4 ms·

A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied.

by mikk14 5mo ago

A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves. Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.

amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.
- mikk14 5mo ago
  I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.
energy123 5mo ago
Imagine you are destroyed in your sleep by aliens and replaced by an atomically identical duplicate. Would you call this "you"? If not, what if the aliens recycled the atoms from your original body to make the new body, putting each original atom into the same original spot with the same position and momentum (ignoring quantum and uncertainty principle). What if they recycled 99% of the atoms from your original body, but swapped 1% of them for different atoms? What if they only destroyed 5% of your brain and reassembled that destroyed portion, leaving the rest of you untouched? What about 50%? What if they waited 1 planck moment before reassembling you versus 5 seconds? Where is your dividing line in this scenario space between "that's really me" versus "that's just a copy and is not really me" ? The functionalist answer, as I understand it, is fungibility across time and copies when arriving at definitions of words like "you". The functionalist answer is not that > 1 copy can communicate telepathically or supernaturally share experiences is a dualist sense. They are still causally independent physical entities.
- mikk14 5mo ago
  None of these scenarios would result in "me" from a monist perspective. The destruction is a discontinuity point, I died there and then, and then the next planck moment a new being was created with all my memories. But "I" died. The functionalist answer, as you understand it, is dualist. It says "something" survived the utter complete destruction of the physical body and was "put back in it" once it was reassembled. If "it" survived the complete physical destruction of the body, it must be somewhere else, detached from the body. And, you know, there's really nothing wrong being dualist. I do not mean to denigrate that specific worldview. What is problematic is claiming to be a staunch monist while holding dualist positions.
  - energy123 5mo ago
    What if they destroyed and reassembled only 0.5% of your brain? What's your dividing line? 0.36%? 0.0188%? > The functionalist answer, as you understand it, is dualist. I think you're misunderstanding that words are social constructs which can point to abstract categories rather than necessarily single concrete objects at a particular moment in time (although words can also do that). Like if you have multiple tennis balls, each ball is still a tennis ball, despite each ball being different, because "tennis ball" is a social construct and an abstraction that's an indirection to a certain concept. In the worldview I am talking about, the word "you" is an indirection to a mind that is indistinguishable in content and experience from the one you have right now, with the property of fungibility across modalities, time and space.
    - mikk14 5mo ago
      > What if they destroyed and reassembled only 0.5% of your brain? What's your dividing line? 0.36%? 0.0188%? Apologies, I read too quickly and skipped over this. See one of my sibling comments. I concede this is problematic for my position and I need to think harder on how to solve it, but I don't think it's unsolvable. The placeholder answer is that there must be a certain level of damage -- the precise % probably doesn't matter as much as exactly which parts you destroy -- that is incompatible with keeping continuity. For the rest, as a social construct, if we incinerate me to create a clone of me that is identical to the original at the subatomic level I agree that, for everyone else in society, it is me. But my self has still died and whatever replaced it is having its own experiences. And it matters very little what everybody else thinks: if tomorrow an imposter convinces everybody else that they are me, they aren't me for me. Their experiences aren't magically beamed to my brain. Your tennis ball example is again a textbook dualist position. You can have a tennis match with different balls which is functionally identical to have it with the same ball, because the ball in the game is an abstraction that lives _outside_ the ball itself. But, assuming balls can feel when they are hit by the racket, the ball you used in the previous point and now is lying on the sideline does not feel being hit when the next point starts with another ball.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
innin 5mo ago
There is no prove that continuity really matters. In fact who goes to say that your current conscious self is the same as your self from five minutes ago. After all you do not feel what they felt. The only thing that makes you think that the two are related or even the same is your state (memories, emotions). Why would we even think about whether cloning is able to transmit consciousness when we don’t even know if consciousness is transmitted over time? Edit: Just to clarify my opinion: This means that the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and my current self and the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and a clone of that self that aged the same amount would be equivalent. Both of us would _not_ be the same as my past self
- prmph 5mo ago
  In that case you don't exist, since there is no such thing as "current". Every moment in time is either past or future, assuming time is continuous. The reals are infinitely infinite.
  - soopypoos 5mo ago
    if time is continuous, there are no moments
  - pixl97 5mo ago
    Hey, looks like you're finally starting to catch on to the trick the consciousness plays on you. consciousness always exists in the past of reality around you. It is a physical process with an execution time. Light takes nanoseconds to get to your eyes. The chemical reactions in your eyes take milliseconds. Then you have that signal getting to your visual cortex. Then your brain takes a while and shoves a bunch of shit it assumes is there from pattern matching taking its own number of milliseconds. Eventually this is passed up to your consciousness to interpret 'long' after it actually happened. But you can make it even more screwy from that point that totally screw with your perception of time. Even more fun are drugs that keep you conscious but keep you from recording short term memories so it's like that time never existed. You are but a chemical dream upon meat hardware.

