122 replies to this topic

[hotamali]

What about this hypothetical proposition? You analyze every corner of your brain down to the quantum level, then reassemble it within a computer, down to every quark and electron. Would you regain consciousness within the simulation? Yes, it wouldn't even be considered a simulation of you anymore, it would be a perfect simulation, an emulation. If we accept a reductionist point of view of human consciousness, which I think most of us do, then you would wake up again with the memories that you had at the time the scan was made.

To say "it would just be a copy" is meaningless. What happens to people who are in a coma with little to no brain activity, then wake up? How is consciousness continuous? What if I were to die at this very instant, my entire body incinerated, but an extremely complex computer remade my body from scratch down to every last detail. Wouldn't it just be a copy? No, I'd wake up and be the same exact person.

What I have come to believe is that the continuity of consciousness is a meanlingless statement. We have from evolution been given the illusion that we are conscious, but when you get down to it all of our existence can be explained by the interactions of quantum particles. So the particular arangment that exists in my head at one time is me. What about who I was ten years ago? Was I a different person? Disregarding the continuity of my body(which isn't actually continuous as our cells turn themselves over many times a years) I have a plethra of different and new experiences than I once had, and a whole new worldview. The fact is that what we think we know about the self and consciousness is based really on Cartesian Dualism, and that mind is inseparable from the body (at least its been my experience that people think that way) If we can take that particular set of information and put it in another subsrate, consciousness can exist again exactly as it did before.

Now the problem arises of what happens if we make a copy of our minds in a computer while the original is still alive. Whoa... This is really mind boggling. The fact is we really don't know what would happen yet, we need to wait for the technology to come around before we can be sure what happens. But what I expect would happen is that the two consciousness would immediatley diverge if information wasn't kept constant between them( as stated before). But if they stayed synchronized, they would in essence be one.

[Luna]

Now the problem arises of what happens if we make a copy of our minds in a computer while the original is still alive. Whoa... This is really mind boggling. The fact is we really don't know what would happen yet, we need to wait for the technology to come around before we can be sure what happens. But what I expect would happen is that the two consciousness would immediatley diverge if information wasn't kept constant between them( as stated before). But if they stayed synchronized, they would in essence be one.

It's not mind boggling once you learn to accept the rest of what you said is just nonsense.
It means simply you and "you" and if we keep on pasting we have also "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and .. trust me, none of them is connected and they all would most likely feel like the original but the original is none of them, hey - he is standing right "there" because we didn't press the delete button! do you think you'd want to press it once you see how the other you are all nicely performing without your need? Seriously, that is committing suicide due to mis-conception. I doubt any of us want any clones to walk around instead of us.

[ben951]

I agree that at the moment we create another you it becomes independent from the other you that might exist.

But if uploading is just creating copies (not clones since a clone is just a genetically identical person, basically identical twins are clones).

And we know that we replace our particles completely after a certain amount of time, aren't we already naturally slowly uploading our self in another biological substrate ? Then it seems to me that only the pattern of our body and mind have continuity.

Then why gradually uploading ourselves into a non biological substrate with brain implant or artificial neurons or another method would create a copy but naturally replacing our biological substrate would not ?

[hotamali]

Now the problem arises of what happens if we make a copy of our minds in a computer while the original is still alive. Whoa... This is really mind boggling. The fact is we really don't know what would happen yet, we need to wait for the technology to come around before we can be sure what happens. But what I expect would happen is that the two consciousness would immediatley diverge if information wasn't kept constant between them( as stated before). But if they stayed synchronized, they would in essence be one.

It's not mind boggling once you learn to accept the rest of what you said is just nonsense.
It means simply you and "you" and if we keep on pasting we have also "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and .. trust me, none of them is connected and they all would most likely feel like the original but the original is none of them, hey - he is standing right "there" because we didn't press the delete button! do you think you'd want to press it once you see how the other you are all nicely performing without your need? Seriously, that is committing suicide due to mis-conception. I doubt any of us want any clones to walk around instead of us.

The rest of what I said is nonsense? So people who go into a coma and come back out aren't the original? If I make a perfect quantum copy of myself after I die it's not me, just a copy? I'm sorry but I fail to see the nonsense here.

