Why should you be emotionally invested in strong AI?

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 09:27 AM

I am aware that there are many individuals emotionally invested in the notion that strong AI is false. I can understand why -- the idea that our consciousness has some magical component that is beyond the boring and cold scientifically understood world is one that can be tempting.

But there are also very good emotional reasons to support the notion that strong AI is true.

Because if strong AI is true, the implications aren't limited to a realization that we are all just meatbags having the illusion of non-deterministic thought. There is so much more.

If strong AI is true, humans will someday be able to upload their consciousness into any suitable substrate. This is not only the closest thing to immortality that could be available in our universe, but it is also far better than immorality. The ability to upload our consciousness implies the ability to modify it as well -- in any way we desire. Being able to upload also implies the ability to travel at lightspeed between suitable locations. So if you are interested in living forever, or living in any way you could possibly think of, you should want strong AI to be true.

Now you might say "but religion tells us that immorality is available now -- we don't have to wait for the technology, which might not arrive for hundreds of years."

To that I reply that my own estimates put the arrival time of such capability at less that 50 years from now. In fact such a thing might be possible within 20 years or so, and economic feasibility would follow within a few decades.

But even if you can't wait that long, you can always freeze yourself. Because an implication of strong AI being true is that technology to thaw you and bring you back to life is no longer relevant -- all that is needed is the technology to scan your frozen brain and extract the topography of the neural networks contained within. After that, the upload technology takes care of everything else.

Hopefully I have shown that there are emotional reasons to support strong AI that are just as good, if not better, than those for opposing it.

Ladewig · 16th December 2009, 09:55 AM

I am not very knowledgeable in this area so forgive my question, but why are you assuming that strong AI will allow the ability to upload individuals' consciousness?

Meadmaker · 16th December 2009, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

But even if you can't wait that long, you can always freeze yourself.

You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you?

Third Eye Open · 16th December 2009, 10:21 AM

This is all very immoral.

Richard Masters · 16th December 2009, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you?

It's a risky form of insurance, but if we can unfreeze people while preserving their organs at some point in the future, then it's not exactly a bunch of hooey.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 11:44 AM

Originally Posted by Ladewig

I am not very knowledgeable in this area so forgive my question, but why are you assuming that strong AI will allow the ability to upload individuals' consciousness?

Because an implication of strong AI is that there is no loss of "essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be, when the intelligence is instantiated upon a non-biological substrate.

That is, if AI can really be conscious, then there is no logical reason why our own consciousness could not be transferred to a non-biological substrate.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you?

I think it is a bunch of hooey that those frozen people will ever be un-frozen and "fixed" or whatever they think will happen.

I do not think it is implausible that at some point in the future -- certainly within a few hundred years, much sooner if my estimates are correct -- there will be technology to extract from a frozen brain the information needed to completely reconstruct a model of the neurons and their connections.

Assuming the brain is kept at a low enough temperature (maybe they aren't currently, but that isn't a fault of my argument), there is no reason that any neural connections should degrade past the point of being able to recover the topography.

justcharlie09 · 16th December 2009, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Now you might say "but religion tells us that immorality is available now -- we don't have to wait for the technology, which might not arrive for hundreds of years."

.

Oh yes, I think religion all too often does preach the availability of immorality. Just look at the recent sex scandals in the RCC.

No technology required.

....

Sorry, couldn't resist...

....

I'm a PKD and Asimov fan, too. AI would certainly make things more interesting, wouldn't it?

aggle-rithm · 16th December 2009, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Because an implication of strong AI is that there is no loss of "essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be, when the intelligence is instantiated upon a non-biological substrate.

That is, if AI can really be conscious, then there is no logical reason why our own consciousness could not be transferred to a non-biological substrate.

By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it?

If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me? Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable? Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint?

Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively?

roger · 16th December 2009, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it?

If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me? Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable? Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint?

Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively?

You are assuming a "me" that doesn't exist (according to the way of thinking expoused in this thread).

All you have is a brain, and processes running on the brain. The processes are self aware, and refer to something called 'me'. But there is no 'me' there.

