Transcendence........would You Do It?

[RainMan]

There is going to be a new species of technology soon that will enable humans to download their brain into a computer program before they die. If given the chance, would you do it? We may not know where our soul goes, where it transcends to or even if we have one, but we will be able to "transcend" our brain functions into the realm of cyber-space.

 

My answer is yes........I would most certainly do it. 

[Buffy]

Have you ever asked yourself why?

 

We are analog creatures living in an analog world. Right now the technology requires us to digitize everything, and digitization always requires a bazillion approximations and something is always lost in the translation. We can get closer and closer to the analog--to the point where sampling rates now satisfy even analogophile Neil Young--but there's always something lost that may be essential.

 

Maybe we'll get to the point where we can manufacture analog systems, but then the transference step is always prone to error too, simply due to quantum effects.

 

Some things that might seem to be mere extensions of what we know really do cross the line into violations of the laws of physics, so I dunno, maybe its possible, maybe it will be proved impossible.

 

Agents of SHIELD sure has an interesting take on this, and I watch it mainly for the related story line in it.

 

But I don't get too wrapped up in it because it's doubtful the technology to do this is going to happen in my lifetime (barring visitors from Asgard or Vulcan).

 

 

Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them, :phones:

Buffy

[sman]

It may seem like unabashed self-aggrandizing, but I refer you to this - my old post on the subject in a different thread - because I find myself wanting to comment in the same spirit in this new thread.

This topic crops up from time to time. The compiled content here at hypography’s forums is old and robust. Playing around with the ‘search’ usually returns a wealth of info. Feel free to bump-up an old thread.

[Turtle]

The idea brings new meaning to the expression 'pull the plug'. Before you can put an 'I' into a machine, you need to know what an 'I' is. I like Hofstadter's view that 'I' is a strange loop. One of the strange-atudenalities of this view is that when my body croaks 'I' live on in my writings and the memories of others. To paraphrase Doug, in many ways Bach is more alive now then when he breathed. Look Ma; no body!

[ErlyRisa]

There is going to be a new species of technology soon that will enable humans to download their brain into a computer program before they die. If given the chance, would you do it? We may not know where our soul goes, where it transcends to or even if we have one, but we will be able to "transcend" our brain functions into the realm of cyber-space.

 

My answer is yes........I would most certainly do it. 

 

 

If you could do that, why would you bother?

 

Wouldn't you just download the whole universe instead (ie. your in it?)

[cal]

We are analog creatures living in an analog world. Right now the technology requires us to digitize everything, and digitization always requires a bazillion approximations and something is always lost in the translation. We can get closer and closer to the analog--to the point where sampling rates now satisfy even analogophile Neil Young--but there's always something lost that may be essential.

...

Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them, :phones:

Buffy

This ^

Everyone talks about transfering your consciousness into a machine, but they ignore what is it to be a "mind". Robert Nozick has a book called Philosophic Explanations where he goes over a very important schema called the Closest Continuer. The closest continuer goes back to the ancient philosophers; they argued that if you had a small wooden boat that you took out onto a lake everyday, and noticed that there was a squeaky board everyday, and replaced a single board everyday until every board on the boat was replaced, you still have the same original boat. The problem arises when you take all of the first boards and re-arrange them in the same position as they first were, because then which boat is now the original? The Closest Continuer would say that the replaced boat is still the original because the whole remained even though all the parts were changed. This is a good thing because it means that despite all of our atoms in our entire body being replaced every few years, it is still our own original bodies, unique to our whole.

 

That being said, if you immediately end your physical biological body and zap your "mind" (which I guess for now we'll just define as the active kinectic energy and the pathways it inhabits in your brain) into a computational machine, you've lost the closest continuer and that new mind is no longer yours. For this same reason, you technically die everytime you get beamed up/down from/to a planet in the Star Trek teleporters. If you completely dissasociate the old, it doesn't matter that the new uses all the same parts of the old, it's still a new, seperate, thing.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Snax

[ErlyRisa]

This ^

Everyone talks about transfering your consciousness into a machine, but they ignore what is it to be a "mind". Robert Nozick has a book called Philosophic Explanations where he goes over a very important schema called the Closest Continuer. The closest continuer goes back to the ancient philosophers; they argued that if you had a small wooden boat that you took out onto a lake everyday, and noticed that there was a squeaky board everyday, and replaced a single board everyday until every board on the boat was replaced, you still have the same original boat. The problem arises when you take all of the first boards and re-arrange them in the same position as they first were, because then which boat is now the original? The Closest Continuer would say that the replaced boat is still the original because the whole remained even though all the parts were changed. This is a good thing because it means that despite all of our atoms in our entire body being replaced every few years, it is still our own original bodies, unique to our whole.