Now as to what happens when we make a copy while the original is still alive is, intuition would tell us the answer is yes, that they would all be different consciousnesses. So it would naturally follow that coma patients who wake up are a different person. That every time you go to bed at night and lose consciousness you wake up and are another person. Does this make any sense?

The fact is we can't explain what will happen subjectively to the copied conscious, but from an empirical standpoint it is exactly the same as the original; i.e. it is the original. The intrinsic property of being original doesn't matter. But the fact of multiple copies existing at the same time forces us the look at consciousness in a different way.

I tend to think of consciousness as our universe's particular way of viewing itself, i.e. taking a set of matter and configuring it to process information in a specific way. If we reproduce that configuration, regardless of whether or not there are several copies, subjective experience will exist within each copy. Now if they are not synchronized, they WILL diverge to form different subjective consciousness, but in the infinitesimal moment that they are all created YOU will exist as multiple copies.

And we know that we replace our particles completely after a certain amount of time, aren't we already naturally slowly uploading our self in another biological substrate ? Then it seems to me that only the pattern of our body and mind have continuity.

Yes, the pattern is what is preserved between substrates. It doesn't matter what the substrate is, a human brain, a simulation, it is still you. If multiple patterns exist simultaneously, they will start to diverge the instant they are made, but if you keep synchronization, they will exist as one. It's like saying how think today and you think tomorrow. Doesn't your consciousness diverge tomorrow from what it was today? No, because your brain is kept synchronized with its old memories. So if we made copies, they would all diverge with new sets of experience unless they can share memories.

Edited by hotamali, 29 January 2010 - 04:17 PM.

[Luna]

Now the problem arises of what happens if we make a copy of our minds in a computer while the original is still alive. Whoa... This is really mind boggling. The fact is we really don't know what would happen yet, we need to wait for the technology to come around before we can be sure what happens. But what I expect would happen is that the two consciousness would immediatley diverge if information wasn't kept constant between them( as stated before). But if they stayed synchronized, they would in essence be one.

It's not mind boggling once you learn to accept the rest of what you said is just nonsense.
It means simply you and "you" and if we keep on pasting we have also "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and "you" and .. trust me, none of them is connected and they all would most likely feel like the original but the original is none of them, hey - he is standing right "there" because we didn't press the delete button! do you think you'd want to press it once you see how the other you are all nicely performing without your need? Seriously, that is committing suicide due to mis-conception. I doubt any of us want any clones to walk around instead of us.

The rest of what I said is nonsense? So people who go into a coma and come back out aren't the original? If I make a perfect quantum copy of myself after I die it's not me, just a copy? I'm sorry but I fail to see the nonsense here.

Why do you have to wait till you die? why not just make 10 copies of yourself before death and see if you still want to press the delete button? Just because you aren't there it doesn't make it real.

As for replacing atoms, I don't know. we never stop at the time. Even coma people's brain still work but we don't know how and what level so in short, we don't know who they are.

Maybe if you upload but keep in network. As in, connect to the copy as it is being done so you ARE in two places at once, like two brains connected, but then one is shut.
But how will it be done? I don't know. Scary questions, or is it scary answers? For now it is scary what the answers could be, still they could be different luckily.

[Luna]

Now as to what happens when we make a copy while the original is still alive is, intuition would tell us the answer is yes, that they would all be different consciousnesses. So it would naturally follow that coma patients who wake up are a different person. That every time you go to bed at night and lose consciousness you wake up and are another person. Does this make any sense?

The fact is we can't explain what will happen subjectively to the copied conscious, but from an empirical standpoint it is exactly the same as the original; i.e. it is the original. The intrinsic property of being original doesn't matter. But the fact of multiple copies existing at the same time forces us the look at consciousness in a different way.

I tend to think of consciousness as our universe's particular way of viewing itself, i.e. taking a set of matter and configuring it to process information in a specific way. If we reproduce that configuration, regardless of whether or not there are several copies, subjective experience will exist within each copy. Now if they are not synchronized, they WILL diverge to form different subjective consciousness, but in the infinitesimal moment that they are all created YOU will exist as multiple copies.

