10 replies to this topic

[A941]

Would immortality also work without uploading or is it absolut necessary?

I thought the majority of the scientists working in this area are going to invent techniques to reverse ageing with genetech?

[Lazarus Long]

The mind dies and what matters the body. The body is always vulnerable even if it can be made stronger, more resistent to desease, and steady state with regard to aging. So ask how you get your brain to be replaced?

If you can't transfer consciousness then you can't inhabit a replacement body, the mind as it is configured now goes where the brain goes. Change that and the rest all become doable. Sooner or later damage to neurons is too cumulative and an alternative is necessary. IMHO

[A941]

Yes, this would be good!

But i think a "transfer" to an artifical body would only be a copieing of information and not the transport of consciousness.
Yes there would be a Person acting in the same way like you would act but if you would die YOU would be death.

I talked with M. Anissimow about this problem and i think the continuity of our consciousness is very important but if we could repair parts of our Brain our replace them trough less delicate materials without interruption of the consciousness this would be ok cause this process happends every day in our body and i think this could be done with nanotechnologie.
Immortality for a copy of my brain would be nonsense cause if i die i would get the bad experience of death and i wouldnt be able to see what will happend after this time.
There would be a guy which acts like i would and looks like i have looked but he would be a copy, consciousness depends of matter and it couldnt be divided from matter easily.
There is no immatterial Soul which could be up- or downloaded.

[Utnapishtim]

Every night before you go to sleep the mind is destroyed and rebuilt the next day. So we don't have continuity of consciousness in the first place in my opinion. As a side note I can remember struggling to get to sleep as a kid. The notion of being turned off really bothered me then.

[alex]

Yet, you're still here, aren't you? Though you still are experiencing consciousness to a certain degree while sleeping.

[Chip]

I expect that stem cell research, nanotechnology, drugs and nutrients will be able to facilitate revitalizing/replacing/cloning of brain cells. I see uploading as creating various degrees of analogues of myself to perform specific tasks. Maybe I can make sufficient uploads of myself someday so I can contribute my perspective to more chat rooms simultaneously, like existing bots of today that intrude on many chat rooms. I could be irreverent on many fronts that way.

[A941]

Every night before you go to sleep the mind is destroyed and rebuilt the next day. So we don't have continuity of consciousness in the first place in my opinion. As a side note I can remember struggling to get to sleep as a kid. The notion of being turned off really bothered me then.

No! Thats only a lower level of activitie (dreams,...).

[Cyto]

I see how Orga can be considered second to Mecha if you exclude the problems of Mecha.

Neurons may be damaged but replacements can be issued through a plasticit/totipotent cell. Why I hold up stem cells on a platinum platter is due to the already present system of how they are used. I understand that we are not able to replenish all of our brain due to the slow process of neuronal growth but forceful induction is being worked on. We can and will improve ourselves through already established genetic systems such as the ability to regrow limbs and regrow huge amounts of our brains (birds).

And let me lay down some things.

If you "upload" you will be stored on some sort of informational "hard drive." I also postulate that in order to maintain your "self" the hard drive will have to have how each of your neurons are positioned, what synaptic strength are they at and what neurotransmitters are issued. On top of that boundaries would need to be established so you don't occur faults in your neuron pathways. Such as axon A323 can't connect with axon Xd2 all the way on the other lobe. Then the information must be compiled onto a computer with tons of buffer ram so it can deal with the tremendous change happening as you learn or perform functions. This speed required would nix anything small and metal due to the surge of power building up electronic heat and or discharge. So those liquid computer I heard about a while back might have to be used. Back to the computer with the buffer, you would have to have your brain reconstructed on a "plane of functioning" or something. This would be needed so you could compile your neural map from the hard dive so function can be faster instead of it having to spend time recalling what goes with what.

If "uploading" did happen and you made copies of yourself wouldn't some smart copies figure they are 3, 4, 5, or 6 times better if there is only one? I'll call that "The One" syndrome in relation to the movie. Because if your all smart and great then the more there are of you the less each is treasured. "Oh well Mars blew up, luckily we have 7 more to go around!!" Isnt that a tool instead of a person?

This would require a tremendously expensive and massive data storage system.

If you do occur a problem, since programs are not all perfect, who would take you off the "blue screen?" Or run the defragmenter? Your changing thoughts all the time so neurons are getting rewritten and you would need thousands or millions of optical writing devices. And who at first would take care of you? You think orga is going to be bossed around by something that thinks its so much better then the orga species?

I state that you are endangering yourselves even more by disassociating from the real world. You can be unplugged and if something bad happens the orga are not going to haul your massive systems away to safety.

[Avatar Polymorph]

I think upgrading is a lot more plausible than uploading. Uploading must mean translating your hardware and software together into a new substrate. For example, I insert nanotech intra and inter cellular molecular supercomputers and cell-change/repair machines into my body. These form a distributed computer system linked to my more macro neural network. Then I insert specialized "new" cells, e.g from dendrimer polymers, and computronium materials as add-on for memory storage. Then I create broadcast linkage mechanisms of high efficiency for communication purposes and interaction with VR. If there is a big enough computronium bed, full of VR and sentient sectors, how do I transfer to it? I can visit it easily enough, by sensory extension and allied "software transfer" but how do I physically add my neural hardware and its software to it? The problem is the two are linked. Making a copy of the software - short of a perfect quantum copy - simply makes a close duplicate that's not me and therefore not relevant. I can't leave my "original" brain behind. If I have upgraded completely to a more flexible system I guess I can stick my head into a computronium socket and squeeze my brain into it, keeping continuous connection. That might do it over some period of time. Another solution might be to have a small "core brain" and have physical plug-ins and add-ons. Also maybe you could actually "plug" your brain in directly to the computronium web at times (like cable, only funnier - your "brain" could "run" or "wave-flow" along the cable-blank-brain if it was efficient enough). Guess we'll find out soon enough.
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Just as a further thought - I really don't believe in the concept of "software" - there are only subsets of hardware. The "software" is still physically existant, just like writing is made of lead pencil or a movie is photons hitting a sheet. Even a computer's software is electronic action within a chip and moving parts in a hard drive etc.. This makes me very suspicious of those who argue about "versions" of themselves running around without continuity. These are different beings who look similar, even if it is down to the atomic level, but are different.

[Lazarus Long]

I don't object to the distinction but I think we should be clear on terms, I have been using uplifiting as roughly equivalent to how you use upgrading. Semantically we are saying something very similar.

I also think that logically we will be upgrading long before we upload.

Uploading is more subtle however because it is also like "Networking" of minds. In order to interface MY mind with other human MINDS, not just the Machine Mind it will be inherently necessary to translate neurophysiological operations into cybernetic language that is convertable back to "Wet-Ware" again. I see this as much a software translation issue as a phyisiological/hardware one.

[Avatar Polymorph]

Lazarus: I think you're spot on.