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Sigh. Not that I don't love the idea of revolutionary technology, but the very idea betrays what seems to me a fundamental misunderstanding: Man, as in mankin
by Cushman 14y ago
Sigh.
Not that I don't love the idea of revolutionary technology, but the very idea betrays what seems to me a fundamental misunderstanding:
Man, as in mankind, already is immortal. We seem to stand a decent chance of outliving our star, anyway.
The desire for one individual, by which we really mean the one ephemeral brain-state that happens to exist at this moment, never to cease to be seems positively juvenile. For life to be, change must happen; for change to happen, that which is must end. Demanding that thought continue to happen according to my design is a selfish idea of the mind that shouldn't make intuitive sense to anyone with a materialistic conception of consciousness.
- philh 14y ago> one individual, by which we really mean the one ephemeral brain-state that happens to exist at this moment No we don't. What we really mean is hard to pin down, but it's not that (at least not in this context). I have friends, and every ten minutes they're in a different brain state; but they're still the same person, more or less, and I would be sad if they were to die but I don't get sad when a particular brain state ceases to exist.
- Cushman 14y agoThere are discontinuities in brain state we are willing to accept: sleep, drug use, travelling the world for a year. There are those we are not: Death, Alzheimer's, radical personality change. Have you ever known someone who got in a relationship, or went to a foreign country, or took a job that seemed to really change who they were? Has that ever made you sad? What do you think it means to grow apart? You don't want your friends to die, but you also don't want them to change so much that they aren't your friends any more. Death is a very great and permanent discontinuity, but nothing else about it makes it special.