Seriously, you don't lose consciousness when you are sleeping. Your brain is working, you can even be super active in your dreams. You are just not interpreting your external sensors input as you do when you are awake.
As for being in coma? I dunno. I been in anesthesia and when I woke up I had all kinds of feelings and could swear I had a dream. The anesthesiologist told me it is just like coma, but artificial so who knows.
Your brain does function at some level even in coma though, we know that.

Now, your atoms don't replace all at once and there is some brain activity the whole process. Think computers - copy -> paste, paste, paste. That doesn't work that way, you need a connection for it to "transfer". We don't teleport around space, we move through it.

And sure, it is the same properties when you copy things but trust me, if you look at your copy you won't think it is you. It is exactly like you but it isn't you. He will most probably feel the same if he didn't know otherwise.

Now for the universe looking at itself? The universe is just a word that is used to categorize "everything which exists". The universe does not look at itself or anything.
Just like "nature" does not cause earthquakes or select for anything. Things happens, they do because of a chain of events caused and obeyed the "laws" of physics, that's it.

That is unless there is a higher being which planned it all but that's for another discussion.

So if you keep your simulations synced they are still not you, it's just that their properties are still the same but you are you and he is he and so on.
I have two copies of a folder on my computer, their content is exactly that same but one of them is copied from the original, I can delete one and it won't effect the other. That one is still there and the other isn't, if it was a living being one would have died while the other kept living. I do believe you don't want to be the one dying so it's best for you to realize that you can't just copy paste you need to be more creative than that. Sadly, we still need to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Edited by Luna, 29 January 2010 - 04:45 PM.

[hotamali]

Seriously, you don't lose consciousness when you are sleeping. Your brain is working, you can even be super active in your dreams. You are just not interpreting your external sensors input as you do when you are awake.
As for being in coma? I dunno. I been in anesthesia and when I woke up I had all kinds of feelings and could swear I had a dream. The anesthesiologist told me it is just like coma, but artificial so who knows.
Your brain does function at some level even in coma though, we know that.

Now, your atoms don't replace all at once and there is some brain activity the whole process. Think computers - copy -> paste, paste, paste. That doesn't work that way, you need a connection for it to "transfer". We don't teleport around space, we move through it.

And sure, it is the same properties when you copy things but trust me, if you look at your copy you won't think it is you. It is exactly like you but it isn't you. He will most probably feel the same if he didn't know otherwise.

Now for the universe looking at itself? The universe is just a word that is used to categorize "everything which exists". The universe does not look at itself or anything.
Just like "nature" does not cause earthquakes or select for anything. Things happens, they do because of a chain of events caused and obeyed the "laws" of physics, that's it.

That is unless there is a higher being which planned it all but that's for another discussion.

So if you keep your simulations synced they are still not you, it's just that their properties are still the same but you are you and he is he and so on.
I have two copies of a folder on my computer, their content is exactly that same but one of them is copied from the original, I can delete one and it won't effect the other. That one is still there and the other isn't, if it was a living being one would have died while the other kept living. I do believe you don't want to be the one dying so it's best for you to realize that you can't just copy paste you need to be more creative than that. Sadly, we still need to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Actually at a quantum level each one of our atoms is coming in and out of existence millions of time a second. So at a quantum level we are annihilating and reassembling ourselves, but we still exist through and through.


What about this. What if right now I were to die and all brain activity would cease. I am dead as a doornail. What If hypothetically we could revive me. Would consciousness continue?! I think it would. So lets extend this. What if I die now and we make a perfect copy of my body and bring it to life. I don't think it matters that we used a different set of matter. I would be conscious again.

As I said before, yes a copy of you would not be you as long as they are both diverging. What you didn't understand is that if they are synchronized they won't diverge and in theory would be the same. What I mean by synchronizing is that they have real time access to each others minds. They won't diverge because they are sharing their consciousness as one. But if they are unsynchronized, yes they would just be copies.

As for the universe thing that is just an analogy I try to use to help understand consciousness. It makes perfect sense to just say that subjective experience doesn't exist but my subjective experience is telling me that's not the case.