If this is all true (and I think it is, I don't see any mechanism but the brain to create all this), then if you were to copy your brain state to silicon or whatever, the processes running on silicon would think "I'm still me!!!". Meanwhile, the processes running on the brain would think "hey, that silicon sure is acting a lot like me".

It is absolutely no different from the fact that you don't have my consciousness. That's not because there is a "you" and "me", but because the processes running in each of our brains are not networked in any way.

It's also no different, given these assumptions, then you falling asleep and waking up. There is no 'me' thing - it's just that the processes that are running in your brain now have access to memory of previous times when they were active, and your brain creates the fiction of a 'me'. But, if we swapped out your brain for silicon you couldn't tell. If we ran 10,000 instances of your brain on different computers, none of those 10,000 could tell - they'd all still think they were the you of the meat brain.

PixyMisa · 16th December 2009, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively?

Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it?

One and the same, according to the computational model.

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me?

Both would be you for an instant, after which they would diverge. If it worries you, go ahead and keep a pistol nearby the original like in The Prestige.

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable?

Up to you.

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint?

Yes. Your subjective experience could be recreated (or restarted, as it were) from the neural map data. Kind of like what happens when you go to sleep and then wake up -- there is a break in subjective experience but you are still the same person nonetheless.

Originally Posted by aggle-rithm

Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively?

Yes, in theory it would be identical to your experience right now.

But furthermore I can envision even a world where you can recombine with other instances of yourself and merge the memories.

Think about it -- try to remember a place you have been, and the stuff you did there. Now ask yourself this -- were you thinking about that, at all, prior to me mentioning it in the above statement? That is what it would be like to acquire memories from another copy of yourself -- you wouldn't know the difference.

Pretty cool stuff, if strong AI is true.

Frank Newgent · 16th December 2009, 01:01 PM

Reminds me for some reason of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch... and the hallucinogen to be marketed as "Chew-Z" with its slogan: God promises eternal life. We can deliver it.

Very entertaining read.

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Yes. Your subjective experience could be recreated (or restarted, as it were) from the neural map data. Kind of like what happens when you go to sleep and then wake up -- there is a break in subjective experience but you are still the same person nonetheless.

That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time.

If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on.

Bikewer · 16th December 2009, 01:16 PM

Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV.
Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI.

Fred Pohl had a nice exploration of what this might be like in one of his HeeChee novels; with the ability to "think" so much faster than a human that speaking to one would be an exercise in multi-tasking to avoid being bored....
It's an interesting notion, but one that's down the road a bit.

Gate2501 · 16th December 2009, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time.

If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on.

You should go read the "teleporter" thread if it still exists. It really challenged my thinking on this matter, and brought me over to RD's position after much internal debating.

Gate2501 · 16th December 2009, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by Bikewer

Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV.
Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI.

Fred Pohl had a nice exploration of what this might be like in one of his HeeChee novels; with the ability to "think" so much faster than a human that speaking to one would be an exercise in multi-tasking to avoid being bored....
It's an interesting notion, but one that's down the road a bit.

That is a really good idea, and would make me much more comfortable. You could have the bio body and the AI share memory for the switching period so that it feels very seamless to the mind being transferred.

Maia · 16th December 2009, 01:20 PM

Two questions.

1.) RD, what are you smoking?
2.) Can I have some?

I Ratant · 16th December 2009, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by Richard Masters

It's a risky form of insurance, but if we can unfreeze people while preserving their organs at some point in the future, then it's not exactly a bunch of hooey.

.
Storing a bunch of people, with the population increasing as it... is it realistic to expect the future would -want- more people?
Especially as in the typical Sci-fi scenario, these corpsicles are infected with probable long erased diseases for which the living population has no resistance.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

That is a really good idea, and would make me much more comfortable. You could have the bio body and the AI share memory for the switching period so that it feels very seamless to the mind being transferred.

Yes.

In fact, this is the solution that I proposed in the teleporter thread. If you are hesitant about your consciousness being reduced to numbers, then you can always use this slower option.

My version was to teleport neurons one at a time, so that at any given instant neurons at the source are getting impulses from neurons at the destination and vice versa, until all the neurons have been moved to the destination.

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 01:31 PM

Originally Posted by Bikewer

Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV.
Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI.

