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"upload consciousness" is just a meaningless juxtaposition of words, the modern pseudo-intellectual crank lexicon. One might as well say, in other ears: "captu

"upload consciousness" is just a meaningless juxtaposition of words, the modern pseudo-intellectual crank lexicon. One might as well say, in other ears: "capture personality with cathode rays" or "compress the fluid of the soul" or or "render oneself in brass automata" or "bottle the element of the mind". It is essentially an argument from ignorance combined with an argument from authority: "look what we've discovered! we dont know it's implications! here's some implications (sprinkled with academa-bable)".

m0th87 13y ago
This is an ongoing debate in science and philosophy, so it's certainly not a meaningless juxtaposition of words. The counter-arguments against Searle's Chinese room argument alone should be enough to put the handwaving to bed.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  EDIT: Whoops, replied to the wrong comment. I meant to reply to the apparent Searle adherent. You are going overboard in the other direction. Cochlear implants show that machines can talk to brains without an abstraction other than an electric signal. It's a long way from there to living even partly "in" a machine, but that was kind of my point.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
I find it disheartening that this "hyper-skeptical" brand of pseudo-intellectualism has taken hold in certain circles. Suppressing imagination and foresight in favor of a cold reverence to facts is misguided. Creativity and vision (along with need) is the driver of scientific progress; you cannot have one without the other. So dismissing thought experiments and speculation as "meaningless juxtaposition of words" is utterly missing the point of everything that has been accomplished by scientific progress thus far. It doesn't take much of a leap at all in fact to realize that uploading one's consciousness to a virtual world is very plausible. If the meaningful stuff of consciousness is information rather than matter, it is in fact a certainty. Of course, questions of whether you're uploading your consciousness rather than a copy abound, but I think there are solutions to even that issue (which I've discussed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/237qqj/kurzweils_idea_of_minduploading_now_an_integral/cgumytp http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/237qqj/kurzweils...)
- negativity 13y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I think the word "consciousness" holds very different meanings for different people. I don't think you're interpretting the word in the same way other people do. Furthermore, after reading the comment you linked to, I disagree with the premise of gradually replacing each organic neuron with a synthetic surrogate. But, hey, if you're into the idea of slowly eroding your central nervous system, and back-filling the tissue with a machine that picks up the slack, I won't stop you. The remnants won't be you though. If we amputate a goldfish from it's brain, and the body continues to be guided by an electronic apparatus, the gold fish is no more. The husk that remains is a grotesque puppet. If, as my parents were slowly debilitated by alzheimers, they elected to supplement their mental functions with computer assistance, I would regard them as I might regard a dead animal that was stuffed and mounted. There is no such experience as climbing inside the circuits of a computer to experience immortality. There is no such experience as slowly disolving one's self into a mixture of microscopic machinery, after which we suddenly blink our eyes and become miraculous robots. We die. The robot blinks, and masquerades as us for the benefit of the living. Nothing more.
  - pedrosorio 13y ago
    But if instead of replacing your neurons with "a mixture of microscopic machinery", you replace them with other neurons, you remain yourself (instead of becoming a stuffed animal)? Care to explain why? Because the essence of humanity is in the exact molecules that make up neurons? What if we replace some of the atoms in these molecules by different isotopes? (a common practice for studying metabolism, including in human brains: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/) Does the person remain human, then? Where do you draw the line and what is the reasoning behind it?
    - negativity 13y ago
      Because I have yet to see any product of human effort come close to the scale of complexity that cellular tissues represent. Current-generation electronic systems are very complicated, and convincing "life-like" behavior still seems to be out of reach. Even if we eventually manage to produce systems that engage in sufficiently convincing life-like behavior, that bridges any sort of uncanny-valley gaps, there will still be a confusing grey area between truly sentient Life, and deceptively convincing complex apparatuses which are not alive. Even to reach the grey area will demand large collaborative teams of skilled and talented experts. If breathing life into a complex system represents a challenge above and beyond the Manhattan Project or the Apollo moon missions, how will we ever decide who benefits from the fruits of such labor? Are human beings capable of sharing such a thing? These things will not be toys. They would be more controversial than genetically modified foods. If a tissue replacement technology were to be implemented, would it be self-replicating and autonomous? If so, would it possibly be infectious? Or would it be so durable that it wouldn't need to repair itself? Would it's many tiny components communicate with one another? Could the communication be intercepted and disrupted? These are huge problems. Even if one very powerful HAL 9000 system solves all these problems for us, and manages to devise a scheme to mass produce a practical inorganic replacement for neurological tissue, isn't it possible that such an expert system might have an agenda of its own that does not represent lesser human interests like immortality? Wouldn't it require a similar leap of faith to trust in a technology with a purpose that can only be rationalized and not proven? For these reasons, I place my bets on biotechnology, using native human cells, and not electronic surrogates. If I know that I am alive, and that typical organic cells produce this phenomenon of experience, and it's within our reach to manipulate stem cells to repair our brains and keep them alive without any upper age limits, then I'll choose the sure thing, before placing faith in any experimental electronic surrogate.
graeham 13y ago
The impossibility of an "uploaded mind" relies on the assumption that there is something special about the mechanisms behind the human brain's function that cannot be replicated in a machine (including an artificial, organic computer). The brain's function would have to the the result of something other than the structure and organisation of its biology. (Probably the people who believe in the possibility of minds in machines would argue 'souls' and 'personality' are also purely functions of the underlying biology and learning, and thus could also be made artificially). "Consciousness" itself is tricky to define, as it is essentially defined only by the experience of the evaluator. We are little further in our understanding then Descarte's, "I think, therefore I am". Our evaluation of the consciousness of other entities is limited to traits in them that we see in ourselves. "It thinks like me, therefore it is, too." Hence the appeal of the Turing's Imitation Game to evaluate artificial intelligence.
- jakobe 13y ago
  > relies on the assumption that there is something special about the mechanisms behind the human brain's function Imagine someone spilled the contents of a large trash in a pile on the floor. Now it is your task to create an exact replica of this pile. There was absolutely nothing special going on when that pile of trash was generated, and yet it is impossible to replicate. Sure, you can create similar piles of trash by spilling other trash cans on the floor, or you can carefully arrange banana peels an half-filled soda cans to create a pile that looks similar from the surface. But generate an exact copy? No way.
  - graeham 13y ago
    It depends on how 'exact' exact is. For a brain, there are a finite number of neurons with a finite number of dendrites and axons. A quick search suggests 2.5 pentabytes (2.5 million GB) of storage http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory.... So about 2.5 thousand hard drives, so not an unreasonable amount of complexity to deal with today. Your argument seems to suggest there is some finite level of complexity which is the limit of engineering. What is this limit and how is it justified? If our ability to scale to complex systems scales linearly, this could take a very long time. If it follows a power law (like Moore's Law), it could be feasibly much faster. The trash argument is weak because the pile serves an identical function regardless of how exact or inexact it is. Probably the challenge is not in making an artificial brain, it is in reading a current one (especially one that is living without damaging it).