 

That being said, if you immediately end your physical biological body and zap your "mind" (which I guess for now we'll just define as the active kinectic energy and the pathways it inhabits in your brain) into a computational machine, you've lost the closest continuer and that new mind is no longer yours. For this same reason, you technically die everytime you get beamed up/down from/to a planet in the Star Trek teleporters. If you completely dissasociate the old, it doesn't matter that the new uses all the same parts of the old, it's still a new, seperate, thing.

 

 

Exactly...and too add

 

If you were to purport to be able to store "an animals" pure routines/subroutines/data - and have it put that device onto shopping trolley wheels (knowing full well you can trick that new entity into believing it were a goat) - would in not just be a comical entity for the other humans to laugh at?

 

ie. Even as you with 5 sences: you beleive in the world around you based on those sences... if you were blind, then you could be tricked into eating raw bannanas for your whole life, thinking they were ripe and were always meant to be that way: The ultimate joke by your observers is too give you normal bannanas and see if you still like them (which you would most probably not).

 

;Which then you are nothing more than a comedy robot fashion by God(s) for thier pleasure.

 

ie. If the power to store what is supposedely alot of info (a human) is available (which already is anyway)... why would you bother with such a mundane and quite pathetic achievement by todays standards: Wouldn't you just create your own universe - and put yourself into that.

 

AKA as Books, then Radio, Then Television, then 3D Gaming, then VR holosuites, then full electron cloud transgression into a vessel of choosing. (AKA - beam me into the genie bottle)

 

The question is who takes care of the Bottle?

 

ie: I would assume that the bottle could have defences - against? some alien overlord that understand what he is holding when he finds one... which in that case the bottle would have to be able todo unfathomable things: only you could figure out with the awesome power of such bottle, for example:

 

you may want a mode of transport like, legs, maybe hands to be able to grasp things, a mouth to communicate and conume energy, and maybe eyes to be able to see the alien coming...hmm this reminds me of something - oh yeah, its the basic way an animal is built...

 

Evolution guys: its locked.

[arissa]

Sounds like the new movie Transcendence. I am not sure if I could handle something like that. I am already clastrophobic, now you are talking about putting me into a box pretty much. I don't think I could swing that way.

[ErlyRisa]

Sounds like the new movie Transcendence. I am not sure if I could handle something like that. I am already clastrophobic, now you are talking about putting me into a box pretty much. I don't think I could swing that way.

 

 

We do it anyway: some people call it a funeral.

[RainMan]

....if you immediately end your physical biological body and zap your "mind" .........into a computational machine, you've lost the closest continuer and that new mind is no longer yours. If you completely disassociate the old, it doesn't matter that the new uses all the same parts of the old, it's still a new, separate, thing.

 

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. You seem to be equating separate with new. Downloading the mind means downloading all the memories that come with it. My body isn't the same as it was when I was 7 years old, but it's still my body. My thoughts aren't the same now as they were when I was 7, but they are still my thoughts. What those thoughts are in....my body, the body of a 70 year old woman or in a glass jar on shelf doesn't matter. It doesn't change those thoughts, only how I can physically deal with them or not. It's like pouring brandy from a bottle into a glass. You're not changing the content in those vessels, you're simply changing the vessels. If the brandy was 70 years old in the bottle, it's still going to be 70 years old in a glass.

Edited April 27, 2014 by RainMan

[ErlyRisa]

closest continuer:

 

Yeah - doing a full "one moment" zap - is akin to copying a floppy disk...

 

you now have 2 copies remember!

 

Unless I could be convinced, in some wierd logic that my "actual" state, has moved "a superioir distance", without being doctored on the way

 

then no thanks.

