4 ms·

I'm hoping for mind uploading... my body sucks, I crave the power of bits

highwaylights 4y ago
Even if you could upload your whole conscious mind to a machine, is it still you? I often think about this in the concept of teleporters from Star Trek. When they beam the away team down did they really send those people somewhere or just incinerate them and create clones in another place?
- dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  I'm sure you could Ship of Theseus it (upload a % of your mind at a time)
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    100% this, I think the key to doing this successfully lies in replacing your mind as you stop using it (i.e. as you're going to sleep)
- andai 4y ago
  I read a great essay about that a few years ago. The thought experiment went like this: imagine a universe in which a machine scans your atoms one by one, transmits the data wirelessly to Mars, and rebuilds you there, atom by atom. Does your consciousness "jump" to the new body, or do you just die? * What if the scanner is able to scan you without destroying the original body? What if you accidentally arrive in two destinations? etc... * Another fascinating question is, we'll assume the new body will be just as conscious as you were. Where does its consciousness "come" from? From its point of view, it was in the teleporter on Earth one moment, and on Mars the next! I thought the video game SOMA did a nice job exploring this area.
  - weikju 4y ago
    “Think like a dinosaur” a science fiction story on that subject. It’s been adapted a few times for TV, I think eg in The Outer Limits (90s version or early 2000s?)
  - cookingrobot 4y ago
    When 2 parents have a child, where does that new consciousness come from? When someone dies where does the consciousness go? I don’t think there’s any law of conservation of consciousness.
    - andai 4y ago
      Sure, but also, you wake up as the same person every day.
    - enlyth 4y ago
      We also lose consciousness every night when we sleep.
      - mnky9800n 4y ago
        I think it's bizarre that we all collectively cease consciousness around the same time every day as everyone around us. We all become willingly helpless for hours with no protection from any danger every day. It's ridiculous.
        theGnuMe 4y ago
        Teens typically stay up later than parents who stay up later than grandparents. And babies tend to use a 2-3 hour feed cycle which necessitates mom at the minimum to be somewhat awake. There seems to be evolutionary reasons for this (probably to prevent predation). Interesting some schools and I think California in general has introduced a later start time for teens because of this biology. So it is staggered in general.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    Also worth checking out the 2006 Christopher Nolan film The Prestige if you’ve never seen it.
    - viciousvoxel 4y ago
      Also worth checking out the game The Swapper
- piperswe 4y ago
  I've come to the personal conclusion that "I" am the sum of my memories. The physical parts that make me up are no more "me" than the clothes on that body. Whatever system contains my memories and makes computation based on those memories, whether a brain, computer, or something else, is "me" enough.
  - tetris11 4y ago
    There are unconscious parts of your mind screaming interrupts at you as your limbs extend and react about your environment using trained behaviours. Your organs groan and churn also using unconscious trained behaviours from your brain. They form a feedback loop of input with your brain, the conscious side of which you are aware of, and the unconscious side oprating silently in the background. What do you think will happen if you deprive your brain of these inputs? Yes your conscious mind might cope, but your unconscious mind might go berserk, and start spamming hidden error messages to your conscious which might manifest in many unpredictable ways.
  - mnky9800n 4y ago
    Your memories are not stored like a computer stores memories. Your brain recreates things that you remember such that remembering things is a creation of a new thing made from bits and pieces of things in your mind. This is the basis of constructivism in cognitive science.
- Kinrany 4y ago
  This is an accounting question, no one intrinsically cares about identities except as entertainment or for sentimental reasons. If someone said that we Officially (TM) become a different person when we sleep and wake up, no one would care. On the other hand, we would really care about cloning because all sorts of things assume it to be impossible and it would all be a huge mess in practice. Not because the identities got tangled, but because as a consequence we don't know how to jail someone who created a clone a year ago, for example.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Humans change over time: their old versions disappear, and their new versions are cloned every moment to replace the previous clone.
- mnky9800n 4y ago
  In Stargate it's a matter transporter so it literally takes all your molecules turns them into a collimated beam and shoots that beam at close to the speed of light to some other place to be reassembled. In star trek I believe it does full matter to energy conversion and back again. I'm not entirely sure how piecewise motion of said energy is accomplished.
andai 4y ago
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh...
x-complexity 4y ago
100% agree with you here: I try to take care of my body as much as I possibly can, but it still gives me pains, aches, cramps, & just buckets of discomfort for most of my waking moments. This doesn't even take into account of the fact that even if you were to meticulously plan every single bit of your life, your body can just betray you out of spite (I fear testicular torsion every day.)
TACD 4y ago
You sure about that? https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
scotty79 4y ago
What if digital image of your conscious gets leaked and people will create copies of it and coerce them to control mundane tasks for them?
comfypotato 4y ago
It’s a long way away. Assuming it will be based on MRI imaging of axons/neurons etc., the resolution of the current state of the art is too low. There’s no foreseeable advances in this area, so the only hope is a paradigm shift or serious breakthrough. The Human Connectome Project might interest you. It is the closest thing we have to this right now. Also the Open Worm project. We have successfuly uploaded nematodes (by countless dissections and microscopically mapping the neuron/axon connections).