You'd have to be able to instantly upload the new info from the machine's "experience" back into the shutdown bio body's brain before "restarting" the bio brain, wouldn't you, to make that work?

westprog · 16th December 2009, 01:35 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time.

That doesn't mean that it's wrong, of course.

Quote:

If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on.

All that means is that consciousness is an entirely unphysical phenomenon. It's an idea, but there's no need to take it too seriously.

westprog · 16th December 2009, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

"essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be

Getting the belief in "essence" of consciousness might be that difficult first step for some people. But if you can just bring yourself to accept, look, eternal life!

Piscivore · 16th December 2009, 02:01 PM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

I am aware that there are many individuals emotionally invested in the notion that strong AI is false. I can understand why -- the idea that our consciousness has some magical component that is beyond the boring and cold scientifically understood world is one that can be tempting.

But there are also very good emotional reasons to support the notion that strong AI is true.

I'm sorry, did you just ask us to stop uncritically accepting a speculative, unevidenced belief just because it is pleasing, and instead uncritically accept your contradictory speculative, unevidenced belief because it is also pleasing?

Yeah... no.

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 02:11 PM

Originally Posted by Piscivore

I'm sorry, did you just ask us to stop uncritically accepting a speculative, unevidenced belief just because it is pleasing, and instead uncritically accept your contradictory speculative, unevidenced belief because it is also pleasing?

Yeah... no.

What do you see as being fundamentally illogical about "digital immortality"?

westprog · 16th December 2009, 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

What do you see as being fundamentally illogical about "digital immortality"?

He didn't say it was fundamentally illogical. It isn't. Given the premises, it makes sense.

However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence. Which, if you were asked to literally bet your life, might give one pause. Or not. I can well imagine people queuing up in a few years time to have their brain patterns transcribed. You will lose a few thousand dollars, my friends, but I am promising you eternal life!

westprog · 16th December 2009, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

You'd have to be able to instantly upload the new info from the machine's "experience" back into the shutdown bio body's brain before "restarting" the bio brain, wouldn't you, to make that work?

Not if you put Kellyb into a coma before creating Kellyc.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by westprog

All that means is that consciousness is an entirely unphysical phenomenon. It's an idea, but there's no need to take it too seriously.

Nor is there a need to take any of the other stuff seriously. You know, like religion and all that jazz.

Yet, billions do, and wars are fought over it.

Funny how that works.

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by westprog

He didn't say it was fundamentally illogical. It isn't. Given the premises, it makes sense.

However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence. Which, if you were asked to literally bet your life, might give one pause. Or not. I can well imagine people queuing up in a few years time to have their brain patterns transcribed. You will lose a few thousand dollars, my friends, but I am promising you eternal life!

Well, he said it was not not only speculative but also "contradictory". I'm not seeing it.

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by westprog

Not if you put Kellyb into a coma before creating Kellyc.

Right...but if you're going to bounce back and forth, you've got to get the KellyC experience into the comatose KellyB before awakening KellyB again.
If you're trying to actually switch back and forth.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by Piscivore

I'm sorry, did you just ask us to stop uncritically accepting a speculative, unevidenced belief just because it is pleasing, and instead uncritically accept your contradictory speculative, unevidenced belief because it is also pleasing?

Yeah... no.

No, I didn't. I simply gave some reasons why the belief is pleasing, and suggested that you become emotionally invested in the belief if you find those reasons valid.

I don't recall every saying you should accept strong AI. Perhaps you could quote me?

Oh, wait, you can't, because I never said it.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 02:26 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

Right...but if you're going to bounce back and forth, you've got to get the KellyC experience into the comatose KellyB before awakening KellyB again.
If you're trying to actually switch back and forth.

Yes, correct.

That scenario would require the ability to modify neurons via an external mechanism, so that kellyB's brain topography would match kellyC's.

rocketdodger · 16th December 2009, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

Well, he said it was not not only speculative but also "contradictory". I'm not seeing it.

He meant contradictory to the idea of consciousness being magical, not self-contradictory.

I never say anything self-contradictory ... if I can help it

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 02:35 PM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

He meant contradictory to the idea of consciousness being magical, not self-contradictory.

