From: Christofer Bullsmith (c_bullsmith@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jun 25 2002 - 01:42:46 MDT
A question for the 'extropians'. (Apologies if this discussion has been had
-- please direct me to it).
Much of the discussion here talks about 'uploading'. Apparently we're all
'currently uploaded to the meat in our heads' (a paraphrase of part of one
of the posts). OK, so the essential 'me' is taken to be information, or a
program if you will, which can be executed on a next-generation
super-computer, a bowlful of meat jelly, or by a diligent but uninspired
clerk with a very long toilet roll and a pencil. Then, the continuing
existence of this information, so long as it is (help me out here -- what
conditions do you have in mind?) held ready to be used in calculation, or
perhaps continues to be used to process other information (the kind that
right now is flowing in through your senses and washing around the meat
jelly), is taken to be the continuance of the essential 'me'. And hence we
find posts about 'when I'm uploaded', 'after I'm uploaded I'll', etc.
And so we have found immortality.
Now, I think these words are being used in different ways in this forum, but
bear with me. Humans can be emulated (their input-output pattern reproduced,
say by a digital computer), or simulated (modelled beyond the input-output
level, perhaps given a digestion and so on, to whatever level and for
whatever purpose one has in mind).
Neither being emulated (by my friend's kid, nor by a roll of toilet paper
and a diligent clerk) nor simulated (by a media double or an android)
constitutes duplication of 'me'. I might feel a certain pseudo-paternal
pride as the emulating child enters the world or the toilet-paper/clerk
system delivers something interpretatable as an answer I would give, I might
even be given goose-bumps by my doppleganger, but when I (you all might say:
'this body') run down and die, no amount of doppleganging or toilet-papering
will add up to 'my' act.
So far as I can see, uploading is no route to immortality. I might play a
crucial causal role in the creation of a machine intelligence, but I die
anyway.
Now, I've been trying to figure out why you all feel differently. Maybe if
the upload scanning is invasive and results in destruction of the body, we
intuitively fasten onto the emulation as the 'best candidate survivor', in
the sense of 'I am survived by Hal, the new Me'. In some brain damage or
memory loss cases, where questions of 'same person/different person?' become
difficult to answer, it might be appropriate to use the same kind of
language.
But this intuition can be bent any which way. An upgrade of technology to
nondestructive scanning may leave you alive and well, watching a machine
intelligence launch itself ('yourself?') into space. Even the information
obtained by destructive scanning could presumably be used more than once --
which resulting machine intelligence is 'you'? So far as I can see, you've
died, though emulations of you survive you. Intuitively, linguisitically,
legally, philosophically, and biologically a much easier position.
What do you expect? A splitting of consciousness (what would this be)? The
beginning of a new one (in this case, you die and your child goes to the
stars)? I feel a certain academic interest in uploading myself, but would
deem destructive scanning a form of suicide, and the process otherwise to
have no impact on my life expectancy. (Medicinal, biological, mineral, or
computational *enhancements* I feel a much more personal interest in,
though.)
As an aside, my worries are I think made worse by the easy talk of programs
and implementation and moving humans (in the process becoming post-) to new
architectures, etc. For a start, I'm not my brain, for all that my point of
view sits in about the same place. My memory uses my muscles, I can't
remember my own phone number without my right hand and a keypad, my brain is
privileged but not the whole story by any means. But let's look just at my
brain. Suppose for a moment the brain is a kind of next-generation neural
net with the mechanics underwritten by all sorts of chemicals -- no
software/hardware divide, or however the IT people phrase it. The hardware
embodies the program -- it's an embarrassment for the old Minsky crowd that
even a digital computer (of the physically possible variety) has to get so
low-down and dirty as to actually simulate at the node level rather than
just running a few lines to emulate the input-output behaviour. In the
absence of a hardware/software divide, pulling out just the software sounds
difficult; and once you're talking not about a functionally identical
implementation of the software (as one can with software) but rather a
'functionally-similiar-in-respect-of-x-and-y' emulation (the best one can
do, I'm afraid), talking about a physical system rather than just the
information processing capability of the system, uploading is starting to
sound downright unattractive.
Besides -- me, I'm a physical system, not an information processing
capability.
Chris
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