RTP Discussions

[Mind Unraveled]

hi my first post!!

I think its clear that this prosses would not create immortality or Omortality. If i get cloned the very second I die, I would still be dead. It is more like giving birth to a clone than never dieing. I think in order to become truely immortal a person would have to remain conscious.

lets say somehow we find out what it is and where, for example it could be part of your brain. If we copy your intire brain that means there is another conscious that takes your place, but it isn't you because it is just a copy. To be immortal there would have to be a cut and paste operation with that part of the brain. It would require that the person's brain would become basically a storage space, so you would never be in two places at once.

Of course, no one knows what or where it is. But i believe it must be something that makes us....us. I think if we ever figuire out what it is it will be easy to deterimine if it's possible.

I can't think of anything else and my lunch break is over, so i guess thats it for now.
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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -epicurus

[HarryStottle]

Greetings "Mind" and welcome to the forum

the core of your challenge is:

[Smurf123]

I believe this to be possible. Not 100% sure yet but very VERY plausible.

For me the hardest part is the "fact" that me is gone when a clone is made but replacing a cell by cell do not feel like cloning even tough in fact it is.
Me as in my current mind/soul is very week one hit to the scull and its changed forever. I can loose memmories forever ie a "new" me is born as the brain structure is altered.

If you replicate the entire body in an instant or cell by cell you should not lose the "soul" or "conscious" or "mind" I see them all as the same thing - ME.
As long as your brain is the same you will stay the same.
So, I no longer think that a clone will be the annihilation of the former me.

Now for some questions about the "soul" & "conscious" & "mind".
I would like to get some views from people who split them up and from you who have info on this already if you have been talking about it.

What part that represent what.
What difference it makes to have them splitt.

I could also ask how it would inflict upon cloning but that is what all posts before are arguing about so i skip this one. For me the answer is simple, as long the brain is intact it is the same.

The two question above please, if its not too much.

/Smurf - 20 year old swedish dude plagued by his agnostic mind.
-How am I supposed to be sure there aint no God/s?
-If I decide he/she/it/they dont exist have satan/great evil/whatevah already won?

[HarryStottle]

[Stone1]

This discussion seems to have come to a pause but that ain't gonna prevent me from adding my own thoughts on the topic.

First off, I liked the play "Resurrection" even more than "Conversation with God", although IMHO both are enjoyable texts. I think the former is somehow more emotionally touching.

I would be almost perfectly happy to leave this existence knowing that a replica of me (for lack of a better word I'll call it that) which, in essence, is me, is able to live on. The detail that would make the whole thing perfect would be the replica to be me, or in other words, to transfer the self-aware consciousness to the replica. The problem being, as SeeDubya stated

[HarryStottle]

First, just in case anyone thinks I'm claiming credit for "grok" let me clarify that we owe that one to Robert Heinlein though I can't remember which of his novels it came from, possibly Starship Troopers...

Second, by happy coincidence, this months Cafe Sci, which took place less than 40 hours ago as I write, was focussed on a presentation by Professor Zafar Bashir, who, as you can see from that link, is researching deep inside the brain. I had a reasonably lengthy chat with him after the event and spent some time on the essence of the question we're discussing here.

In short, although he doesn't believe there are yet any good digital analogues for the neuron, he (and others in his field) do not perceive any material or logical barriers to creating them. We simply don't yet understand the real thing well enough yet to create an accurate simulation, but that's just a matter of time.

More interesting to me (because I'd always taken that "matter of time" for granted) was what he had to say about what I've always seen as the more intractable problem; viz the neurotransmitters.

It's always seemed to me to be the harder problem. Yes we can imagine how we'll simulate information storage and transfer between our digital neurons. That's the easy bit because it aint that far from what we're already doing with computers today. But how do we deal the "emotions" and the "modulators" of information transmission?

Unlike information storage and transmission, emotions are chemically mediated. Serotonin or Dopamine or whatever floods into the brain and changes the way information is being stored or transferred. How would we simulate that? Indeed WHY would we simulate that?