Even if you could upload your whole conscious mind to a machine, is it still you? I often think about this in the concept of teleporters from Star Trek. When they beam the away team down did they really send those people somewhere or just incinerate them and create clones in another place?

dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
I'm sure you could Ship of Theseus it (upload a % of your mind at a time)
- mxkopy 4y ago
  100% this, I think the key to doing this successfully lies in replacing your mind as you stop using it (i.e. as you're going to sleep)
andai 4y ago
I read a great essay about that a few years ago. The thought experiment went like this: imagine a universe in which a machine scans your atoms one by one, transmits the data wirelessly to Mars, and rebuilds you there, atom by atom. Does your consciousness "jump" to the new body, or do you just die? * What if the scanner is able to scan you without destroying the original body? What if you accidentally arrive in two destinations? etc... * Another fascinating question is, we'll assume the new body will be just as conscious as you were. Where does its consciousness "come" from? From its point of view, it was in the teleporter on Earth one moment, and on Mars the next! I thought the video game SOMA did a nice job exploring this area.
- weikju 4y ago
  “Think like a dinosaur” a science fiction story on that subject. It’s been adapted a few times for TV, I think eg in The Outer Limits (90s version or early 2000s?)
- cookingrobot 4y ago
  When 2 parents have a child, where does that new consciousness come from? When someone dies where does the consciousness go? I don’t think there’s any law of conservation of consciousness.
  - andai 4y ago
    Sure, but also, you wake up as the same person every day.
  - enlyth 4y ago
    We also lose consciousness every night when we sleep.
    - mnky9800n 4y ago
      I think it's bizarre that we all collectively cease consciousness around the same time every day as everyone around us. We all become willingly helpless for hours with no protection from any danger every day. It's ridiculous.
      - theGnuMe 4y ago
        Teens typically stay up later than parents who stay up later than grandparents. And babies tend to use a 2-3 hour feed cycle which necessitates mom at the minimum to be somewhat awake. There seems to be evolutionary reasons for this (probably to prevent predation). Interesting some schools and I think California in general has introduced a later start time for teens because of this biology. So it is staggered in general.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  Also worth checking out the 2006 Christopher Nolan film The Prestige if you’ve never seen it.
  - viciousvoxel 4y ago
    Also worth checking out the game The Swapper
piperswe 4y ago
I've come to the personal conclusion that "I" am the sum of my memories. The physical parts that make me up are no more "me" than the clothes on that body. Whatever system contains my memories and makes computation based on those memories, whether a brain, computer, or something else, is "me" enough.
- tetris11 4y ago
  There are unconscious parts of your mind screaming interrupts at you as your limbs extend and react about your environment using trained behaviours. Your organs groan and churn also using unconscious trained behaviours from your brain. They form a feedback loop of input with your brain, the conscious side of which you are aware of, and the unconscious side oprating silently in the background. What do you think will happen if you deprive your brain of these inputs? Yes your conscious mind might cope, but your unconscious mind might go berserk, and start spamming hidden error messages to your conscious which might manifest in many unpredictable ways.
- mnky9800n 4y ago
  Your memories are not stored like a computer stores memories. Your brain recreates things that you remember such that remembering things is a creation of a new thing made from bits and pieces of things in your mind. This is the basis of constructivism in cognitive science.
Kinrany 4y ago
This is an accounting question, no one intrinsically cares about identities except as entertainment or for sentimental reasons. If someone said that we Officially (TM) become a different person when we sleep and wake up, no one would care. On the other hand, we would really care about cloning because all sorts of things assume it to be impossible and it would all be a huge mess in practice. Not because the identities got tangled, but because as a consequence we don't know how to jail someone who created a clone a year ago, for example.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
Humans change over time: their old versions disappear, and their new versions are cloned every moment to replace the previous clone.
mnky9800n 4y ago
In Stargate it's a matter transporter so it literally takes all your molecules turns them into a collimated beam and shoots that beam at close to the speed of light to some other place to be reassembled. In star trek I believe it does full matter to energy conversion and back again. I'm not entirely sure how piecewise motion of said energy is accomplished.

andai 4y ago

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh...

x-complexity 4y ago

100% agree with you here: I try to take care of my body as much as I possibly can, but it still gives me pains, aches, cramps, & just buckets of discomfort for most of my waking moments. This doesn't even take into account of the fact that even if you were to meticulously plan every single bit of your life, your body can just betray you out of spite (I fear testicular torsion every day.)

TACD 4y ago

You sure about that? https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

scotty79 4y ago

What if digital image of your conscious gets leaked and people will create copies of it and coerce them to control mundane tasks for them?

comfypotato 4y ago

It’s a long way away. Assuming it will be based on MRI imaging of axons/neurons etc., the resolution of the current state of the art is too low. There’s no foreseeable advances in this area, so the only hope is a paradigm shift or serious breakthrough. The Human Connectome Project might interest you. It is the closest thing we have to this right now. Also the Open Worm project. We have successfuly uploaded nematodes (by countless dissections and microscopically mapping the neuron/axon connections).