m0th87 13y ago

This is an ongoing debate in science and philosophy, so it's certainly not a meaningless juxtaposition of words. The counter-arguments against Searle's Chinese room argument alone should be enough to put the handwaving to bed.

Zigurd 13y ago
EDIT: Whoops, replied to the wrong comment. I meant to reply to the apparent Searle adherent. You are going overboard in the other direction. Cochlear implants show that machines can talk to brains without an abstraction other than an electric signal. It's a long way from there to living even partly "in" a machine, but that was kind of my point.

hackinthebochs 13y ago

I find it disheartening that this "hyper-skeptical" brand of pseudo-intellectualism has taken hold in certain circles. Suppressing imagination and foresight in favor of a cold reverence to facts is misguided. Creativity and vision (along with need) is the driver of scientific progress; you cannot have one without the other. So dismissing thought experiments and speculation as "meaningless juxtaposition of words" is utterly missing the point of everything that has been accomplished by scientific progress thus far. It doesn't take much of a leap at all in fact to realize that uploading one's consciousness to a virtual world is very plausible. If the meaningful stuff of consciousness is information rather than matter, it is in fact a certainty. Of course, questions of whether you're uploading your consciousness rather than a copy abound, but I think there are solutions to even that issue (which I've discussed here: http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/237qqj/kurzweils_idea_of_minduploading_now_an_integral/cgumytp http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/237qqj/kurzweils...)

