3 ms·

Suppose you do it ship-of-theseus style, one neuron at a time (or heck, one atom at a time if you want). In that case I'd find it hard to argue for your positio

Suppose you do it ship-of-theseus style, one neuron at a time (or heck, one atom at a time if you want). In that case I'd find it hard to argue for your position.

troyvit 3y ago
I haven't watched the video yet so take this with a grain of salt. dd for a human amirite? Maybe one atom at a time, but you'd have to make sure you get all the bacteria that helps control your personality as well right?[1] Then you need to simulate the changes in that system, based on how you interact with the rest of a virtual world, including relationships with other people[2], so you'd have to have an accurate copy of that too. What do you do if your virtual self needs to interact with a still living, breathing human? How do you simulate the changes to your micro-biome that occur there? How do you simulate what your copied human "eats" and how it processes that food?[3] Having a copy of all your atoms is a start but you also need to simulate all of those processes accurately if you want it to be truly "you." Then what you end up with is -- assuming we know everything that makes up a human being and how it behaves -- a perfect copy of you along with a perfect copy of your world. [1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule-our-minds https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rul... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9 [3] http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/intermetabolism.html http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/interme...
- ouid 3y ago
  You dont have to replace yourself perfectly in order for the proposal to make sense. All that matters is that you agree the two versions are connected by conscious experience. If you take steroids that massively change your personality and mood, you still perceive it as happening to you.
  - troyvit 3y ago
    Ah. Well the good news there is that we have perfectly defined "conscious experience" so all should be well ;)
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  If you have an illness and lose a good chunk of your microbiome did you just die? No. You're still you, just a version of you slightly further along the timeline after some event that modified 'you'. Any copy of you that fails to simulate the mites on your left pinkie toenail is also 'you', just a version slightly further along the timeline after some event that modified 'you'. There is no 'you' - just an unbroken chain of chemical interactions stretching back to the first self-replicating molecule. 'You' is a concept that the pattern replicating event predictor engine that evolved to live in your skull is desperately clinging to. It has no real physical basis.
  - troyvit 3y ago
    Nah you don't just die, but you are changed. If you fail to account for a person's microbiome (among all the other things that we might not even know about yet) then you haven't completely copied who they are. I probably should have just said that IMO we humans don't know the beginning of what consciousness is.

Suppose you do it ship-of-theseus style, one neuron at a time (or heck, one atom at a time if you want). In that case I'd find it hard to argue for your position.

troyvit 3y ago

I haven't watched the video yet so take this with a grain of salt. dd for a human amirite? Maybe one atom at a time, but you'd have to make sure you get all the bacteria that helps control your personality as well right?[1] Then you need to simulate the changes in that system, based on how you interact with the rest of a virtual world, including relationships with other people[2], so you'd have to have an accurate copy of that too. What do you do if your virtual self needs to interact with a still living, breathing human? How do you simulate the changes to your micro-biome that occur there? How do you simulate what your copied human "eats" and how it processes that food?[3] Having a copy of all your atoms is a start but you also need to simulate all of those processes accurately if you want it to be truly "you." Then what you end up with is -- assuming we know everything that makes up a human being and how it behaves -- a perfect copy of you along with a perfect copy of your world. [1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule-our-minds https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rul... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9 [3] http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/intermetabolism.html http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/interme...

ouid 3y ago
You dont have to replace yourself perfectly in order for the proposal to make sense. All that matters is that you agree the two versions are connected by conscious experience. If you take steroids that massively change your personality and mood, you still perceive it as happening to you.
- troyvit 3y ago
  Ah. Well the good news there is that we have perfectly defined "conscious experience" so all should be well ;)
idiotsecant 3y ago
If you have an illness and lose a good chunk of your microbiome did you just die? No. You're still you, just a version of you slightly further along the timeline after some event that modified 'you'. Any copy of you that fails to simulate the mites on your left pinkie toenail is also 'you', just a version slightly further along the timeline after some event that modified 'you'. There is no 'you' - just an unbroken chain of chemical interactions stretching back to the first self-replicating molecule. 'You' is a concept that the pattern replicating event predictor engine that evolved to live in your skull is desperately clinging to. It has no real physical basis.
- troyvit 3y ago
  Nah you don't just die, but you are changed. If you fail to account for a person's microbiome (among all the other things that we might not even know about yet) then you haven't completely copied who they are. I probably should have just said that IMO we humans don't know the beginning of what consciousness is.