Maybe if you upload but keep in network. As in, connect to the copy as it is being done so you ARE in two places at once, like two brains connected, but then one is shut.
But how will it be done? I don't know. Scary questions, or is it scary answers? For now it is scary what the answers could be, still they could be different luckily.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't see this post. Yes, that is in essence what I am saying. It is a very strange concept that I don't think we can quite grasp.

Edited by hotamali, 29 January 2010 - 05:04 PM.

[Luna]

Actually at a quantum level each one of our atoms is coming in and out of existence millions of time a second. So at a quantum level we are annihilating and reassembling ourselves, but we still exist through and through.

But the whole is still there and active the whole time, also it doesn't all phase in and out at once. Stop saying quantum as if it is a magical word.

What about this. What if right now I were to die and all brain activity would cease. I am dead as a doornail. What If hypothetically we could revive me. Would consciousness continue?! I think it would. So lets extend this. What if I die now and we make a perfect copy of my body and bring it to life. I don't think it matters that we used a different set of matter. I would be conscious again.

That's the thing, we DON'T KNOW. Logically it is probably no. Which is also scary when thinking about cryonics.

As I said before, yes a copy of you would not be you as long as they are both diverging. What you didn't understand is that if they are synchronized they won't diverge and in theory would be the same. What I mean by synchronizing is that they have real time access to each others minds. They won't diverge because they are sharing their consciousness as one. But if they are unsynchronized, yes they would just be copies.

Yes, with this I agree but you must understanding that this is not what happening with the copy paste option! also you must be sure that all of them really have some very complex processing units that it really works so it will really be just as if you simply get rid of some external sensors and not killing a unit.

Maybe if you upload but keep in network. As in, connect to the copy as it is being done so you ARE in two places at once, like two brains connected, but then one is shut.
But how will it be done? I don't know. Scary questions, or is it scary answers? For now it is scary what the answers could be, still they could be different luckily.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't see this post. Yes, that is in essence what I am saying. It is a very strange concept that I don't think we can quite grasp.

See, as I said above - you never said that in any of the replies to my posts, I totally agree that if they are linked (but it must be in a very smart way which I am not sure how would be done yet) then it might have worked, just like simply having one big brain but shutting down parts of it. When you just say copy and simulate that's a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT thing than you just said.

I will repeat myself then.

If you simply copy paste or cut paste, no, it's is not you. It is exactly the same but you died.

If you create some sort of a link in a very complex way to make it act as if one big brain and when you disconnect the old part it would be just as if you disconnect part of the whole, then yeah, it is probably you but the method of how it will be done right I haven't thought of yet, but it should be possible.

[Luna]

duplicate post

Edited by Luna, 29 January 2010 - 06:07 PM.

[Nootropic Cat]

I would want to go the 'organic' (ha!) route of gradual addition/assimilation of tech parts to my biological self, with no limits on where 'I' might end up. This is purely a pragmatic viewpoint though. I need to believe that my present physical complex will have continuity in order to have the will to live day-to-day. Fundamentally though I don't 'believe' in anything, including my own existence. If I were to go to sleep and while I slept a perfect copy of my brain was uploaded while my original body was 'deleted', the 'new' individual that woke up would be just as much 'me' as the me who was now dead. In fact that would be indistinguishable from what happens every morning. I have memories of having been alive for all these years, but I can't know for sure that I haven't in fact just this nanosecond been born into a VR sim and those memories aren't fabrications. So I have no moral beef with uploading or disproportionate attachment to my 'original self', since I would argue that the only self is the present one, the 'original' being a memory and nothing more. Nevertheless insofar as I have a choice, I'll choose to preserve the physical survival of my present self, because to do otherwise would be to annihilate the subjective value of my existence.

[hotamali]

Ok, sorry if I didn't make myself clear. Every time I said synchronized I meant linked, in real time.

As for how to synchronize, I would imagine we could have a networked copy of yourself on a computer substrate, linked to your old biological self. I'd play around with that for a while and see what it felt like before I cut the link to the old bio-self.

