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I think you completely missed the point. What you are calling his argument, is not his argument. The point is this: > I don't see how transferring my brain to

by javert 13y ago

I think you completely missed the point. What you are calling his argument, is not his argument. The point is this: > I don't see how transferring my brain to a computer does anything for me. I don't want a copy of me to live forever, I want to live forever myself. Copying someone's brain is, unambiguously, a copy of that person. The original still dies. I'm the original. I don't want a copy of me to live forever. That doesn't do anything for me. I want to live forever.

Udo 13y ago
I don't think I'm missing the point as such, it's rather that my position is just sufficiently aggravating it looks from your perspective as if I didn't see your core problem. I'm painfully aware of the point you are trying to make, and no, I still don't agree with the premise behind it. Death is two things: your mind stops being executed, and the information making up your mind is being destroyed. Neither of these things happens to an uploaded person if the upload is sufficiently recent. If you make a copy of yourself, they're both you. If you make a working copy of a dead person, that means there is still a you after the whole thing. People wonder about strange things like continuity of consciousness, which does not exist to begin with, but it's always invoked nevertheless. How will it feel to be duplicated? And the hidden assumption is that by describing the proposed weirdness of the feeling it will somehow contradict and disprove the feasibility of the whole concept. What it feels like to be duplicated will very much depend on the external circumstances at that time. If you get run over by a bus and wake up in a piece of silicon, that's how it will be. If you step into a matter replicator or a non-destructive scanner, you'll suddenly look at another instance of yourself. Twice. None of these things are spacetime-shattering paradoxons. The notion of an "original" and a "copy" is not even applicable if the copy isn't degraded somehow. - In closing I think I made a serious mistake during this whole discussion. Instead of challenging people to justify why they believe "a copy of you isn't you", I made the error of trying to explain why I think this is wrong - as opposed to you guys having to explain why you believe this is right. I just realized that nothing I wrote here today was actually accessible or useful to anyone and I'm actually turning into losethos as I realize that I'm producing content that makes no sense to anyone. ;)
- javert 13y ago
  No, your argument is not what is aggravating. Don't assume someone disagrees with you just because your argument is aggravating. What is aggravating is that you claim to be getting the point, but you're not. > Death is two things: your mind stops being executed, and the information making up your mind is being destroyed. Neither of these things happens to an uploaded person if the upload is sufficiently recent. This is an improper reduction. If you want to extend the computer analogy: If I die, a particular instance of my mind's execution goes away forever. You may argue that that doesn't matter for some reason (perhaps by analogy to going to sleep and then waking up, as I do every day), but you have to first accept the that it is a fact. Your account pretends that it isn't a fact. For example: > The notion of an "original" and a "copy" is not even applicable if the copy isn't degraded somehow. This ignores the fact that a copy is a different instance.
Houshalter 13y ago
A copy of you IS you. Replacing all that atoms in your brain and you would still be the same person. Likewise if you built another out of different atoms.
- javert 13y ago
  This is obviously false. In certain respects it is true, but not in all respects. It is the non-true respects that I am concerned about.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    What is false about it? How is a copy of you not obviously you? The physical material your brain is made out of doesn't matter. I could swap it all with different material and you wouldn't even notice. It could be happening every 1 second and you wouldn't have any idea. The universe would be exactly the same as far as you are concerned. Hell we happen to live in a universe where it doesn't even make a difference. Atoms don't have little tags saying "atom 1265". And your physical make up does change all the time. It's not the physical material that is important. It is the information in it, the pattern or algorithm that represents your consciousness.
    - javert 13y ago
      My life and my consciousness is a continuous, ongoing, self-sustaining process. If you make a copy of me, that is a different instance of that process. An analogy can be made between two instances of a program running on a computer, or two instances of a particular class in OO programming. Ultimately, all of my values reduce to physical pain and pleasure and the anticipation of my continued and increasing ability to experience more pleasure than pain. Sure, I have lots of higher-level, "spiritual" values, but the underlying biological process is what makes those possible. I have no biological or higher-level (rational) reason to care about a different instance of my body and consciousness. I only care about this one. When I go to sleep, I am putting my conscious mental life on hold, but not my physical life. And I know that my concsiousness will resume in a few hours when I wake up. So making a copy of yourself and killing the original is not obviously analogous to sleeping.

