From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Aug 17 1999 - 07:46:17 MDT
"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> writes:
> > Ralph Lewis <rlewis@csulb.edu> wrote:
>
> > An interesting idea. Since orgasm is a mind/body interaction would two
> > upload personalities having sex actually experience anything? Cybersex
> > between a computer and human in a virtual reality suit would make sense but
> > between two computers????
Depends on your views on whether software can have experiences. For
functionalists and pattern identity people like me there is no
problem, but others may disagree. I see nothing strange with the idea
of a piece of software that experiences pleasure.
> Well the triggers may be in the body, but the experience of orgasm
> is definately in the brain. So an upload would be able to experience
> an orgasm if you tickle the right "nerves". Presumably all uploads have
> an interesting problem mapping sensory inputs (eyes, ears, taste, smell,
> heat, cold, pain, etc.) onto those "connections" that used to plug into
> the respective organs.
>
> If I recall, Moravec stops his upload process
> at the point where you have a bunch of wires hanging out of an empty
> brain casing. So this leaves you with two brainless bodies doing the
> horizontal mambo while the experiences are being "felt" in the computer.
> Seems horribly inefficient.
A realistic upload scenario would involve a body simulation connected
to the more detailled neural emulation, sending it the right
signals. Of course, you can likely tweak your body simulation quite a
bit once it is in place and you are comfortable with it. Whether you
keep your old physical body around or not is a matter of taste,
affection and economy; it could be used instead of the virtual body,
or it could be used to give input to the virtual body which ten
re-maps the input in fun ways.
> It seems to make more sense to give your partner a "sex-organ object"
> in which the field values create resonances in your "sex cortex".
> They then have to vary the values in interesting ways until they
> trigger the big "O". Of course I suspect we lose a lot of programmers
> in beta testing.
Well, we don't seem to have a "sex cortex", rather sex involves plenty
of brain systems. Pleasant sensations in the somatosensory and insular
cortex, temporal lobe stuff, olfaction, emotional reactions in the
cingulate cortex and limbic parts like the amygdala, hippocampus,
hypothalamus, medial septum, lots of brainstem nuclei and of course
hormone influences and various autonomous feedback. The detailled
interactions are complex, and can be varied a lot to produce very
different sensations (how would sex feel with the periaqueductal grey
on and off?). Orgasm is just part of it, an epileptic-like wave of
activation in the subcortical systems.
Actually, I think uploads could devise new variations and
generalisations of "sex" that would make even the most inventive and
kinky embodied humans look downright prudish. Just imagine what you
can do with a remappable (or reconfigurable) virtual body, and a brain
where stimuli can be put straight into subcortical systems.
> If I recall my psychology classes, rats will stimulate their
> pleasure centers, forgetting to eat or drink. I wonder if humans
> will do the same thing?
Apparently not, in the cases it has been done (as a treatment for
cancer pain) they have been able to stop. Actually, many rats also
take pauses from brain stimulation to eat and drink when they are
hungry/thirsty enough. There are some interesting papers out there
about how this may show that the internal value system of mammals is
scalar, that there is a kind of common currency for estimating the
value of actions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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