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[wierd]

Trying to argue about a nontangible feature is pointless.  Can you catch a soul, lord bucket?

[Cthulhu]

Consider: If you choose not to care about the continuity problem, you and I can scour the universe as immortal posthuman gods purging the stars of all alien life.

The concepts that we tentatively agree these shapes signify (with allowances for differences in perspective producing variations in what specific signified each brain derives) triggers neural responses that encourage the collective contents of this brain to take the action described in the message.

EDIT:  Shit dude.  This is why it gets confusing when I try to talk about these things. The idea that there's a unified and immanent "me" is hard to get past and it's hard to talk in a way that doesn't imply it exists.

[wierd]

Personally, I would not go on a xenophobia induced murder spree, if given a fancy interstellar machine body for my then liberated transhuman consciousness.

I would instead employ the von-neuman replicator technology I asked about, to experiment with and ultimately construct astro-engineering projects, with the ultimate goal of "settling down."

(ahem-- That is to say-- building something like a halo-esque ringworld, filling it with engineered lifeforms of various kinds as decoration/pets/recreational nature watching fodder, and when the project was far enough along to be really good and interesting, integrate my ship body with the structure, and become the superstructure I had built for myself, then "sit back with the popcorn" so to speak.)

[LordBucket]

Trying to argue about a nontangible feature is pointless.  Can you catch a soul, lord bucket?

1) Personal observation is empirically observable. It is not intangible.  The consciousness or other people might be relatively intangible, but that does not invalidate the tangibility of observed experience.

2) If arguing about it is pointless, why are you arguing about it? It's logically inconsistent for you to assert your own arbitrary views one way on this topic and then try to claim that my own arbitrary views another way are pointless due to intangibility, when yours are equally intangible.

I am not arguing the existence of 'soul.' I'm not entirely sure what a 'soul' is. However, working with your statement as a metaphor: yes, I can't demonstrate a soul exists. Neither can you you demonstrate that it doesn't. If you take this and conclude that it's pointless to argue either way about the existence or non-existence of soul...ok, I don't have much to say to that. But you appear to be saying that since I can't prove it exists, you're therefore right by default.

No, you're not right by default.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Personally, I would not go on a xenophobia induced murder spree, if given a fancy interstellar machine body for my then liberated transhuman consciousness.

I would instead employ the von-neuman replicator technology I asked about, to experiment with and ultimately construct astro-engineering projects, with the ultimate goal of "settling down."

(ahem-- That is to say-- building something like a halo-esque ringworld, filling it with engineered lifeforms of various kinds as decoration/pets/recreational nature watching fodder, and when the project was far enough along to be really good and interesting, integrate my ship body with the structure, and become the superstructure I had built for myself, then "sit back with the popcorn" so to speak.)

I'd probably see if I could get enough people together to construct a massive network of something akin to stargates, but large enough to send through a decent sized ship (not to the scale of supergates, though), across a large chunk of the galaxy.  Leave detailed pictographical plans of to demonstrate how to access the things on them and watch what happens.  Maybe see if we could get a few planets terraformed to speed things along if it's taking a bit too much time for intelligent life to show up if none, or only a very limited number, are on the network.

[wierd]

Trying to argue about a nontangible feature is pointless.  Can you catch a soul, lord bucket?

1) Personal observation is empirically observable. It is not intangible.  The consciousness or other people might be relatively intangible, but that does not invalidate the tangibility of observed experience.

2) If arguing about it is pointless, why are you arguing about it? It's logically inconsistent for you to assert your own arbitrary views one way on this topic and then try to claim that my own arbitrary views another way are pointless due to intangibility, when yours are equally intangible.

I am not arguing the existence of 'soul.' I'm not entirely sure what a 'soul' is. However, working with your statement as a metaphor: yes, I can't demonstrate a soul exists. Neither can you you demonstrate that it doesn't. If you take this and conclude that it's pointless to argue either way about the existence or non-existence of soul...ok, I don't have much to say to that. But you appear to be saying that since I can't prove it exists, you're therefore right by default.

No, you're not right by default.

No, I was not arguing about any rightness- only that the argument itself is not useful, as you rightly pointed out prior to that.