I never say anything self-contradictory ... if I can help it

Oh. lol.

So, do you think we'd have to work in the digital netherworld? To pay the living to service our computers or whatever?

roger · 16th December 2009, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by westprog

However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence.

In what way? All available evidence indicates that our brain creates our consciousness, that the brain is wholly physical, and that there is nothing specific to the hardware of the brain that cannot be duplicated (after all, we duplicate it every time we have a baby). It is proven that memories are stored in the brain. It is proven that by stimulating neurons we can cause people to reexperience them. It is proven that destruction of neurons can lead to destruction of memory, and alteration or destruction of personality.

It's superbly supported by the evidence, so far as I can see.

Darat · 16th December 2009, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by kellyb

...snip...

If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on.

No there wouldn't be, and that holds even if we follow the speculation in the opening post, what there would be is two very similar people who share an identical history.

Piscivore · 16th December 2009, 02:51 PM

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

No, I didn't. I simply gave some reasons why the belief is pleasing, and suggested that you become emotionally invested in the belief if you find those reasons valid.

I don't recall every saying you should accept strong AI. Perhaps you could quote me?

Oh, wait, you can't, because I never said it.

You said "But there are also very good emotional reasons to support the notion that strong AI is true." As far as I'm concerned, there are NO "good emotional reasons" to support any notion as true.

Richard Masters · 16th December 2009, 02:54 PM

Originally Posted by I Ratant

.
Storing a bunch of people, with the population increasing as it... is it realistic to expect the future would -want- more people?
Especially as in the typical Sci-fi scenario, these corpsicles are infected with probable long erased diseases for which the living population has no resistance.

I'm not arguing for or against it. It's actually kind of creepy in a way, especially because the typical scenario involves decapitating the individual and keeping the head. (The rest of the body, if desired, can theoretically be reconstructed from the individual's DNA).

kellyb · 16th December 2009, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by Darat

No there wouldn't be, and that holds even if we follow the speculation in the opening post, what there would be is two very similar people who share an identical history.

I guess what I meant was, two people both having equal rights to claim "the real Kellyb" status. And if they both exist, functioning, at the same time, the biological "body located consciousness" ("me") can't escape the non-existance of death.

It's almost like there's some sort of paradox in there, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it. But it seems like having the simulated consciousness operating at the same time as the bio consciousness renders the simulated consciousness insufficient for the purpose of escaping death.

Or something. I think.

westprog · 16th December 2009, 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by roger

In what way? All available evidence indicates that our brain creates our consciousness, that the brain is wholly physical, and that there is nothing specific to the hardware of the brain that cannot be duplicated (after all, we duplicate it every time we have a baby). It is proven that memories are stored in the brain. It is proven that by stimulating neurons we can cause people to reexperience them. It is proven that destruction of neurons can lead to destruction of memory, and alteration or destruction of personality.

It's superbly supported by the evidence, so far as I can see.

That the brain is a physical object is fairly clear. This theory makes the claim that a different physical object is the same brain. Not similar, not likely to behave in the same way, but exactly the same thing. That's the contention which is unsupported by the evidence. What's the difference between "essence of consciousness" and "immortal soul"?

The very fact that consciousness is located in a physical object implies that it is tied to that physical object. A big, big leap of faith is required to say that it isn't.

