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Total Members Voted: 53

[MagmaMcFry]

Split off from the sad thread. Continue discussing!

[Loud Whispers]

I guess much of it depends on your personal philosophies.

One stuffs or two stuffs?

[Graknorke]

I really need to draw something to explain myself. Something like a flow chart.

Because I understand what the other people are saying, but I can't explain adequately with words why it's illogical.

[GlyphGryph]

Copy-pasting form other thread....
I think I've got a way to keep the Descanites happy.

So what we do is this: First, we /extend/ your brain. We build a copy of your brain, but instead of just booting it up, we HOOK you to the copy somehow, so you can the copy are sharing information.

So basically, it's all you, one consciousness, but you've got a redundant copy of all the data. I think you'd agree that this is still you, right?

Then, rather than replace bits, what we do is slowly cut your brain down the middle, so that when trying to access the opposite hemisphere, it's accessing the backup data instead. This is a gradual process. There's a shares consciousness, but it's getting steadily more out of joint. This mirrors a person that has had a partial bisection, in that they have one consciousness but half their brain has access to information the other part doesn't, but there's still continuity.

Then, like a cell splitting, we continue this process. At some point, well beyond severing the last link, it's far more realistic to think of this as two separate consciousness that share a bit of information, but there's no division where that occurs, no break in continuity.

Then, we sever the last link... and now there's two of! There's two of you, with no break in continuity, meaning both of them are you.

Then we simply repeat the process, except this time not bothering to hook the organic part up to anything, and now we've got two of you with a 100% mechanical brain.

I forget why we wanted two of the same person (or at least two people that WERE the same person at some point in the not-so-distant-past, and thus two people with a common ancestor who both have a 100% valid claim to being the same person as the pre-operation fellow), but the transfer to a mechanical consciousness has succeeded!

[Catsup]

i've been pondering this myself. You can probly extend your life for as long as your brain is healthy if the technology exists for brains to be successfully transferred and implanted into other bodies (preferably a clone of yourself) without any damage to the brain or nervous function.

Its going to be very very hard though because the brain can die so easily and all nerves have to be reconnected to the new body. Hopefully some sort of synthetic brain renewal technology is developed by then that lets you either regrow your brain naturally to replace dead cells or lets you replace your brain a little at a time with synthetic brain tissue while retaining your consciousness and memory.

[penguinofhonor]

Huh, this topic comes up in this forum pretty regularly. I'm surprised we haven't had a thread for it by now.

[Graknorke]

My main issue is with people wanting to "retain the stream of consciousness".
Because consciousness doesn't really work that way.

[Catsup]

My main issue is with people wanting to "retain the stream of consciousness".
Because consciousness doesn't really work that way.

how does it work then? i think consciousness comes from our brain.

[GlyphGryph]

And if you believe it DOES, there's some pretty weird outcomes - like my example, where you end up with to minds that are both the original. But that's simply something you have to accept if continuity is your basis for conceiving of a mind.

[Graknorke]

My main issue is with people wanting to "retain the stream of consciousness".
Because consciousness doesn't really work that way.

how does it work then? i think consciousness comes from our brain.

Yes it does, but it exists entirely in the present, based on memories of past experience. We remember being conscious in the past too. And if you were to create a copy of yourself, they would both be you. They would not be each other because they start to have different experiences as soon as the second is made; but they would both be all of the iterations of yourself before the cloning took place.

[Catsup]

And if you believe it DOES, there's some pretty weird outcomes - like my example, where you end up with to minds that are both the original. But that's simply something you have to accept if continuity is your basis for conceiving of a mind.

dude what are you talking about? if you make a copy of your brain and put it into something else then that one is the copy, and you are the original, and only you would know this and it would be impossible to tell otherwise. Even if you connect the 2 brains together such that you can sense what the other body senses (information) their still separate because the they are 2 separate functional brains.

As for splitting 1 single brain, that creates 2 new beings neither of which is you, because your memories and your consciousness make up who you are, if neither of those 2 halves are really complete you end up conscious with half your memory beside a stranger who has the other half, but is not you because their brain is fully functional and they control their own body. Its also quite possible for you to never wake up, and 2 new beings result with half of your memories each, but you cease to exist.

[DeKaFu]

(having read the posts in the other thread)
I have to say, I remember a variant of this discussion happening before (in regards to teleportation), and seeming to be one of the only people arguing the "cloning yourself perfectly and then dying is still dying" angle. So glad it's not actually just me that this seems obvious to.

I've thought about this in the past, and decided that under very specific circumstances, I guess I'd be okay with having this done if in doing so, the copy of myself would be able to achieve certain dream-goals that I will never be capable of fulfilling.

If I did so, though, it would be with the knowledge of exactly what I was doing: Dying in order to grant the otherwise impossible dreams of a person just like me who desires them exactly as much as I do.

The idea of this kind of thing being done without actually recognizing the weight of it, though, as in certain sci-fi teleportation methods, really seriously creeps me out. People would just keep on unwittingly committing suicide, because the copies would all feel like they were the original and the original would be too dead to argue.

[Graknorke]

(having read the posts in the other thread)
I have to say, I remember a variant of this discussion happening before (in regards to teleportation), and seeming to be one of the only people arguing the "cloning yourself perfectly and then dying is still dying" angle. So glad it's not actually just me that this seems obvious to.

I've thought about this in the past, and decided that under very specific circumstances, I guess I'd be okay with having this done if in doing so, the copy of myself would be able to achieve certain dream-goals that I will never be capable of fulfilling.

If I did so, though, it would be with the knowledge of exactly what I was doing: Dying in order to grant the otherwise impossible dreams of a person just like me who desires them exactly as much as I do.

The idea of this kind of thing being done without actually recognizing the weight of it, though, as in certain sci-fi teleportation methods, really seriously creeps me out. People would just keep on unwittingly committing suicide, because the copies would all feel like they were the original and the original would be too dead to argue.

But you would be both the original and the copy.
There would be no difference in anything between the brain-copy and the brain immediately before the transfer. The only thing that would suck would be if they let the original survive for a bit before killing it off. Because then it would suck for that version of yourself.

[Catsup]

guys it should be noted that there is NO way to copy memories exactly, if you clone a brain it turns into a blank slate but has your genetic information or if you clone your body they start out as a child and grow up with their own memories, but look physically like the original. I dont think its realistically possible to have a exact copy of yourself with the exact same memories of the past such that both of you think you were the original.

even if you took a blank brain and somehow modified the neuron connections in it to exactly match your own that would still be recreated from scratch using a blank brain and not an exact copy.

[Graknorke]

even if you took a blank brain and somehow modified the neuron connections in it to exactly match your own that would still be recreated from scratch using a blank brain and not an exact copy.

So what you're saying is that even if it's an exact copy, it's not an exact copy?