The "Why" question is the easiest. For me, at least, unless we can authentically mirror our emotions as well as our memories, then "it aint me" will remain true. What we'd have would be a super sophisticated version of a telephone answering service; capable of answering any question thrown at it as "I" would have, but completely lacking the "motivation" that makes me "Me".

The reason I'd always thought the "How" would be the difficult one was because I was under the impression that these "modulators" flooded the brain in a different way to the "information transfer" transmitters. And that this would not be easy to mimic in any "natural" way. I am rather pleased to learn that I was wrong.

There are essentially two different types of neurotransmitters (assuming I've absorbed the Prof's information correctly). One type is released at the synapse only and provides the "information transfer functionality. The other I had imagined being released only from key parts of the brain like the Amygdala and flooding a whole area (which would make it very difficult to simulate accurately). But it doesn't happen like that.

Instead, these too are released by individual neurons but NOT at the synapse. They diffuse more generally from the body of the neuron. THAT is much more straightforward for simulation and it has significantly increased my confidence that we will indeed be able to mirror "feelings" just as easily as basic memory. The combination provide "motivation" and the core of "self".

So, as of now, I'm even more confident that our digital future is plausible if not yet inevitable. There are, of course, still some amazingly difficult technical barriers to overcome but none look like showstoppers. Frankly the only "showstopper" looks to be the ongoing war between us and the Authoritarians. THAT could prevent our digital future which is why "sidelining" the authoritarians has got to be, in my view, our main priority...

[squeakthedragon]

This is technically my second post as my first one was in the registration-email sent to Harry. (Hello!!)

But to offer a thought on this thread:

The concepts going into "omortality" mirror to a large degree my own pondering about consciousness and more pertinently, the transfer and continuation of it. In a nutshell, I play with the idea "what if consciousness is a non-localized phenomenon?"

This is not the Soul as seen in many spiritual or religious models, but might work as a reasonable substitute (though not, I think, in a way that would make many religious believers comfortable).

To use Harry's story about examining the water flowing over the brook, as a point of reference: the as-yet not fully understood element of consciousness is the "water" and the physical brain and neurological system is the "riverbed". As the water flowing through the brook at some point originates from an ocean - and via evaporation some day returns to it - so does what we "feel" as our personal point of presence, the "I", "me" and "person sitting inside the viewing box in my head" is a virtual effect caused by the brain processing consciousness. Our senses are evolved to tell us that we operate in a linear, three-dimensional world (and to a degree they aren't lying) and this bias prevents us from easily wrapping our heads around what consciousness might fully be.

In the context of Omortality, I might see it this way:

If I a particular frame of my existence is scanned and recreated virtually, then put into operation, my consciousness begins to operate once more and it is, in fact, "me". There is no personal discontinuity between my last moment in an organic body and operations resuming elsewhere. I may have lost some memories, if the frame through which the water of my consciousness flows (oh look, a pretty metaphor) is from earlier than my organic "death". But it's really me. Hurrah hurrah, etc etc.

Now, within these ideas, I think there might be some unknowns to ponder, special situations. For instance, if an Omortal me begins living while a organic me is still alive, which point of presence am I personally experiencing? Interestingly, I ponder what would be the implications if the answer is "it doesn't matter, until one of us stops thinking". What if, for example, if you have a true version of yourself running elsewhere, and another version stops operating, its point of presence is folded into any other currently operational copy? There could be some form of trauma involved - if this phenomenon doesn't usually happen until a species develops the technology or methods to bring it about, it wouldn't be something we have a hint of beforehand in studying natural systems. Unless one suspects some very rare instances of "paranormal" experiences could be related to sudden jumps in the operation of consciousness due to similar interactions.

I ninja vanish now.
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We're from Outer Space, every one of us!

[HarryStottle]

Greetings Squeakthedragon (may I call you squeak?) and welcome to the board.

You're raising two issues. On the first I think we're in broad agreement and your version is every bit as conjectural as my own wild thoughts on Telepathy and I still haven't figured out how to test that hypothesis so I don't know where we can take that discussion!