16th December 2009, 09:27 AM	#1
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Why should you be emotionally invested in strong AI? I am aware that there are many individuals emotionally invested in the notion that strong AI is false. I can understand why -- the idea that our consciousness has some magical component that is beyond the boring and cold scientifically understood world is one that can be tempting. But there are also very good emotional reasons to support the notion that strong AI is true. Because if strong AI is true, the implications aren't limited to a realization that we are all just meatbags having the illusion of non-deterministic thought. There is so much more. If strong AI is true, humans will someday be able to upload their consciousness into any suitable substrate. This is not only the closest thing to immortality that could be available in our universe, but it is also far better than immorality. The ability to upload our consciousness implies the ability to modify it as well -- in any way we desire. Being able to upload also implies the ability to travel at lightspeed between suitable locations. So if you are interested in living forever, or living in any way you could possibly think of, you should want strong AI to be true. Now you might say "but religion tells us that immorality is available now -- we don't have to wait for the technology, which might not arrive for hundreds of years." To that I reply that my own estimates put the arrival time of such capability at less that 50 years from now. In fact such a thing might be possible within 20 years or so, and economic feasibility would follow within a few decades. But even if you can't wait that long, you can always freeze yourself. Because an implication of strong AI being true is that technology to thaw you and bring you back to life is no longer relevant -- all that is needed is the technology to scan your frozen brain and extract the topography of the neural networks contained within. After that, the upload technology takes care of everything else. Hopefully I have shown that there are emotional reasons to support strong AI that are just as good, if not better, than those for opposing it.
	Last edited by rocketdodger; 16th December 2009 at 09:28 AM.

16th December 2009, 09:55 AM	#2
Ladewig Hipster alien Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: not measurable Posts: 16,827	I am not very knowledgeable in this area so forgive my question, but why are you assuming that strong AI will allow the ability to upload individuals' consciousness?
	__________________ Is the JREF message board training wheels for people who hope to one day troll other message boards? It is not that hard to get us to believe you. We are not the major leagues or even the minor leagues. We are Pee-Wee baseball. If you love striking out 10-year-olds, then you'll love trolling our board.

16th December 2009, 10:01 AM	#3
Meadmaker Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Detroit suburbs Posts: 11,453	Originally Posted by rocketdodger But even if you can't wait that long, you can always freeze yourself. You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you?
	__________________ Dave "War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Particles are waves."

16th December 2009, 10:21 AM	#4
Third Eye Open Graduate Poster Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Washington state, USA Posts: 1,402	This is all very immoral.
	__________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."- Friedrich von Schiller "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." - Thomas Jefferson "Let all your troubles go, cling to the joy of living..." - Heavenly

16th December 2009, 12:00 PM	#9
aggle-rithm Ardent Formulist Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 14,156	Originally Posted by rocketdodger Because an implication of strong AI is that there is no loss of "essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be, when the intelligence is instantiated upon a non-biological substrate. That is, if AI can really be conscious, then there is no logical reason why our own consciousness could not be transferred to a non-biological substrate. By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it? If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me? Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable? Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint? Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively?
	__________________ To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion. Woo's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by aliens.

16th December 2009, 10:29 AM	#5
Richard Masters Illuminator Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 3,030	Originally Posted by Meadmaker You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you? It's a risky form of insurance, but if we can unfreeze people while preserving their organs at some point in the future, then it's not exactly a bunch of hooey.

16th December 2009, 11:44 AM	#6
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by Ladewig I am not very knowledgeable in this area so forgive my question, but why are you assuming that strong AI will allow the ability to upload individuals' consciousness? Because an implication of strong AI is that there is no loss of "essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be, when the intelligence is instantiated upon a non-biological substrate. That is, if AI can really be conscious, then there is no logical reason why our own consciousness could not be transferred to a non-biological substrate.

16th December 2009, 11:47 AM	#7
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by Meadmaker You do realize that this part is a bunch of hooey, don't you? I think it is a bunch of hooey that those frozen people will ever be un-frozen and "fixed" or whatever they think will happen. I do not think it is implausible that at some point in the future -- certainly within a few hundred years, much sooner if my estimates are correct -- there will be technology to extract from a frozen brain the information needed to completely reconstruct a model of the neurons and their connections. Assuming the brain is kept at a low enough temperature (maybe they aren't currently, but that isn't a fault of my argument), there is no reason that any neural connections should degrade past the point of being able to recover the topography.

16th December 2009, 11:48 AM	#8
justcharlie09 Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 436	Originally Posted by rocketdodger Now you might say "but religion tells us that immorality is available now -- we don't have to wait for the technology, which might not arrive for hundreds of years." . Oh yes, I think religion all too often does preach the availability of immorality. Just look at the recent sex scandals in the RCC. No technology required. .... Sorry, couldn't resist... .... I'm a PKD and Asimov fan, too. AI would certainly make things more interesting, wouldn't it?

