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[pisskop]

I'd dislike a copypaste thing.

I'd prefer having my consciousness transferred

But then what is conciousness?  Science doesn't seem to offer a definite solution.  We are unsure if it is really as active as we claim, or really an after the fact justification.

[Korbac]

You should probably read the rest of the thread then, since plenty of us are in opposition to that viewpoint.

Oooh!

I will be happy if you can convince me.

I will in a bit.

[andrea]

I look at it this way. having a copy of me somewhere else is not going to make me any happier to take a bullet in the face.
may be right or may be wrong, but I wouls still consider the 2 me as separate entities.
and since I don't want to deal with property issues ( or, in general, to deal with another me), I am not going to be uploaded anywhere.

[Levi]

I'd feel a lot better about death if I had a copy of myself hanging around.  I'd feel better and better the more recent the copy is. 

[Cyx]

According to my conception of consciousness, if my brain was to be copied and then destroyed the copy would still be me and I would still have this consciousness in all meaningful senses of the words. I mean, moving my brain an inch doesn't erase me, changes in my neural network and stuff don't erase me, why would this ?

This sort of stuff also led me to weird ideas. For example, my current opinion is that when you die, "you" (again, in all meaningful senses of the word) keep being conscious because thoughts that are like the ones that you have - or could have had - are still being had. Similarly, as you are having conscious thoughts, everyone alive or dead or other who had/have these sort of thoughts are partly "conscious" through you (through this brain activity). Consciousness - and identity - sort of don't exist as much or as strongly as we like to think they do, but in a way that makes it so that the "consciousness" that you have now is still going to be there when you die, it's just that it's not this brain that will be producing it anymore and the fact that "you" won't be there to experience it doesn't matter because it doesn't mean anything in reality.

Which brings me back to : what if being copied and destroyed wasn't really an issue at all ?

That stuff's really hard to explain. Still, thoughts, people ?

[Telgin]

Considering the points already brought up about what it means to have a brain copy, I wouldn't feel any more secure knowing I had a "backup" since it wouldn't do me any good.

Anyway, I fully support the notion of human engineering to remove flaws and improve the species.  I don't have time to read the entire thread to pick out specific things to discuss on the matter, but that's my grand overall feelings on the matter.  If we had the ability to improve ourselves as a species I don't see many convincing arguments why we shouldn't.

Aside from obvious abuses, of course.  This is assuming that engineering (most likely genetic, but maybe technological) was universally available, which it surely would not be.  That's sort of the question I guess, and not something I really have an answer for.

[andrea]

would make loved ones much happier, that is sure ( or at least much less sad).
all a copy would be good for, in my personal view of the matter, would be to tie loose ends. but a copy of me that continues to run around doing stuff kind of defeats the point of loose ends, and I surely don't expect him ( or it, if a computer. I suppose.) to commit suicide after fixing stuff.

on an emotional point of view, I can't really consider the other me as anything else other than a separate entity ( with which I share a common history. a very close twin, maybe? ). I'll be happy if it survives after I die, but not much difference than if it was, for example, a son. Which still makes me rather unhappy to die.

on a rational point of view... I don't really see the point in preserving any single mind in such a way? people have popped in an out of life since forever, and I have never seen anything wrong in that. In fact, it helps keeping everything not stale.

[Korbac]

Hypothesis : Conciousness is something given by a brain structure / neural network. No matter where this brain structure /nerual network is placed, 'conciousness' between the two entities can be continuous.

Problem : Unprovable. It is impossible to get two brains / neural networks exactly the same. If you take a snapshot of someone's brain at time A, at time B (where B is virtually any time in the future), the brain the copy was taken from will have changed. Thus we can never pass on our consciousness unless it is in perfect synch with our original brain (which is impossible.)

[Korbac]

That would be fantastic and I agree would heavily weight towards belief of a soul if it happened.

[Graknorke]

If it turns out that when you copy a mind, the copy of it doesn't function until the person with the initial mind dies, I think I may end up believing in some sort of soul.

I doubt that would happen, though.

In particular because of the vagueness of death.
If it was in a machine and I powered it off, would the other one work until I returned the power? That sort of occurrence doesn't really make any sense. And then because we'd have to define at what point two identical mechanisms will have to share a "soul".

[Cyx]

Hypothesis : Conciousness is something given by a brain structure / neural network. No matter where this brain structure /nerual network is placed, 'conciousness' between the two entities can be continuous.

Problem : Unprovable. It is impossible to get two brains / neural networks exactly the same. If you take a snapshot of someone's brain at time A, at time B (where B is virtually any time in the future), the brain the copy was taken from will have changed. Thus we can never pass on our consciousness unless it is in perfect synch with our original brain (which is impossible.)

Not sure I get it. For all we know, continuous (or at least continuous enough) consciousness happens where human brains are despite the fact all of these brains are constantly changing (and moving).
I feel like you're pulling your "perfect synch is necessary for continuous consciousness" argument out of nowhere. I mean, if the stuff you're telling me about continuous and non-continuous consciousness is provable you should write a book about it.

[Korbac]

Hypothesis : Conciousness is something given by a brain structure / neural network. No matter where this brain structure /nerual network is placed, 'conciousness' between the two entities can be continuous.

Problem : Unprovable. It is impossible to get two brains / neural networks exactly the same. If you take a snapshot of someone's brain at time A, at time B (where B is virtually any time in the future), the brain the copy was taken from will have changed. Thus we can never pass on our consciousness unless it is in perfect synch with our original brain (which is impossible.)

Not sure I get it. From what we know, continuous (or at least continuous enough) consciousness happens where human brains are despite the fact all of these brains are constantly changing.
I feel like you're pulling your "perfect synch is necessary for continuous consciousness" argument out of nowhere. I mean, if the stuff you're telling me about continuous and non-continuous consciousness is provable you should write a book about it.

Don't worry about it. I don't think it's right, I never said it was provable, I was just throwing around ideas.

"Continuous consciousness happens where brains are despite the fact all of these brains are constantly changing"

Yeah, this is true (or at least it feels to us like it is.) I'm trying to find a constant which ties together a single consciousness with itself. Maybe it's location relative to body then?

Basically I'm trying to find why my mind doesn't randomly entangle itself into others'.

[Eagle_eye]

How do you know it doesn't? Can you trace back the path of every single one of your thoughts? Or even a decent portion of them?

[Cyx]

Oh ! yeah, I get it now, it's a good question.

I was thinking ; if all the "minds" were entangled but all the brains were separate, wouldn't it feel just like it does now ?

[Scoops Novel]

The main problem with Eugenics is that I'm fairly certain unhelpful genes have ended up being very much so somewhere down the line in a range of species, including us. Take Sickle-cell disease. Until we're entirely certain what we're fucking with, i wouldn't make any hasty moves. However, disorders which clearly outweigh any future benefit, at least in their current form, such as down syndrome, should certainly be stopped.