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----Zenith---- t1_j1z05p3 wrote

Reply to comment by alcatrazcgp in 11 years ago Michio Kaku talked about mind upload into Machine - Big Think by keghi11

This. I’ve tried to explain it so many times but some people just don’t get it. It wouldn’t be you in any way shape or form. Just an exact replica. You’d be dead. Something else that’s not you would be alive.

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alcatrazcgp t1_j1z0scs wrote

the best way to achieve "immortality" is keeping yourself alive, or at the very least transplanting your entire brain. which is in this case "you".

no brain = no you

you = specific signals in the brain

you can't just move that in code form onto a machine, thankfully im not the only one who realized this

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FrmrPresJamesTaylor t1_j20lcd9 wrote

Honestly I would love to see a bunch of billionaires and influential technophiles essentially sign up for their own deaths in this manner. If someone thinks this technology is desireable or even possible, they can go first.

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alcatrazcgp t1_j20lwm8 wrote

that actually seems like the worst "shortcut" for immortality, once these billionaires get it, who is to say you cant just turn off their copies? its just lines of codes, its not a living human, its a copy of them.

now if you took the route of biology and bioengineering and prolong your existing life by many different ways, thats a whole different story, thats true immortality

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thisimpetus t1_j24pn4w wrote

> you can't just move that into code form onto a machine

That's an absolutely enormous claim I will be utterly shocked if you could truly defend, and that's not to insult you but to suggest that you might vastly underestimate the scale of that claim. It is absolutely not something that can be taken as obvious.

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alcatrazcgp t1_j24qnyh wrote

No, I do not underestimate it, I truly think its impossible, at least for a very very long time. while you can copy it, you can't MOVE it, moving it would mean you somehow, some way, transform my brain into code while not killing me in the process, and then putting that into a machine, again, without killing me.

you can easily scan the brain and its signals and just translate that into code and input that into a machine yes, but you can't move the brain and "me" into that machine, you can just input a copy of me in it. hope that makes sense

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thisimpetus t1_j24roa0 wrote

Well "moving it" isn't a meaningful thing to say, there is nothing to move, structure and data aren't material things. You're literally constantly changing, there is nothing static about you. You are the information in motion; where it is and by what means it moves doesn't mean anything. Copying a PDF doesn't physically relocate parts of your drive to another location, it represents that information identically somewhere else. So too your consciousness; just as reading the same song from different devices changes absolutely nothing about the song—and just as a song has to be happening in time to actually be the song—what makes you you is the data structure connected in real time to the environment, not the medium.

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alcatrazcgp t1_j24uot7 wrote

no, your consciousness is not the same as digital data, you cannot have 2 copies at the same time, you can only control one, you cannot control 2 different "you"s in different places, thats not how it works

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thisimpetus t1_j24vor3 wrote

Well, I'm no expert in this field but I do have a little academic training in it and I'll tell you that these claims you're making are very, very big claims that a great many PhD's have debated and I think if you're really interested in this subject you might consider getting into some of the reading.

Because the thing is, I don't think you'll find much agreement with your position at the top of the game, but that's because these are really, really hard questions and our intuitions about them tend to be really bad. That makes a lot of sense; we certainly can't expect ourselves to have an evolved understanding of these ideas. But all the same, if you're really interested, there are some fundamental ideas that you're challenging and I'd wager you might reconsider some of them if you got some exposure to some rigorous investigation of them. It's very interesting stuff, I know my thinking was forever changed by it. D.C. Dennet is a great place to start because his writing is enjoyable in addition to being top-shelf cognitive philosophy.

Best.

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Stainless_Heart t1_j23n9hs wrote

Tell me, exactly which signals are constant, uninterrupted, and represent you as a person?

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alcatrazcgp t1_j23nqcv wrote

all of them

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Stainless_Heart t1_j23nzah wrote

Are they all permanent signals? Or do they come and go, regenerated when needed?

If the latter, you’re constantly dying in little bits and being recreated in little bits.

If the former, if all your brain signals were always happening without cessation… you’d be insane or at least in full seizure.

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thisimpetus t1_j24p36p wrote

No cell in the body you typed that with was with you when you were born, and no cell you were born with is with you still. You've replaced them all.

So, you've already moved your entire consciousness from one medium to another, you just did it piecemeal and without a disruption in function.

Now, if you fall in a frozen lake and, after being technically dead for a few minutes, are revived, I'll wager you still think that's you.

So if we can find practical examples of both disrupted function and transference to another medium, we'd have to suppose that doing both all at once is what makes the difference. I don't see that at all.

You are not your body, you are just that pattern of data dancing about. So long as it dances, it's you. If there were two of you for a moment, or a thousand, they'd all basically immediately start being someone else because the dances would begin to be different. But this idea that there is an authentic you of which copies are something else really doesn't hold up under scrutiny unless you believe in a soul.

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CadmusMaximus t1_j20a7e4 wrote

Exactly. Though it's not QUITE as easy.

Theoretically the copy would think it's "you" also.

So you essentially have a 50/50 chance of waking up as the robot or as the poor sap who's still mortal or (worst case) now dead.

Of all things, the movie "Multiplicity" deals with this pretty well.

Same with that Black Mirror episode with Jon Hamm.

So the real question you have to ask yourself:

"Do you feel lucky?"

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----Zenith---- t1_j20alc0 wrote

Well no you’d have 100% chance of not waking up at all. But yes the copy would think it’s you and would not be able to tell the difference unless it already assumed what we are saying here before they copied themselves.

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CadmusMaximus t1_j20b48e wrote

Not necessarily. What's to say that you're not experiencing the robot's "memories" right now?

Like your whole life is (for lack of a better way of describing it) building up to being the consciousness that "lives on" in the robot?

If that's the case, you'd think you "got lucky" and woke up as the robot.

There still would 100% be a poor sap that was left as a mere mortal /dead.

In that case, it absolutely is 50/50 you "end up" as the robot or mortal / dead.

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----Zenith---- t1_j20gj02 wrote

If I were the bot and thought I was real I’d still not be the original me.

The original me would be dead. Then I’m just a copy who doesn’t know it’s a copy, but is one.

There is no 50/50 chance of anything. 100% chance that the original dies and the copy is created.

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Spursfan14 t1_j21xj1g wrote

What makes you you then? Why are you the same person you were 10 years ago and why does that exclude the copy?

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----Zenith---- t1_j2210xr wrote

Well if you want to view it that way then none of us are really “alive” anyways just a code or algorithm

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Spursfan14 t1_j21xefe wrote

If I took your biological brain and put in another person’s body, such that you had exactly the same memories, personality, likes and dislikes etc, would that still be you?

If I rearranged another person’s brain such that it had exactly your current state (ie same memories, personality as above) and in the process killed your original body, would that still be you?

At what point does it stop being you?

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PeakFuckingValue t1_j208cc5 wrote

Nah. If you do it a certain way I believe you can remain you. It would not be about copying the signals though. It should be about merging with AI at first. Augmented you. Evolved you. Almost like bringing the internet into you vs the other way around.

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