From: Alex Ramonsky (alex@ramonsky.com)
Date: Tue Jun 25 2002 - 22:38:27 MDT
Christofer Bullsmith wrote:
>
> [snip]
> 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).
>
From my point of view this is not uploading; this is making a copy. As
soon as it is active, it will diverge from this me; it will be a
different person, just as twins are different despite the same DNA;
nobody can have identical experiences; even our view of the world is
different because our eyes are not in the same physical location.I think
of copies as offspring. (unless they're sharing input; then it gets
complicated).
> [snip]
> 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.
There's a big difference between duplication and replacement. You've
already replaced every single cell you were born with; every single cell
in you is now a copy (of a copy of a copy etc). Do you claim you're not
the same person because of that? If I replace your arms and legs with
prosthetics, are you then somebody else? If I replace a part of your
brain with a prosthetic which performs exactly the same function as that
which it's replaced, what's the difference? What if I replace all of it,
a bit at a time? Biology is doing this to you daily. No change there then.
>
>
> [snip]
> 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.
Procedural memory uses muscles; sensory-motor mnemonics. Declarative
memory does not, as far as we know, although all humans make
'micromovements' whenever they think. Each type of memory uses
differenrt circuits in the brain. Declarative memory recalls stuff like
'who was the second president?' (you don't need your keypad and fingers
to remember that). Procedural memory remembers how to ride a bike, and
so on. We store stuff partly in the way that's convenient to us
individually, and partly in the way we've been taught to, which is why
some people can remember loads of phone numbers and some can't. Both
depend on electrical signals which can be reproduced, just as you can
_imagine_ a piano keyboard and recall what a scale sounds like by
imagining pressing the keys.If you can imagine stuff in dreams and in
VR, what's the difference where those electrical signals come from? (I
do believe we will need that input, as some kinds of thought may be
impossible without it). If your mind is getting the correct electrical
input to function optimally, I think it matters little from whence it
came. And if one method can free us from deleterious biological
effects, then I for one am going for it. Cos this one isn't going to
last very long, you know. : )
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:01 MST