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I think it will eventually be possible, but I don't necessarily agree that the subjective nature of life will transfer. Let's presume it's possible to physicall

by LocalH 4y ago

I think it will eventually be possible, but I don't necessarily agree that the subjective nature of life will transfer. Let's presume it's possible to physically clone a grown human. Now you have two subjective experiences occurring simultaneously, yet the "original" will only actually experience their own life from that point, the clone would be a totally independent copy, correct? So why do we think that if we could upload our mind into a machine, that our subjective experience would transfer? The mind in the machine would have all of the original life experience, etc. Anything that happened to the mind in the machine after uploading would be just as unknown to the original person, just as any other person's internal experience is. A similar argument can be applied to Star Trek-style teleportation. The idea is that we break an organism or item into it's constituent particles, transmit those in some fashion to the target site, and then reconstruct the original object from the particles. So in essence, you're destroying and recreating objects and organisms every time they teleport. I feel like the "original" consciousness would be separated from the biological vessel, and I don't necessarily think that the same consciousness would be present on the destination side. Sure, a consciousness will be present, and it will have access to all memories and experience of the original person, so it will feel like it is the same one. However, I don't feel like it actually would be. I have no scientific evidence or argument for all of this. Quite honestly, it's a "gut feeling" of how consciousness itself works, that was "given" to me during a particularly time-bending DMT experience, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. Then again, I don't think that science will ever be able to provide all the answers to human existence, but it's not really designed to. It's one of the few processes we as humans have attempted to design to be as utterly resistant to bias and subjectivity as possible. It's simply that not all things can be answered through objectivity.

roarcher 4y ago
Most mind-uploading futurism seems to be driven by the idea that we'll achieve digital immortality--at some point before or just after death, we'll transfer our minds to a simulated being in a simulated world, or perhaps a robot in the real world. And in that light I completely agree with what you're saying--digi-me would not be the same consciousness as bio-me. There's a trivial proof of this--suppose bio-me doesn't conveniently die, and my consciousness is merely cloned. There are now two inarguably distinct beings who just happen to share the same mental history until the "fork". But we can take this thought experiment even further--how do I know that the me who woke up this morning is the same one who went to sleep last night? Perhaps my consciousness "dies" every night and a new "instance" inhabits my body when I wake up. My sense of personal continuity comes from my memories of always being me, not from uninterrupted consciousness. To take it even further, perhaps this happens from one moment to the next while I'm awake. How would I know? In light of that thought experiment, perhaps there's no such thing as a continuous me. That would mean that digi-me is just as legitimately "me" as bio-me, even if we exist at the same time and argue about which of us is the true me. This is not my personal belief--I share your gut feeling that there's an immutable "real me". But I have to acknowledge that perhaps this is only because my brain is arranged so that it's impossible for me to feel otherwise.

by LocalH 4y ago

roarcher 4y ago

Most mind-uploading futurism seems to be driven by the idea that we'll achieve digital immortality--at some point before or just after death, we'll transfer our minds to a simulated being in a simulated world, or perhaps a robot in the real world. And in that light I completely agree with what you're saying--digi-me would not be the same consciousness as bio-me. There's a trivial proof of this--suppose bio-me doesn't conveniently die, and my consciousness is merely cloned. There are now two inarguably distinct beings who just happen to share the same mental history until the "fork". But we can take this thought experiment even further--how do I know that the me who woke up this morning is the same one who went to sleep last night? Perhaps my consciousness "dies" every night and a new "instance" inhabits my body when I wake up. My sense of personal continuity comes from my memories of always being me, not from uninterrupted consciousness. To take it even further, perhaps this happens from one moment to the next while I'm awake. How would I know? In light of that thought experiment, perhaps there's no such thing as a continuous me. That would mean that digi-me is just as legitimately "me" as bio-me, even if we exist at the same time and argue about which of us is the true me. This is not my personal belief--I share your gut feeling that there's an immutable "real me". But I have to acknowledge that perhaps this is only because my brain is arranged so that it's impossible for me to feel otherwise.