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Unless you accept dualism (that there is some 'you' separate from the wetware in your head) you are always going to have this problem. A copy of 'you' would onl
by indiecore 14y ago
Unless you accept dualism (that there is some 'you' separate from the wetware in your head) you are always going to have this problem. A copy of 'you' would only sync with 'you' for an infinitesimal amount of time before you both diverged. The two 'yous' both have valid claim to everything before the Split but afterwards you are effectively two different people.
- jlgreco 14y agoThis is where the following thought experiment comes in: Imagine science advances to the point where medical science can replace individual brain cells with perfect robot replicas. These robot cells interact with surrounding cells in exactly the same way as the real ones and can be initialized with the state of the real cell they are replacing. They're small though, so all the real computation work they may need to do is offloaded to a computer (over radio signals perhaps, or whatever.) Perhaps we can even optimize their operation such that communication with other robot cells that may happen to be next to it takes place inside the computers modelling both cells, instead of actually firing off the connection "for real". Preform this operation once, and few would argue that the mind in question has died, been replicated, ceased to operate and been replaced with another... anything. It's just the same mind. If you are willing to accept that (and if you're not, we'll just have to disagree), then preform the operation again. And again. And again. This is what sodiumphosphate was referring to by "metamorphosis", and it does not require dualism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Human_body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Human_body
- Rhapso 14y agoWe all really want to accept this idea. It is inviting. Not accepting it has a lot of scary implications. If small changes in the matter that makes up my mind "kills" me, then what happens when my body naturally replaces parts. In neurons, the whole cell is rarely replaced, but all components of it all, none of the atoms are there forever, it is only a matter of scale to replace neurons with "working replicas". So, accept that somewhere along the way of "perfect replicas" I think you stop being the same person for any rational reason, then by scaling that reason down simply changing out atoms in the natural process of life kills "me" just as surely.
- jlgreco 14y ago"No man ever steps in the same river twice" Replacement with the subtly different is interpreted by our minds as "change". You no more "die" when the cells or atoms in your brain are replaced than a river dries up when all the water molecules you could see at one point in time flow away.
- Rhapso 14y agoExactly. "You no more "die" when the cells or atoms in your brain are replaced than a river dries up when all the water molecules you could see at one point in time flow away." when we find a way to measure this little death relative to the bigger more permanent one we can make interesting arguments. My advice, assume the transporter/uploading-machine will kill you. You will use it anyway for the same reason you use a credit card at the grocery store or corner market, you will be worried that the people behind you will be annoyed by the delay caused from your hesitation and the person who comes out the other side will not begrudge you for creating them.
- jlgreco 14y agoIf you want to define change to be a type of death, go ahead. As far as I can tell your position is philosophically sound though I disagree that it is makes for interesting discussion.
- fallous 14y agoThe difference is that the original you exists on a consistent space-time arc. Copy of you diverges from that, and becomes not you. To external observers, not you appears to be exactly like you but it isn't you because your mind is a process that is tied to that arc. Not you starts as you but then operates within alternate time-space arc.
- jlgreco 14y agoIn the case of metamorphosis there is only one "you" at any point in time. The concept of divergence doesn't make any sense if there is only one you. Diverge from what?
- gaius 14y agoIt would need to be really exactly the same, otherwise it is actually just a damaged neuron and the rest of the brain will continue normally, working around it just as it would a normally dying cell. Until some tipping point was reached, and what would you be - perhaps a read-only version of yourself?
- jlgreco 14y agoEh, I think of it more as a thought experiment than an engineering proposal.
- gaius 14y agoIt hinges not on engineering (the mechanism for inserting an artificial cell and it communicating with an external computer) but whether consciousness is computable in a Turing machine. The new "you" might be deterministic.
- jlgreco 14y agoI am very confident that humans do not represent nor contain a model of computation greater than Turing Machines.
- gaius 14y agoCan a human solve the Halting Problem (without necessarily being able to express that solution as a program)? Does even recognizing the Halting Problem take us out of what is computable?
- indiecore 14y agouh. I wasn't disagreeing with you...?