16th December 2009, 12:11 PM	#10
roger Penultimate Amazing Join Date: May 2002 Location: Mountain View, CA Posts: 11,021	Originally Posted by aggle-rithm By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it? If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me? Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable? Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint? Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively? You are assuming a "me" that doesn't exist (according to the way of thinking expoused in this thread). All you have is a brain, and processes running on the brain. The processes are self aware, and refer to something called 'me'. But there is no 'me' there. If this is all true (and I think it is, I don't see any mechanism but the brain to create all this), then if you were to copy your brain state to silicon or whatever, the processes running on silicon would think "I'm still me!!!". Meanwhile, the processes running on the brain would think "hey, that silicon sure is acting a lot like me". It is absolutely no different from the fact that you don't have my consciousness. That's not because there is a "you" and "me", but because the processes running in each of our brains are not networked in any way. It's also no different, given these assumptions, then you falling asleep and waking up. There is no 'me' thing - it's just that the processes that are running in your brain now have access to memory of previous times when they were active, and your brain creates the fiction of a 'me'. But, if we swapped out your brain for silicon you couldn't tell. If we ran 10,000 instances of your brain on different computers, none of those 10,000 could tell - they'd all still think they were the you of the meat brain.
	__________________ May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. - John Muir

16th December 2009, 12:32 PM	#11
PixyMisa Persnickety Insect Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sunny Munuvia Posts: 14,914	Originally Posted by aggle-rithm Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively? Wil McCarthy's The Collapsium.
	__________________ Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO

16th December 2009, 12:38 PM	#12
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by aggle-rithm By "uploading" are you talking about moving consciousness from one place to another, or simply copying it? One and the same, according to the computational model. Originally Posted by aggle-rithm If I uploaded my consciousness to a substrate, would I be me, or would the substrate-I be me? Both would be you for an instant, after which they would diverge. If it worries you, go ahead and keep a pistol nearby the original like in The Prestige. Originally Posted by aggle-rithm Would either me or the substrate-me be disposable? Up to you. Originally Posted by aggle-rithm Is it sufficient for my personality and memory to survive for me to survive, from a subjective standpoint? Yes. Your subjective experience could be recreated (or restarted, as it were) from the neural map data. Kind of like what happens when you go to sleep and then wake up -- there is a break in subjective experience but you are still the same person nonetheless. Originally Posted by aggle-rithm Can you envision a world in which everyone is constantly dying and being recreated, but nobody notices because the personalities and memories are continuous, and we are unable to experience our own death and resurrection subjectively? Yes, in theory it would be identical to your experience right now. But furthermore I can envision even a world where you can recombine with other instances of yourself and merge the memories. Think about it -- try to remember a place you have been, and the stuff you did there. Now ask yourself this -- were you thinking about that, at all, prior to me mentioning it in the above statement? That is what it would be like to acquire memories from another copy of yourself -- you wouldn't know the difference. Pretty cool stuff, if strong AI is true.

16th December 2009, 01:01 PM	#13
Frank Newgent Illuminator Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 4,689	Reminds me for some reason of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch... and the hallucinogen to be marketed as "Chew-Z" with its slogan: God promises eternal life. We can deliver it. Very entertaining read.
	__________________ Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski

16th December 2009, 01:09 PM	#14
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Quote: Yes. Your subjective experience could be recreated (or restarted, as it were) from the neural map data. Kind of like what happens when you go to sleep and then wake up -- there is a break in subjective experience but you are still the same person nonetheless. That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time. If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on.

16th December 2009, 01:16 PM	#15
Bikewer Philosopher Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: St. Louis, Mo. Posts: 9,537	Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV. Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI. Fred Pohl had a nice exploration of what this might be like in one of his HeeChee novels; with the ability to "think" so much faster than a human that speaking to one would be an exercise in multi-tasking to avoid being bored.... It's an interesting notion, but one that's down the road a bit.

16th December 2009, 01:16 PM	#16
Gate2501 Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 1,377	Originally Posted by kellyb That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time. If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on. You should go read the "teleporter" thread if it still exists. It really challenged my thinking on this matter, and brought me over to RD's position after much internal debating.