 

Heres the problem: How do you know its not already happening, we have all seen that horrid movie I donot dare mention the name of.

[Turtle]

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. You seem to be equating separate with new. Downloading the mind means downloading all the memories that come with it. My body isn't the same as it was when I was 7 years old, but it's still my body. My thoughts aren't the same now as they were when I was 7, but they are still my thoughts. What those thoughts are in....my body, the body of a 70 year old woman or in a glass jar on shelf doesn't matter. It doesn't change those thoughts, only how I can physically deal with them or not. It's like pouring brandy from a bottle into a glass. You're not changing the content in those vessels, you're simply changing the vessels. If the brandy was 70 years old in the bottle, it's still going to be 70 years old in a glass.

I think you are mistaken that your thinking would be the same in the body of a 70 year old woman as in your current body. Your thoughts are all fun-da-mentally predisposed on your senses and regardless of what is already in your memory, changes in senses means changes in thinking. As soon as that brandy is exposed to air, it is irrevocably changed.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Turtle

[PiSquare]

To add another challenge to the equation, if your brain can be downloaded into a machine, what stops technology from uploading this knowledge/information into another living brain - a.k.a. Highlander revisited in the technology age. Also, what exactly is transcended, the brain or the mind? Pure knowledge, one-dimensional facts? Or wisdom, maturity, experience, multi-dimensional insights which transcend the physical realm? I am not yet convinced that evolution, albeit only from birth to death, can be captured accurately and completely in the realm of cyberspace. 

[ErlyRisa]

Highlander is one of my favourite examples...

 

The movies are about 2hrs (with commercials)

 

in other words: even as an immortal being, he is only about 2hrs of my life interesting.

 

He has the initial Wife - and he has some flusies along the way and occasionally gets into a scuffle -> its a typical life, just spread out in

human history.

 

He (Mr. Lambert and freinds) maybe be ahead of the human racee when it comes too immortality, but today we will all be able to do it, making Mr Lambert and ordinary human - but with stories to tell....

 

but why would the humans believe Mr. Lambert, what the humans should always strive for is accuracy in descerning the past (much like science does)

 

--and finally, once we can discern the past accurately - which means you know the future -> you will not know the point of existence.

-you now exist in all times, and all spaces: and in effect have all data: Which means, extinction: You cease to have purpose, you are nothing more

than a perpetual headache.

 

I think every system, comes to this point: I think its called adulthood, where the point of existence is to know that you can pass on "a new" data set, and be happy with the fact that you no longer have to exist...ie even the universe has to trust itself/offspring at one stage.

[PiSquare]

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. You seem to be equating separate with new. Downloading the mind means downloading all the memories that come with it. My body isn't the same as it was when I was 7 years old, but it's still my body. My thoughts aren't the same now as they were when I was 7, but they are still my thoughts. What those thoughts are in....my body, the body of a 70 year old woman or in a glass jar on shelf doesn't matter. It doesn't change those thoughts, only how I can physically deal with them or not. It's like pouring brandy from a bottle into a glass. You're not changing the content in those vessels, you're simply changing the vessels. If the brandy was 70 years old in the bottle, it's still going to be 70 years old in a glass.

 

 True, RainMan, and well said! The only challenge the 70 year old brandy has, is the reliability of the vessel. Some vessels might temporarily hide the visibility or magnificence of the brandy. There might even be a few droplets of whisky in the glass which could change the texture of the brandy somewhat. But you covered this challenge by indicating that the vessel does not change the thoughts, only how these thoughts are physically dealt with...and only until the brandy is released from the current vessel and placed in another vessel.

[arissa]

We do it anyway: some people call it a funeral.

 

Not true. At that point you are putting a body into the ground, that does not mean you know what is going to happen with the rest of the person (their mind, soul, etc.). That is just an assumption. Then again, if you went with that idea what would then happen for someone who is cremated?

[ErlyRisa]

Not true. At that point you are putting a body into the ground, that does not mean you know what is going to happen with the rest of the person (their mind, soul, etc.). That is just an assumption. Then again, if you went with that idea what would then happen for someone who is cremated?

 

They are both boxes though...

 

Even in death, we put things into boxes.