It seems like your worried that I'm going to commit suicide by copying myself into a computer then killing the old self. Don't worry, even when we get the tech I wont go that far without a lot of thought and precautions. This is a public forum and I was just throwing around some ideas.

[Denjin]

I can't quite reconcile what 'copying' yourself really means in terms of consciousness... But if I could be uploaded in a phased fashion so I was 'aware' the entire time I might go for it.

[Kolos]

I can't quite reconcile what 'copying' yourself really means in terms of consciousness... But if I could be uploaded in a phased fashion so I was 'aware' the entire time I might go for it.

Well I guess it doesn't have to be so drastic.
It should be possible to just replace some parts of the brain with implants or nano and slowly increase their number so at some point your brain would be fully artificial and you wouldn't even notice. At first it might be easier to just connect the brain with a machine instead of uploading it (brain might be eventually fully separeted from the body).

Anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haecceity might be a useful term in this discussion.

[Cameron]

I can't quite reconcile what 'copying' yourself really means in terms of consciousness... But if I could be uploaded in a phased fashion so I was 'aware' the entire time I might go for it.

Well I guess it doesn't have to be so drastic. It should be possible to just replace some parts of the brain with implants or nano and slowly increase their number so at some point your brain would be fully artificial and you wouldn't even notice. At first it might be easier to just connect the brain with a machine instead of uploading it (brain might be eventually fully separeted from the body).

<br /><br />I don't think you even have to replace any portion of the brain, simply connecting to a machine should be enough. If the functioning of each region becomes fulfilled more and more by external hardware through time, there will come a point when the meat will only be a small portion of yourself.

Edited by Cameron, 24 April 2010 - 09:49 PM.

[Kolos]

Good point. Anyway I'm not sure it's even possible to live indefinitelly with our human brain, even if we can keep it young and perfectly healthy how much could we remember after thousand of years or even a milion? Sure we can store a lot of data but there have to be some limitations especially that forgeting about something doesn't mean it was delated.
I'm also curious how would memory function in uploaded brain function, would we remember everything or perhaps keep our memory files in special folders on our mind interface and acces them when we need it or perhaps we just simulate how our biological brain functioned but would we also simulate dreaming even if we don't need it anymore? What about defecation, hunger, pain or itch etc. I guess it's not impossible to simulate it when we feel a need to but memories are more important because they shape our personality. There might be a risk that just with changing the way our memory works we might also change our character. Some people might decide to remove painful memories, criminals might remove memories of their crimes there are so many possibilities...

[aimless]

I would only be wary of what would happen with my consciousness in my body....and which "I" would remain....would both the digital and analog self remain? can I integrate the two? can/do the do experience each other subjectively or objectively?

I'm sure it would be a thrill to exist as pure consciousness...no need to compensate for the human body....just...being...
then again... one could meditate...and sit in sensory deprivation tanks for days on end....

[Reno]

From my point of view uploading would be more dependable then cryogenics, so yes I imagine I would upload. At least you would have some results which would be permanent and tangible from uploading.

[urchinstar47]

I would upload, and if the supstrate enabled me to think faster, I wouldn't hesitate much. It would certainly grant some unique abilities to be an infomorph.

[Logan]

I can't quite reconcile what 'copying' yourself really means in terms of consciousness... But if I could be uploaded in a phased fashion so I was 'aware' the entire time I might go for it.

Well I guess it doesn't have to be so drastic.
It should be possible to just replace some parts of the brain with implants or nano and slowly increase their number so at some point your brain would be fully artificial and you wouldn't even notice. At first it might be easier to just connect the brain with a machine instead of uploading it (brain might be eventually fully separeted from the body).

Anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haecceity might be a useful term in this discussion.

I think I would go for this over uploading. I feel like with uploading you would lose your old self. This new you would not be you at all, it would be merely a copy of you. I don't think that is life extension.

Maybe one day we will be able to maintain and preserve certain biological aspects of our brains through replacing some aspects of it with synthetic parts that function like organic part, rejuvenation and regeneration therapies, and nanotechnology. This would be ideal for me.

[mikeinnaples]

I think I would go for this over uploading. I feel like with uploading you would lose your old self. This new you would not be you at all, it would be merely a copy of you. I don't think that is life extension.