On the second, however, I think we disagree. I don't buy the "point of presence" concept. Somewhere in these pages I've actually made the point that, from the moment of separation, "we" are two separate individuals because, from that moment on, we begin to have different histories and identity is part physical and part experience. The experience is tied very directly to that which does the "experiencing". So, for instance, if I'm looking at the digital clone of myself - even if it is inhabiting an exact nano-cloud physical copy of myself and standing right in front of me - we are still having different experiences, if only because I'm facing west looking at my digital self and my digital self is looking east at my organic self. Unless the two copies could occupy the same space and time, they MUST diverge.

So I don't anticipate any existential identity conflict, though there could, of course, be very real "legal" conflicts if we both laid claim to the same identity related rights, such as exclusive access to a bank account, mate or domicile. To avoid that kind of issue when we become a digital species, I suspect we'll never create a "full equal" when we create our avatars (unless it is migrating to a new star system on our behalf or something of that ilk, which is going to separate our selves permanently). We'll normally create only limited versions with a built in "expiry dates" (like session cookies!)

When an avatar's task is complete, our "live" copy will assimilate any new experiences considered worth retaining, and the avatar will be deactivated until it's needed again...

[squeakthedragon]

[Bebop]

Hello everyone.

It's been a while since I posted in the forums and I recently decided I was interested in all this again =]

I've spend the last few hours going through this thread and rereading some of Harry's articles.

Harry, though I do agree with you that omortality will indeed be possible and a viable option one day I just can't bring myself to be satisfied with the concept. For me it's still that argument of, "its not ME, but a COPY of me"

Yes, you can record up untill organic death so that the digital copy seems to wake up just after I die and continue on as if I had never biologically died. But it's the point is that my organic self still closes it's eyes never to reopen them. I don't close my eyes and wake up digitized. I close my eyes and a COPY of me wakes up in a digital form.

From what I understand it seems like your ok with that, so long as the digital version of yourself is accurate enough to continue on where you left off. I am not. What do I care if I have a perfect, complete digital copy of myself running around doing what I would have done if it was still alive? I'm dead! My personal existance is over. Any impact my digital copy makes on the universe is lost on me because I won't be around to know/see/percieve it in any way. Thats what scares me. Omortality is not a 'cure' for death, it's just a replacement for life.

I would be much happier with some sort of organic imortality with omortality as a backup, a sort of last resort if my organic self is killed.

[HarryStottle]

[Bebop]

[HarryStottle]

OK, then respond to my other point:

[Bebop]

[squeakthedragon]

I'd have to side with the objection to omortality being the "cure" for individual death. The omortal concept, as it stands now, is a cure for death for the human race as a whole - not for any one person.

The analogy of your omortal self being more like a child is valid. For himself, I gather from Harry's explanation that he has accepted that a digital version of himself is not *him* in the literal sense and that he's fine with it replacing him after he dies.

From my point of view, I see nothing *wrong* with this, and ethically, if it was possible to give life to an omortal version of yourself to continue living after you die, it's the right thing to do. (After all, if the omortal version is identical to you, it will have the same desire to continue living. You wouldn't be "forcing" a new mind into an existence it never wanted.)

What Harry says about continuity of consciousness hypothetically being broken during regular sleep is also food for thought. If a mind "dies" every time it sleeps (though given that subconscious processing continues during all sleep, this might end up being mostly misleading) then we'd have to ask just what continuity of awareness really is. There might also be potential for some form of personal continuance using a form of digital transcription and this method.

We have to remember that one problem we have, as thinking beings, is that it's difficult for us to imagine what we're not built to imagine. It's hard for us to think outside the framework of our own mental hardware; we can't literally imagine for example, what a digital version of ourselves might feel like as it split itself into multiple copies and then reintegrated the experiences later. We can only construct analogies that make the idea appear to make sense to us.

Therefore, there very well may be a mechanic to the operation of consciousness that is difficult, or impossible, for us to directly conceptualize. Here's an analogy. If you're an average person who's senses are all in good working order - sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing - then your natural awareness of where "you" are, the you behind your eyes, paints a picture that "you" are a pair of eyes located in the front of a face, that "smell" comes from two holes under the eyes, hearing from two holes in the side, touch from all over, etc. But this is all virtual. Your sensory organs could be anywhere on your body. Your brain could be in your belly. Our own personal sensation of who we are and how we physically exist is essentially a conglomerate construct. It's no more literally real than a virtual simulation inside a computer. If your brain WAS in your stomach, you might still feel "you" are in your head because of where your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears all happen to meet in one location.

