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[GiglameshDespair]

Well, 'Advanced technology' is completely arbitrary as it's only in comparison to our current technology.
I'm assuming you know how a advanced computer and all it's components work?
(I would have replied sooner but my computer died. Obviously it agrees with you.)

----

Lordbucket, I'm afraid I disagree with you for the most part. Your views hold a lot of holes, in my mind (heh.). Why would we need some non-physical force? The idea we are generated by our brains has solid evidence. We can see it firing before and during actions, as it responds. When it's damaged our personality and though processes can change. You are an ongoing process. If that process stops, that 'you' has ended, like quitting a restarting a program. The basic program is the same, but it's a different instance.

A soul isn't necessary to anything there. And what's the qualifications to having one? A level of intelligence? Do dogs? Do insects, cellular automations that they are? Do bacteria? Do viruses, that are arguably not even alive?

[SalmonGod]

Identity is really mucky territory.  I'm kind of undecided on it myself, but at this point I don't see it as something that can be defined in any absolute sense.  It's definitely something that everyone is going to need their personal stance prepared for whenever the really serious leaps in transhumanism begin to develop.

The way I currently look at the two main camps is there are those who are concerned with memetic identity (two entities operating on all the same information and expressing all the same signature behaviors are seen as having the same identity) and those concerned with stream of consciousness (another thing that is the same as you isn't you).  And honestly, I'm more and more torn between the two every time I look at it.  Individually, they both have serious problems.  And I start drifting back into the bits of Buddhist philosophy I learned in school, where personal identity/ego is just another illusion that prevents one from finding enlightenment.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

Look, most of my ethics are based of off the fact that I'm completely bonkers. Seeing as one of my other ethics state that being evil is the more morally correct choice, you've got proof right there.

Anyway, considering the cut-off line for sapience/soul possession, it seems to me that a good way to prove what is sapient  (according to normal definition, although this will probably exclude some potential forms of sapience simply because we can not recognize them) and what is not is to study what creatures we can recognize to be sapient and what the related parts of the brain are. Then you would have to create a complex algorithm for recognizing those patterns.

Even so, things like, say, a hive mind (even one with almost exactly the same basis as a human mind) would probably not be recognized simply because of how the pattern occurs in it.

Personally, however, I don't believe there is a specific thing that sets "sapients" and "non-sapients" apart to any definite degree.

Also, it's been proven that humans will actually argue more intensely the more you argue with them, so the chances of us convincing each other are absolutely abysmal.

[Caz]

Ghost in the Shell-style upgrades plz.

[SalmonGod]

You are an ongoing process. If that process stops, that 'you' has ended, like quitting a restarting a program. The basic program is the same, but it's a different instance.

I'm glad you brought this up, because the way I see it, the most common agreements on what constitutes our identity basically amounts to the mind as a software.  We're a program running on biological hardware.  But personally, I find myself less concerned with continuity when I view myself that way.  If the program is my identity, then I'm alive so long as that program is running on something somewhere.  It feels wrong to say this, but I can't reason away the conclusion.  For this not to be the case, then there would have to be something to the relationship between my software and my hardware that is a component of my identity, and I can't find anything in that relationship that seems objectively important.

[GiglameshDespair]

SalmonGod: Well, it's the same being, but not the same instance of that being, still thinking in program terms.

---

Dwarf, I would argue that is your system of ethics is based of "...because I'm crazy!" you simply haven't thought about it and want to sound eccentric. Similar to people who put they're random or crazy on their online profiles or describe themselves as such; if you think you're 'completely bonkers', chances are you're not. Maybe that's a harsh thing to say, but it's true. Note my intention is not to cause offence here.

It's almost definite neither of us will convince the other, but that's not reason to not have civil debate.

FAKEDIT: We seem to have similiar thoughts. Yeah, if your body was destroyed as it was scanned onto a eternal, indestructible computer, you would exist forever, but the original 'you' has ceased. All copies of the program are you, though you personally are not all the copies of the program.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

I was joking about the crazy bit, just because that's how it seems relative to the normal moral system.

Anyway, since I'm unwilling to post something without also saying something on-topic,

FAKEDIT: We seem to have similiar thoughts. Yeah, if your body was destroyed as it was scanned onto a eternal, indestructible computer, you would exist forever, but the original 'you' has ceased. All copies of the program are you, though you personally are not all the copies of the program.

If you're saying that if your body is destroyed, you cease to exist, technically you die every time an atom in your body is changed, simply because you are not the same arrangement of particles anymore. You could use this same argument to say that simply because your blood flows you are not the same person anymore. At which point you can say that a copy is not "you" anymore seems pretty arbitrary.

[GiglameshDespair]

No, not really. You are a continuous effect generated by your brain. The rest of your body is in truth pretty discardable aside from the inputs it feeds to your brain. Going back to the program metaphor again, a program doesn't cease to exist when a bit goes from 1 to 0, but it changes. My point was that the fundamental 'you' still exists, but the instance that was the body and brain has been destroyed.

[scrdest]

No, not really. You are a continuous effect generated by your brain. The rest of your body is in truth pretty discardable aside from the inputs it feeds to your brain. Going back to the program metaphor again, a program doesn't cease to exist when a bit goes from 1 to 0, but it changes. My point was that the fundamental 'you' still exists, but the instance that was the body and brain has been destroyed.

Ooooh, I like this version. Although one question: if you would replace a cell (or multiple cells) in the brain with cells from another person/artificially grown, that have the exact same biophysical/biochemical properties (so they transmit and receive signals in the exact same way the original cells would), same identity or not?

[GiglameshDespair]

Good question. I would argue that it is the same instance.
hmm. This requires deep thought.

Good question, though.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I generally agree with this. I just can't figure out how we'd define the point at which it transitions from changing an instance to creating a new instance entirely, much less what that point actually is.

[kisame12794]

But if you have two identical Ferraris, and then one crashes, it is still a Ferrari, just nonfunctional.

[Sheb]

True, but it's just a philosophical disctinction. If someone took you car and replaced it by one identical to the molecular level, you wouldn't even notice the difference. For all intent and purpose, it'd be your car.

However, I'd like to point out that you don't really have the hardware/software dichotomy in the brain. The software is largely encoded in the various connections between neurons. Moving a human on a computer would require a brain emulator, which would be... maybe not impossible, but certainly a challenge.

Honestly it's probably easier to just create strong AI optimized for the electronic medium and let them take over from the fleshy human race.

[scrdest]

When people say that making a copy of your brain would be the same as you living, I tend to point out that making a copy of a car and having the original crash doesn't mean it still exists, a separate, but indistinguishable car still exists. It's NOT the original.

I assume that if you made a, say, a magic mirror that clones you perfectly the moment you enter it, then as you go out there would be a you that feels continuity in the pre/after mirroring state, and the 'copy' that claims the exact same thing, and as such you would be separate but identical.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

EDIT:

True, but it's just a philosophical disctinction. If someone took you car and replaced it by one identical to the molecular level, you wouldn't even notice the difference. For all intent and purpose, it'd be your car.

To outside observers, it's your car, but the fact is it isn't the car you had in the first place.

But it is just as valid to say that it is that car. Although this point becomes more muddled when dealing with people. I feel that it's best to just let people think what they want as long as they don't interfere with me without valid reason. So, if someone's memories are of being a specific person (and consider those memories their own), from my point of view they are that person. If there's another person with the same memories (ditto), that means I'll consider them to have been the same person up until whatever point their memories diverge. I see it's as just being one personality developing into two different ones, same as "normal" development of someone's personality.