by javert 13y ago

Udo 13y ago

I don't think I'm missing the point as such, it's rather that my position is just sufficiently aggravating it looks from your perspective as if I didn't see your core problem. I'm painfully aware of the point you are trying to make, and no, I still don't agree with the premise behind it. Death is two things: your mind stops being executed, and the information making up your mind is being destroyed. Neither of these things happens to an uploaded person if the upload is sufficiently recent. If you make a copy of yourself, they're both you. If you make a working copy of a dead person, that means there is still a you after the whole thing. People wonder about strange things like continuity of consciousness, which does not exist to begin with, but it's always invoked nevertheless. How will it feel to be duplicated? And the hidden assumption is that by describing the proposed weirdness of the feeling it will somehow contradict and disprove the feasibility of the whole concept. What it feels like to be duplicated will very much depend on the external circumstances at that time. If you get run over by a bus and wake up in a piece of silicon, that's how it will be. If you step into a matter replicator or a non-destructive scanner, you'll suddenly look at another instance of yourself. Twice. None of these things are spacetime-shattering paradoxons. The notion of an "original" and a "copy" is not even applicable if the copy isn't degraded somehow. - In closing I think I made a serious mistake during this whole discussion. Instead of challenging people to justify why they believe "a copy of you isn't you", I made the error of trying to explain why I think this is wrong - as opposed to you guys having to explain why you believe this is right. I just realized that nothing I wrote here today was actually accessible or useful to anyone and I'm actually turning into losethos as I realize that I'm producing content that makes no sense to anyone. ;)

javert 13y ago
No, your argument is not what is aggravating. Don't assume someone disagrees with you just because your argument is aggravating. What is aggravating is that you claim to be getting the point, but you're not. > Death is two things: your mind stops being executed, and the information making up your mind is being destroyed. Neither of these things happens to an uploaded person if the upload is sufficiently recent. This is an improper reduction. If you want to extend the computer analogy: If I die, a particular instance of my mind's execution goes away forever. You may argue that that doesn't matter for some reason (perhaps by analogy to going to sleep and then waking up, as I do every day), but you have to first accept the that it is a fact. Your account pretends that it isn't a fact. For example: > The notion of an "original" and a "copy" is not even applicable if the copy isn't degraded somehow. This ignores the fact that a copy is a different instance.

Houshalter 13y ago

A copy of you IS you. Replacing all that atoms in your brain and you would still be the same person. Likewise if you built another out of different atoms.

javert 13y ago
This is obviously false. In certain respects it is true, but not in all respects. It is the non-true respects that I am concerned about.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  What is false about it? How is a copy of you not obviously you? The physical material your brain is made out of doesn't matter. I could swap it all with different material and you wouldn't even notice. It could be happening every 1 second and you wouldn't have any idea. The universe would be exactly the same as far as you are concerned. Hell we happen to live in a universe where it doesn't even make a difference. Atoms don't have little tags saying "atom 1265". And your physical make up does change all the time. It's not the physical material that is important. It is the information in it, the pattern or algorithm that represents your consciousness.
  - javert 13y ago
    My life and my consciousness is a continuous, ongoing, self-sustaining process. If you make a copy of me, that is a different instance of that process. An analogy can be made between two instances of a program running on a computer, or two instances of a particular class in OO programming. Ultimately, all of my values reduce to physical pain and pleasure and the anticipation of my continued and increasing ability to experience more pleasure than pain. Sure, I have lots of higher-level, "spiritual" values, but the underlying biological process is what makes those possible. I have no biological or higher-level (rational) reason to care about a different instance of my body and consciousness. I only care about this one. When I go to sleep, I am putting my conscious mental life on hold, but not my physical life. And I know that my concsiousness will resume in a few hours when I wake up. So making a copy of yourself and killing the original is not obviously analogous to sleeping.