I have to agree with this sentiment. Uploading my mind isn't life extension as the entity that is 'me' would cease to exist. It would be a copy. In essence, I would be giving birth to a non-organic replica of myself through the act of my death. I will just settle for being unfrozen in a century when our technology has progressed enough to restore my youth and function. Then I can worry about augmenting myself (not replacing myself) to catch up.

[Kolos]

I will just settle for being unfrozen in a century when our technology has progressed enough to restore my youth and function. Then I can worry about augmenting myself (not replacing myself) to catch up.

And how can you know they just don't upload you? I don't really know much about this procedures perhaps you can just leave a message that you want your body to be reconstructed but perhaps in the future when wqe have this kind of technology most of humanity would be already uploaded so only human society you could interact with using your human body would be some religious fanatics that hated the idea. Rather scary perspective for an atheist and they probably wouldn't accept anyway.

[mikeinnaples]

And how can you know they just don't upload you? I don't really know much about this procedures perhaps you can just leave a message that you want your body to be reconstructed but perhaps in the future when wqe have this kind of technology most of humanity would be already uploaded so only human society you could interact with using your human body would be some religious fanatics that hated the idea. Rather scary perspective for an atheist and they probably wouldn't accept anyway.

To be honest, I find your what-if scenario not to be very plausible from a pure logic stand point.

[Kolos]

When we have the technology I think it's only a matter of time, uploading have many advantages over other alternatives assuming we have advanced VR that could simulate all kinds of feelings and emotions but we should because this technologies would be probably very close. You need some nano in your brain to connect with VR and you just need more of it to complitelly upload so this step seem rather natural at this point, you like something and you want more of it. It could significantly slow down progress in many fields of science that wouldn't be needed anymore most notably medicine.

[corb]

Mind uploading is all nice and dandy as long as you use it for therapeutic reasons - if you're a soldier and you get a bullet to the head and you have to rebuild it, beyond that I find it quite useless. I mean yeah I guess buying a copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger for a butler or Angelina Jolie for ... other purposes might be quite cool if that ever becomes legal but, beyond that it has no uses.

[corb]

most of humanity would be already uploaded so only human society you could interact with using your human body would be some religious fanatics that hated the idea. Rather scary perspective for an atheist and they probably wouldn't accept anyway.

That's not going to happen for many reasons :
1. most people wouldn't want to commit suicide - and that is exactly what you would be doing
2. why upload yourself when you can have a never aging body that can be augmented instead
3. instead of killing yourself you can build a comprehensive VR in which you could do whatever you want, WHILE you're still alive mind you. You could use it to take a rest from real life whenever you need it. And then you'd be able to return to living.
4. computers are not eternal and can be destroyed and tampered with. Same way a body can be destroyed or tampered with, in other words you're not doing the big JUMP you think you're doing.
5. uploaded minds would NOT be superior to live people. They would not be able to interact with anything if they're in a VR and if they are downloaded into cybernetic or cloned bodies ... well you could do the same (ala ghost in the shell) with your OWN brain instead of copying it on a SSD and you'd still be alive to enjoy your new you.

I can come up with a lot more reasons but those are good enough.

[nowayout]

I can't quite reconcile what 'copying' yourself really means in terms of consciousness... But if I could be uploaded in a phased fashion so I was 'aware' the entire time I might go for it.

Well I guess it doesn't have to be so drastic.
It should be possible to just replace some parts of the brain with implants or nano and slowly increase their number so at some point your brain would be fully artificial and you wouldn't even notice. At first it might be easier to just connect the brain with a machine instead of uploading it (brain might be eventually fully separated from the body).

Yes, I think this might be the way to go. If you move the function of one neuron at a time to the internet while remaining conscious, at some point you would still be walking around with 3/4 of your neurons in your head and the uploaded 1/4 running on the internet (and connected with the rest of your physical brain via WiFi, for example). After some more time, you'd be half-half, and so on, until your entire brain is running on the internet and connected via WiFi with your spinal, aural, and optical nerves. You would still feel as if you are inside the head of your own physical body, but at this point your consciousness should be as immortal as the Cloud. Speak about going to heaven!

