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> It has been said that [1] Star Trek: The Next Generation was the last sci-fi hopeful. two recent movies come to mind that seem essentially hopeful about the
by exit 12y ago
> It has been said that [1] Star Trek: The Next Generation was the last sci-fi hopeful.
two recent movies come to mind that seem essentially hopeful about the future.
Her - if you focus on the background here you'll notice all socioeconomic problems have been solved, all labor seems rewarding and creative.
Transcendence - in which humanity fails to embrace the salvation offered by technology.
both films culminate with a technological singularity. the future is positive and hopeful just as in Star Trek, but unlike Star Trek it won't be recognizably human.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoBut doesn't the singularity really mean 'everybody dies in the end'? Maybe something other than hopeful.
- tedunangst 12y agoOnly the peons die. All the people who matter, like myself, will transfer their consciousness and live forever.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoAgain, 'transfer their consciousness' means 'die, but somewhere a machine remembers what it was like to be you'. Like an animated, responsive epitaph on your gravestone. Still, you die.
- deciplex 12y agoIt's not a foregone conclusion that with sufficiently exotic technology you can't transfer your mind from the form of a human brain to that of some synthetic thing, all without disrupting your phenomenal experience. However, if you can do that, it also seems like you could split your consciousness in two, while making the transition seamless for each. In effect, not just a copy of your 'mind' but a copy of your 'self'. I'm not sure what to make of that.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoI know. The computer simulation lives on; you eventually die.
- deciplex 12y agoYou're not being imaginative enough. 'Mind uploading' need not be some passive process that merely copies the current state of your brain and runs it in an emulator somewhere. You could, for example, hook your brain up to some machine which would replace parts of it, bit by bit, bringing that functionality into an emulator 'gradually', while creating an interface with the still-physical parts of the brain such that the thing functions the same as the physical brain did before, only with part of it still using the old hardware, and the other part running in the emulator. Continue this process until the entire brain - and perhaps even the entire nervous system or body - has been brought into the emulator. Now you're virtualized. It's obviously extremely speculative, but all the same I can't find any point in a process like this, where your phenomenal consciousness would be disrupted.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoSo you die gradually? Hard to say. But looking just at the body, I see it degrading functionality and sliding, like senility, into a non-functional state. Dead.