ("clones"). I mean, they are all persons, but at the same time they are inherently connected, from DNA to memories.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

psyc 4y ago

If it’s a faithful copy, its acting like the original isn’t superficial.

theptip 4y ago

The problem with this argument is that some people obviously don’t care about the philosophical problem, and so they will use the mind uploader. Sure, many people will think “it’s not _me_ that lives on”. And the rest of the normal people will see their loved ones apparently (from the outside) living on in digital form, and ignore the philosophical questions entirely. Even if only .1% of people upload their minds, that still produces a massive sociological shift.

Symmetry 4y ago

Most people believe that they're the same person who went to bed last night despite all the changes that happened in their brain while they were asleep. They even believe that they'er the same person after a full decade despite the huge differences in behavior and memory that occur after such a large interval! So yeah, after seeing uploads act the same way as the original they'll end up being treated as the original just like we treat people as the same individual over periods of unconsciousness. For myself I don't think it's proper to answer questions like these with a binary but rather I prefer to think about how much alike two individuals are.