5 ms·
Even after a few millennia, I doubt it. The human experience is inseparable from the human body.
by bavell 4y ago
Even after a few millennia, I doubt it. The human experience is inseparable from the human body.
- Sharlin 4y agoThat’s a pretty bold statement. The null hypothesis is that there’s nothing in the body that cannot in principle be emulated in silico to whatever precision necessary.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jodrellblank 4y agoWhy is that the null hypothesis? For one thing, the only experience we have is existing as bodies in a real world, so that should be the default with any other claims being supported by evidence. For another thing, simulating a bridge falling down is not a bridge falling down, and it's not proven that simulated thinking is thinking (or even, possible).
- implements 4y agoSad news for people hoping for a life after death, though! (ie nearly everyone) I think it’ll be possible to create inorganic ‘brains’ that have human-like subjective experience, because to think otherwise reduces to some form of vitalism, but I doubt we’ll be able to move specific individual consciousness across technologies.
- Semaphor 4y ago> (ie nearly everyone) Are you sure about that? That does not sound right to me.
- implements 4y agoWell, I’m assuming the majority of people currently alive (and even more of those who have ever lived) are religious, and the majority of religions followed hold with the Heaven & Hell / Cycle of Reincarnation until Enlightenment model - and that experience in the afterlife was still recognisably ’human’. Though, saying that, OP’s point about needing a human body to have human experiences may be correct if souls get a new human body in the afterlife - I’d just assumed liberated souls, like ghosts, had no physical form.
- Semaphor 4y agoThere’s a vast 49% gulf between nearly everyone and the majority.
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoWhat makes you say that? You could literally be a brain in a jar or be hooked up to god knows what "deep diving" / "full VR" experience humanity will come up with.
- KronisLV 4y ago> The human experience is inseparable from the human body. I'd say that the human body is just one very sophisticated I/O device. The fact that we can't replicate it now doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible after a millenia of engineering, even though this replacement device might as well be a partially organic one in the end. That said, there are no guarantees that we don't fall into a sort of "dark age" of no more growth/research into any new directions, or don't wipe ourselves out altogether.