16th December 2009, 01:19 PM	#17
Gate2501 Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 1,377	Originally Posted by Bikewer Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV. Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI. Fred Pohl had a nice exploration of what this might be like in one of his HeeChee novels; with the ability to "think" so much faster than a human that speaking to one would be an exercise in multi-tasking to avoid being bored.... It's an interesting notion, but one that's down the road a bit. That is a really good idea, and would make me much more comfortable. You could have the bio body and the AI share memory for the switching period so that it feels very seamless to the mind being transferred.

16th December 2009, 01:20 PM	#18
Maia Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 1,261	Two questions. 1.) RD, what are you smoking? 2.) Can I have some?
	__________________ Satan, aka Precious the Cat-- the Comic! Come and read at Stripgenerator!

16th December 2009, 01:24 PM	#19
I Ratant Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 15,305	Originally Posted by Richard Masters It's a risky form of insurance, but if we can unfreeze people while preserving their organs at some point in the future, then it's not exactly a bunch of hooey. . Storing a bunch of people, with the population increasing as it... is it realistic to expect the future would -want- more people? Especially as in the typical Sci-fi scenario, these corpsicles are infected with probable long erased diseases for which the living population has no resistance.

16th December 2009, 01:28 PM	#20
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by Gate2501 That is a really good idea, and would make me much more comfortable. You could have the bio body and the AI share memory for the switching period so that it feels very seamless to the mind being transferred. Yes. In fact, this is the solution that I proposed in the teleporter thread. If you are hesitant about your consciousness being reduced to numbers, then you can always use this slower option. My version was to teleport neurons one at a time, so that at any given instant neurons at the source are getting impulses from neurons at the destination and vice versa, until all the neurons have been moved to the destination.

16th December 2009, 01:31 PM	#21
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Originally Posted by Bikewer Quite a while back, I read a discussion on the concept in OMNI magazine. The idea (according to the article) would be that at the point one was ready to make the "transfer" (or upload or whatever), one would indulge in switching back-and-forth from the body's POV to the machine POV. Eventually, the ability to tell the difference (provided sufficient computational power) would be such that you could dispose of the biological body and simply continue on as an AI. You'd have to be able to instantly upload the new info from the machine's "experience" back into the shutdown bio body's brain before "restarting" the bio brain, wouldn't you, to make that work?

16th December 2009, 01:35 PM	#22
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by kellyb That makes perfect sense but seems so intuitively incorrect at the same time. That doesn't mean that it's wrong, of course. Quote: If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on. All that means is that consciousness is an entirely unphysical phenomenon. It's an idea, but there's no need to take it too seriously.
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	__________________ Dreary whiner, who gradually outwore his welcome, before blowing it entirely.

16th December 2009, 01:38 PM	#23
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by rocketdodger "essence" of consciousness, whatever that may be Getting the belief in "essence" of consciousness might be that difficult first step for some people. But if you can just bring yourself to accept, look, eternal life!
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	__________________ Dreary whiner, who gradually outwore his welcome, before blowing it entirely.

16th December 2009, 02:01 PM	#24
Piscivore Smelling fishy Join Date: May 2004 Location: Home is wherever I'm with you Posts: 26,484	Originally Posted by rocketdodger I am aware that there are many individuals emotionally invested in the notion that strong AI is false. I can understand why -- the idea that our consciousness has some magical component that is beyond the boring and cold scientifically understood world is one that can be tempting. But there are also very good emotional reasons to support the notion that strong AI is true. I'm sorry, did you just ask us to stop uncritically accepting a speculative, unevidenced belief just because it is pleasing, and instead uncritically accept your contradictory speculative, unevidenced belief because it is also pleasing? Yeah... no.
	__________________ Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow. "...untrustworthy obnoxious twerp." - CFLarsen

16th December 2009, 02:11 PM	#25
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Originally Posted by Piscivore I'm sorry, did you just ask us to stop uncritically accepting a speculative, unevidenced belief just because it is pleasing, and instead uncritically accept your contradictory speculative, unevidenced belief because it is also pleasing? Yeah... no. What do you see as being fundamentally illogical about "digital immortality"?