My point here, is that our own personal experience of what day to day life and "consciousness" is, can be misleading. The mirror reflects everything but itself.

Now, one method to achieve literal omortality for a living person in an organic body might be the old idea of offloading brain functions one at a time onto a different substrate; either connected to one outside the body, or by replacing brain cells one at a time with a non-organic equivalent that after full conversion, would have the ability to digitally link with networks everywhere and distribute the processing of consciousness, thus leaving the confine of the body. "You" would truly be transferred because "you" never go anywhere. Omortality comes to you, rather than just having your brain read and the copy of its mindstate started up in a new location.

Reviving the dead in a literal sense might not be possible though, if this is the true limitation of consciousness transfer. A truly perfect recreation of them might be possible using methods Harry has already outlined.

When I talked though about "point of presence" I may have explained it poorly, and I think Harry got the impression that I was talking about some literal, physical mechanism that's a part of how consciousness works in the brain. I wasn't; I was speaking of the subjective, virtual experience our consciousness creates for us due to how it the brain works.

Again, while it's hard for us to imagine directly, the continuation of our consciousness may not depend on the exact three dimensional location of our brain hardware, because it's not continuity in the way the process of living trains us to instinctively feel about it. Even our organic brain swaps out cells over the course of its lifetime. What matters is that the matrix of processing itself remains in the same configuration down to whatever resolution consciousness requires.

Purely as a thought experiment, what if for instance, if you "die", meaning the processing of your brain truly stops, and the matrix of your consciousness restarts, the exact matrix, and you "wake up" only to find yourself in a different physical location? (Such as a distributed consciousness in a digital substrate.) If the exact moment you are reawakened is calculated to precisely simulate your last moment of processing elsewhere, down to whatever required resolution, just where are "you" at anyway? It could be that a "clone" is only created if one matrix of your consciousness is still operating when another is started in parallel. Again, I'm speaking of the virtual experience of awareness.

In this hypothetical situation, reviving a dead person might indeed provide their subjective, virtual consciousness with the experience of actual continuation from the point in the past where the original version of them died to a new location.

Another reason I have the feeling that something is going on here, is because we'll have to answer questions like these - and I think they're going to become extremely relevant and practical - once we DO have digital intelligences even if it is "AI" and not transferred human minds. The existence of a software based AI will not be the same, in the most strict sense, as that of a human mind. A human mind is processing in a limited environment, contained to one brain, with no cross networking outside of Harry's hypothetical telepathy ideas. But a software AI running on anything remotely like what we have as computer systems today, will have a much more distributed nature. Parts of itself will be all over, and will be able to seamlessly merge with and then disconnect with other nodes of processing and even other AIs.

We'll have to consider if this kind of intelligence truly perceives an "I" in the same way we do. We'll have to consider that in a digital system, it can actually be switched "off", really off, as in stone cold with no power (thus no "life in the individual cells) and turned back on. Does the AI "die" when that happens? Or does personal consciousness not depend on the continual operation of a piece of hardware? What if the AI's data is, while it is shut off, copied entirely to another part of the network, the original erased, and the AI started up again? Does it experience true personal continuation? (Note on computer technology for folks: when you "move" a file, what really happens is that you're copying the data to another location and destroying the unique configuration of 1 and 0 bits in the original location.)

If an AI experiences true continuation while existing within the different rules of a digital substrate, what does that suggest about human consciousness? If a human mind is "switched off" (by freezing the brain it runs in, by death, etc) then the data which creates its virtual awareness of self is turned on again in an identical substrate - identical from a processing standpoint - does that mind in fact experience true continuity as far as its own level (virtual) of existence is concerned?

Some of these questions are ones we cannot actually answer, or even reasonably conjecture with certainty, until we're actually there and testing it out for real.
_________________
We're from Outer Space, every one of us!