At this point, however, we do run into some deep philosophical problems. If your electronic brain is stopped an restarted, is it still you? What if it is copied? How does it "feel" when the processes that make you up get swapped in and out of memory or between different nodes, parallellized or serialized, optimistically evaluated (calculating both branches of an if-then in advance for faster evaluation, where one branch gets aborted). What if there is some unknown underlying physical process happening in our neurons that causes consciousness, and this gradual uploading gradually turned us into non-conscious zombies indistinguishable from conscious entities? We could never know for sure if this is a form of suicide or not.

Edited by viveutvivas, 10 October 2011 - 08:51 PM.

[Slahzer]

My problem with mind uploading is that I don't enjoy the idea of having multiple copies of myself, as each copy's personality would diverge until ultimately it might not be me anymore.

I would prefer it if my copies would be able to collectively still remain 'me' through some mechanism such as a distributed consciousness or something to that effect. Be able to be all the copies at the same time and all of them having instant access to all sensory data on each clone, with only one mind being all.

[CorbensLife]

The choice is simple!

A: Die
B: Upload and suffer what ever consequence there might be

Instead of seeing the copy being a copy and not one self because there can exist two or more with the upload method, then why not just put it more blunt? If we just realize that we are walking, talking intelligence that are trapped in a body, then all that "special self" goes away.

From my point of view we are not that complex, just because we havent understood everything yet. An upload is the ONLY feasible assurance to live on. At least, its a nice way to wait until you can make a new clone of your old body and grow it to X amount of years and download yourself into that.

As long as we add the process of "moving" from one entity to another it wont seem like we suffered death. And istead of doing a copy of the brain a cut and paste might seem more interresting. Who "I" am is not hard to answer. I am whatever I am at the moment. Nothing more and nothing less. One thing is for sure, I am not dead, nor am I suspended from animation.

[steampoweredgod]

With regards to copies, continuity, etc. We have to take into account that until more information becomes available there's still the remote hypothetical possibility that all conscious beings are actually just a single being, aka, the same subjective one irrespective of differences in behavior, knowledge, etc.

Seriously, you don't lose consciousness when you are sleeping. Your brain is working, you can even be super active in your dreams. You are just not interpreting your external sensors input as you do when you are awake.

There are deep sleep dreamless periods, but like with the drug versed, you might still be conscious but merely have memory processes off, more knowledge is needed to clarify.

With the drug versed you can be conscious and awake, yet your longterm memory is offline such that you won't recall a bit of what happened, there will be a hole in your memory.
Some people who've had it experience a conscious temporal jump, their conscious experience is of talking to the doctor and then suddenly they're awake after the procedure, as if nothing happened inbetween, they blinked and it felt like they just instantly moved in time.

Now, your atoms don't replace all at once and there is some brain activity the whole process. Think computers - copy -> paste, paste, paste. That doesn't work that way, you need a connection for it to "transfer". We don't teleport around space, we move through it.

There have been cases of individuals who've fallen in ice waters, heart stopped for over three hours and've been at very low temperature. Very low temperature,reduces chemical activity drastically, so even low brain activity is slowed down even more. In any case brain activity is a subject of time scales involved, over say atto seconds no meaningful brain activity related to sensory information processing is likely to've taken place.

The brain's neurons fire at most a few hundred times per second, likely limiting the speed of all processing and simulations,including consciousness. I've heard of about 1 millisecond refractory period between firings... as no single cell holds consciousness but it is the product of communication of networks in the brain, this minimum time along with the slow rates of information transfer places a cap on the speed of the simulation.

What about this. What if right now I were to die and all brain activity would cease. I am dead as a doornail. What If hypothetically we could revive me. Would consciousness continue?! I think it would. So lets extend this. What if I die now and we make a perfect copy of my body and bring it to life. I don't think it matters that we used a different set of matter. I would be conscious again.