16th December 2009, 02:15 PM	#26
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by kellyb What do you see as being fundamentally illogical about "digital immortality"? He didn't say it was fundamentally illogical. It isn't. Given the premises, it makes sense. However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence. Which, if you were asked to literally bet your life, might give one pause. Or not. I can well imagine people queuing up in a few years time to have their brain patterns transcribed. You will lose a few thousand dollars, my friends, but I am promising you eternal life!
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	__________________ Dreary whiner, who gradually outwore his welcome, before blowing it entirely.

16th December 2009, 02:20 PM	#27
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	Originally Posted by kellyb You'd have to be able to instantly upload the new info from the machine's "experience" back into the shutdown bio body's brain before "restarting" the bio brain, wouldn't you, to make that work? Not if you put Kellyb into a coma before creating Kellyc.
westprog Philosopher Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 8,928	__________________ Dreary whiner, who gradually outwore his welcome, before blowing it entirely.

16th December 2009, 02:20 PM	#28
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by westprog All that means is that consciousness is an entirely unphysical phenomenon. It's an idea, but there's no need to take it too seriously. Nor is there a need to take any of the other stuff seriously. You know, like religion and all that jazz. Yet, billions do, and wars are fought over it. Funny how that works.

16th December 2009, 02:21 PM	#29
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Originally Posted by westprog He didn't say it was fundamentally illogical. It isn't. Given the premises, it makes sense. However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence. Which, if you were asked to literally bet your life, might give one pause. Or not. I can well imagine people queuing up in a few years time to have their brain patterns transcribed. You will lose a few thousand dollars, my friends, but I am promising you eternal life! Well, he said it was not not only speculative but also "contradictory". I'm not seeing it.

16th December 2009, 02:24 PM	#30
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Originally Posted by westprog Not if you put Kellyb into a coma before creating Kellyc. Right...but if you're going to bounce back and forth, you've got to get the KellyC experience into the comatose KellyB before awakening KellyB again. If you're trying to actually switch back and forth.

16th December 2009, 02:26 PM	#32
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by kellyb Right...but if you're going to bounce back and forth, you've got to get the KellyC experience into the comatose KellyB before awakening KellyB again. If you're trying to actually switch back and forth. Yes, correct. That scenario would require the ability to modify neurons via an external mechanism, so that kellyB's brain topography would match kellyC's.

16th December 2009, 02:27 PM	#33
rocketdodger Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hyperion Posts: 6,669	Originally Posted by kellyb Well, he said it was not not only speculative but also "contradictory". I'm not seeing it. He meant contradictory to the idea of consciousness being magical, not self-contradictory. I never say anything self-contradictory ... if I can help it

16th December 2009, 02:35 PM	#34
kellyb Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Tennessee. Ain't you jealous? Posts: 4,417	Originally Posted by rocketdodger He meant contradictory to the idea of consciousness being magical, not self-contradictory. I never say anything self-contradictory ... if I can help it Oh. lol. So, do you think we'd have to work in the digital netherworld? To pay the living to service our computers or whatever?

16th December 2009, 02:45 PM	#35
roger Penultimate Amazing Join Date: May 2002 Location: Mountain View, CA Posts: 11,021	Originally Posted by westprog However, it is entirely unsupported by evidence. In what way? All available evidence indicates that our brain creates our consciousness, that the brain is wholly physical, and that there is nothing specific to the hardware of the brain that cannot be duplicated (after all, we duplicate it every time we have a baby). It is proven that memories are stored in the brain. It is proven that by stimulating neurons we can cause people to reexperience them. It is proven that destruction of neurons can lead to destruction of memory, and alteration or destruction of personality. It's superbly supported by the evidence, so far as I can see.
	__________________ May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. - John Muir

16th December 2009, 02:45 PM	#36
Darat Lackey Administrator / JREF Forum Liaison Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: South East, UK Posts: 64,803	Originally Posted by kellyb ...snip... If I were to upload my brain into a robot brain right now, there would be two of "me", but it seems like the "real me" would still be the one operating in this body. And when my body dies, "real me" would die, too, even if the duplicate lived on. No there wouldn't be, and that holds even if we follow the speculation in the opening post, what there would be is two very similar people who share an identical history.
	__________________ If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008