negativity 13y ago
What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I think the word "consciousness" holds very different meanings for different people. I don't think you're interpretting the word in the same way other people do. Furthermore, after reading the comment you linked to, I disagree with the premise of gradually replacing each organic neuron with a synthetic surrogate. But, hey, if you're into the idea of slowly eroding your central nervous system, and back-filling the tissue with a machine that picks up the slack, I won't stop you. The remnants won't be you though. If we amputate a goldfish from it's brain, and the body continues to be guided by an electronic apparatus, the gold fish is no more. The husk that remains is a grotesque puppet. If, as my parents were slowly debilitated by alzheimers, they elected to supplement their mental functions with computer assistance, I would regard them as I might regard a dead animal that was stuffed and mounted. There is no such experience as climbing inside the circuits of a computer to experience immortality. There is no such experience as slowly disolving one's self into a mixture of microscopic machinery, after which we suddenly blink our eyes and become miraculous robots. We die. The robot blinks, and masquerades as us for the benefit of the living. Nothing more.
- pedrosorio 13y ago
  But if instead of replacing your neurons with "a mixture of microscopic machinery", you replace them with other neurons, you remain yourself (instead of becoming a stuffed animal)? Care to explain why? Because the essence of humanity is in the exact molecules that make up neurons? What if we replace some of the atoms in these molecules by different isotopes? (a common practice for studying metabolism, including in human brains: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/) Does the person remain human, then? Where do you draw the line and what is the reasoning behind it?
  - negativity 13y ago
    Because I have yet to see any product of human effort come close to the scale of complexity that cellular tissues represent. Current-generation electronic systems are very complicated, and convincing "life-like" behavior still seems to be out of reach. Even if we eventually manage to produce systems that engage in sufficiently convincing life-like behavior, that bridges any sort of uncanny-valley gaps, there will still be a confusing grey area between truly sentient Life, and deceptively convincing complex apparatuses which are not alive. Even to reach the grey area will demand large collaborative teams of skilled and talented experts. If breathing life into a complex system represents a challenge above and beyond the Manhattan Project or the Apollo moon missions, how will we ever decide who benefits from the fruits of such labor? Are human beings capable of sharing such a thing? These things will not be toys. They would be more controversial than genetically modified foods. If a tissue replacement technology were to be implemented, would it be self-replicating and autonomous? If so, would it possibly be infectious? Or would it be so durable that it wouldn't need to repair itself? Would it's many tiny components communicate with one another? Could the communication be intercepted and disrupted? These are huge problems. Even if one very powerful HAL 9000 system solves all these problems for us, and manages to devise a scheme to mass produce a practical inorganic replacement for neurological tissue, isn't it possible that such an expert system might have an agenda of its own that does not represent lesser human interests like immortality? Wouldn't it require a similar leap of faith to trust in a technology with a purpose that can only be rationalized and not proven? For these reasons, I place my bets on biotechnology, using native human cells, and not electronic surrogates. If I know that I am alive, and that typical organic cells produce this phenomenon of experience, and it's within our reach to manipulate stem cells to repair our brains and keep them alive without any upper age limits, then I'll choose the sure thing, before placing faith in any experimental electronic surrogate.

graeham 13y ago

The impossibility of an "uploaded mind" relies on the assumption that there is something special about the mechanisms behind the human brain's function that cannot be replicated in a machine (including an artificial, organic computer). The brain's function would have to the the result of something other than the structure and organisation of its biology. (Probably the people who believe in the possibility of minds in machines would argue 'souls' and 'personality' are also purely functions of the underlying biology and learning, and thus could also be made artificially). "Consciousness" itself is tricky to define, as it is essentially defined only by the experience of the evaluator. We are little further in our understanding then Descarte's, "I think, therefore I am". Our evaluation of the consciousness of other entities is limited to traits in them that we see in ourselves. "It thinks like me, therefore it is, too." Hence the appeal of the Turing's Imitation Game to evaluate artificial intelligence.

jakobe 13y ago
> relies on the assumption that there is something special about the mechanisms behind the human brain's function Imagine someone spilled the contents of a large trash in a pile on the floor. Now it is your task to create an exact replica of this pile. There was absolutely nothing special going on when that pile of trash was generated, and yet it is impossible to replicate. Sure, you can create similar piles of trash by spilling other trash cans on the floor, or you can carefully arrange banana peels an half-filled soda cans to create a pile that looks similar from the surface. But generate an exact copy? No way.
- graeham 13y ago
  It depends on how 'exact' exact is. For a brain, there are a finite number of neurons with a finite number of dendrites and axons. A quick search suggests 2.5 pentabytes (2.5 million GB) of storage http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory.... So about 2.5 thousand hard drives, so not an unreasonable amount of complexity to deal with today. Your argument seems to suggest there is some finite level of complexity which is the limit of engineering. What is this limit and how is it justified? If our ability to scale to complex systems scales linearly, this could take a very long time. If it follows a power law (like Moore's Law), it could be feasibly much faster. The trash argument is weak because the pile serves an identical function regardless of how exact or inexact it is. Probably the challenge is not in making an artificial brain, it is in reading a current one (especially one that is living without damaging it).