by mikk14 5mo ago

amanaplanacanal 5mo ago

Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.

mikk14 5mo ago
I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.

energy123 5mo ago

Imagine you are destroyed in your sleep by aliens and replaced by an atomically identical duplicate. Would you call this "you"? If not, what if the aliens recycled the atoms from your original body to make the new body, putting each original atom into the same original spot with the same position and momentum (ignoring quantum and uncertainty principle). What if they recycled 99% of the atoms from your original body, but swapped 1% of them for different atoms? What if they only destroyed 5% of your brain and reassembled that destroyed portion, leaving the rest of you untouched? What about 50%? What if they waited 1 planck moment before reassembling you versus 5 seconds? Where is your dividing line in this scenario space between "that's really me" versus "that's just a copy and is not really me" ? The functionalist answer, as I understand it, is fungibility across time and copies when arriving at definitions of words like "you". The functionalist answer is not that > 1 copy can communicate telepathically or supernaturally share experiences is a dualist sense. They are still causally independent physical entities.

mikk14 5mo ago
None of these scenarios would result in "me" from a monist perspective. The destruction is a discontinuity point, I died there and then, and then the next planck moment a new being was created with all my memories. But "I" died. The functionalist answer, as you understand it, is dualist. It says "something" survived the utter complete destruction of the physical body and was "put back in it" once it was reassembled. If "it" survived the complete physical destruction of the body, it must be somewhere else, detached from the body. And, you know, there's really nothing wrong being dualist. I do not mean to denigrate that specific worldview. What is problematic is claiming to be a staunch monist while holding dualist positions.
- energy123 5mo ago
  What if they destroyed and reassembled only 0.5% of your brain? What's your dividing line? 0.36%? 0.0188%? > The functionalist answer, as you understand it, is dualist. I think you're misunderstanding that words are social constructs which can point to abstract categories rather than necessarily single concrete objects at a particular moment in time (although words can also do that). Like if you have multiple tennis balls, each ball is still a tennis ball, despite each ball being different, because "tennis ball" is a social construct and an abstraction that's an indirection to a certain concept. In the worldview I am talking about, the word "you" is an indirection to a mind that is indistinguishable in content and experience from the one you have right now, with the property of fungibility across modalities, time and space.
  - mikk14 5mo ago
    > What if they destroyed and reassembled only 0.5% of your brain? What's your dividing line? 0.36%? 0.0188%? Apologies, I read too quickly and skipped over this. See one of my sibling comments. I concede this is problematic for my position and I need to think harder on how to solve it, but I don't think it's unsolvable. The placeholder answer is that there must be a certain level of damage -- the precise % probably doesn't matter as much as exactly which parts you destroy -- that is incompatible with keeping continuity. For the rest, as a social construct, if we incinerate me to create a clone of me that is identical to the original at the subatomic level I agree that, for everyone else in society, it is me. But my self has still died and whatever replaced it is having its own experiences. And it matters very little what everybody else thinks: if tomorrow an imposter convinces everybody else that they are me, they aren't me for me. Their experiences aren't magically beamed to my brain. Your tennis ball example is again a textbook dualist position. You can have a tennis match with different balls which is functionally identical to have it with the same ball, because the ball in the game is an abstraction that lives _outside_ the ball itself. But, assuming balls can feel when they are hit by the racket, the ball you used in the previous point and now is lying on the sideline does not feel being hit when the next point starts with another ball.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

innin 5mo ago

There is no prove that continuity really matters. In fact who goes to say that your current conscious self is the same as your self from five minutes ago. After all you do not feel what they felt. The only thing that makes you think that the two are related or even the same is your state (memories, emotions). Why would we even think about whether cloning is able to transmit consciousness when we don’t even know if consciousness is transmitted over time? Edit: Just to clarify my opinion: This means that the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and my current self and the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and a clone of that self that aged the same amount would be equivalent. Both of us would _not_ be the same as my past self

prmph 5mo ago
In that case you don't exist, since there is no such thing as "current". Every moment in time is either past or future, assuming time is continuous. The reals are infinitely infinite.
- soopypoos 5mo ago
  if time is continuous, there are no moments
- pixl97 5mo ago
  Hey, looks like you're finally starting to catch on to the trick the consciousness plays on you. consciousness always exists in the past of reality around you. It is a physical process with an execution time. Light takes nanoseconds to get to your eyes. The chemical reactions in your eyes take milliseconds. Then you have that signal getting to your visual cortex. Then your brain takes a while and shoves a bunch of shit it assumes is there from pattern matching taking its own number of milliseconds. Eventually this is passed up to your consciousness to interpret 'long' after it actually happened. But you can make it even more screwy from that point that totally screw with your perception of time. Even more fun are drugs that keep you conscious but keep you from recording short term memories so it's like that time never existed. You are but a chemical dream upon meat hardware.