If we assume an infinite multiverse, it is likely that an infinity of copies are being generated at each instant, maybe even automatically if we take many-worlds interpretation, a key question is why this specific path or copy was taken by your specific subjective individual consciousness... perhaps all path are taken and are equally validly you and it is merely the gaps in memory that keep the distinct "you"s from realizing so(The time traveler example is good to bring at this point... in a time travel scenario both you and the past you are the exact same subjective being only your past self is completely unaware of it... time travel allows for an infinite number of copies which are the exact same subjective you to coexist, even if all are unaware).

But the whole is still there and active the whole time, also it doesn't all phase in and out at once.

No single particle is necessary for continued existence, and presumably neither are long-lasting quantum states. We can assume that for all practical purposes the activity of any single molecule or particle is meaningless, and we can scale it to say the same about any single cell, only the activity of the network is meaningfully related to continued existence...

In all likelyhood this is mostly classical if not wholly classical computation, and no meaningful activity occurs below the scale of nanosecond, most activity being restricted to the millisecond range.

If one takes the mathematical multiverse view, or mathematical realism view, then underneath it all there is nothing but relationships between possible states of information, and nothing exists but mere information... reality is nothing more than a mathematical structure.

4. computers are not eternal and can be destroyed and tampered with. Same way a body can be destroyed or tampered with, in other words you're not doing the big JUMP you think you're doing.

Oh, true, normal computers are not eternal, but a self-replicating immortal supercomputer very likely is.

uploaded minds would NOT be superior to live people.

It depends on what the science of intelligence is able to produce. If we find a way to easily scale intellect whilst preserving continuity... it wouldn't be hard to see how a mind distributed amongst a billion ships commanding trillions of bodies would be able to outclass any live human, nations and even entire civilizations depending on level of development.

We could never know for sure if this is a form of suicide or not.

Hopefully a satisfying theory of consciousness is developed eventually that can explain it in satisfactory and sufficient term. Ideally it would make it obvious how and why something is conscious.

This means war, murder, governments, economics (at least as it stands today; I suppose there would still be a knowledge economy, or an experience economy... I think a lot of study would have to go into it to really detail this one.), involuntary death, taxes, murder, rape... all would be 'obselete' and impossible.

Nope, the only way you get that is if the societal higher control systems are mathematically proven stable and you lock everyone from being able to alter the control systems, and they've proven unbeatable defense systems.... otherwise agents with power oriented goals could hijack control.

Personally, given that we're dealing with post scarcity tech, there is nothing society would be able to offer some agents, as they would be entirely self sufficient, no need for them to put up with any of these restrictions... the universe is pretty much infinite for all practical purposes, such agents can simply leave and colonize elsewhere, having all computational resources acquired in the new locale for themselves. With such they can do as they please, create an advance defense system, and they are absolute law within their domain, if they so which it they can create a new society of which they'd be emperor or if we want a more apt description there they'd be god.

The most important part is that no other citizen in the whole society should have any power over any other citizen in any real, physical way. No one should be able to delete anybody else, no one should be able to force sensorium elements onto anyone else.

My problem with this, is that assuming there is no mathematical proof against scaling general intelligence and working memory(no upper cap), an entity could be created of such overwhelming intellect, that it's able to have intelligent conscious agents within working memory, so such a limitation would be a restriction on what such an entity can think.

Entities with the goal of ever increasing their capacity, would likely require ever more resources, and of course their defense systems would be ever more capable as they took more and more resources from the universe. It would be difficult to attempt to monitor or limit their thoughts. If light speed remains a permanent limit, an entity moving at the fastest possible speed would eventually be entirely out of reach of any law given accelerating expansion of the universe will lock it and its resources forever away from reach.

There's also the hypothetical possibility of opening a hole into an alternate universe(of which there could be an infinity) with alternate laws. If there's a desolate alternate universe whose laws allows infinite computational memory and time an entity that accessed it and cut the address and access point, would in essence gain infinite power, knowledge, time... it would become an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, absolute law over an infinite number of beings.... ascending Jacob's ladder... finally being able to touch God.

[Nicolas Dante Foster]

If you copied every bit of information you are into a computer that is able to emulate it then i dont think it would still be you, maybe a exact copy and the only thing that come close to simulating you. Anyways yes i would upload my brain.