The problem I have with your argument, is that it is circular. "I observe and observation, therefore I exist" does not explain or lead to the conclusion that you actually exist the way that you have observed.  Take for instance, the empirically sound, but macro-scale batshitness of quantum mechanics.  (EG, things that happen at the quantum mechanical level are outright impossible at the macro level, but yet they still happen. What one observes in the macro-scale is not representative of the true reality that the macro-scale is comprised of. What you observe about yourself may not be as empirical as you assert, and you cannot prove otherwise. You could already be a computer simulation, being fed sensory data that leads you to a conclusion. You are merely reporting what you observe. You are not explaining how you observe it, or how that observation makes you, actually, exist.)

If we can conduct empirical studies on simulated neural platforms, and find that there are no functional differences between an actual wetware assemblage and the digital simulation (the simulation model perfectly captures the behavior of the real system) then the simulated components are functionally indistinguishable from the originals.

EG, if I were to use quantum-entanglement reconstruction to destroy the van-goh painting, but at the same time reconstruct it at the quantum state level with wholly new atoms on the other side of the planet-- a patron in the museum would not be able to tell any meaningful difference between the "original", and the transmitted "copy."  This is because the quanta that define the painting (the constituent atoms, and the states of all the electron orbitals that constitute the bonds between those atoms) are a measurable and reproducable, tangible, featureset. It would have every one of van-goh's brush strokes, the same texture-- even the same smell. 

If anything, the very existence of quantum entanglement shoots down the empiricity of the concept of originality.  An entangled particle is actually a single particle existing in two discrete locations simultaneously, until measured-- There is no "original"

Since this concept is basically an intangible, nonsense component to the argument, arguing about it is pointless.  The part of me that is a "Me" is not magic. It is the result of the interaction of tangible, material components. If those components are replicated perfectly, the interaction with the replicated parts will be perfect, and "I" will not observe any difference.  I cannot conclude that I am alive, because I am not magical. My observations of the universe indicate that I am just a collection of atoms with some curious emergent properties. Those properties are tangible, therefor, the "I" that is me, is also tangible as a collection of state information concerning that process.  As a consequence, "I" can be duplicated.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Personally, I would not go on a xenophobia induced murder spree, if given a fancy interstellar machine body for my then liberated transhuman consciousness.

>M2.015
>Being this heretical

Do you even know the Emperor's light?

[wierd]

Personally, I would not go on a xenophobia induced murder spree, if given a fancy interstellar machine body for my then liberated transhuman consciousness.

>M2.015
>Being this heretical

Do you even know the Emperor's light?

The existence of any such emperor is only consequential, in as much as any such emperor decides to impose consequences.  Should such emperor decide to impose such consequences, he shall be met with consequences of his own. I am my own emperor, and require no others.

If you wish to be emperor murderkill, I shall be emperor cockblock.

[LordBucket]

LordBucket, the problem with your counterexample to my proposal is that it immediately makes the assumption that there is a singular neuron that, should it stop working, even for a second, its removal would render the person irreversibly dead (versus the reversible, brief-heart-stop dead). Seeing as how people have been born without massive sections of their brain, not to mention traumatic brain injury, I'm willing to conject that that's false. Furthermore, you assume that the neuron isn't being circumvented during the replacement process so that it, for all intents and purposes, never stops firing.

There are ~100 billion neurons in the brain. Do you seriously propose to change them one at a time, and then have the physician on duty stop after each one to ask: "so, do you feel the same? Are you still you? May I continue?"

I don't think so.

removal would render the person irreversibly dead

Also, no.

I propose that a software automaton could probably produce behavior similar to a conscious human entity. That doesn't mean it's conscious and it doesn't mean it's you.

Human technology has no means to measure consciousness. We don't know what it is and we don't know how to measure it. We can only measure behavior, and things like electrical impulses in a brain. I don't see many people claiming that Siri on their phone is a conscious entity simply because she's able to answer your questions and electrical activity happens when she does. A more complicated piece of software than Siri could presumably converse better and even operate a body. That would not necessarily mean that the software was conscious.

Even if you duplicate the neural network in your brain, yes you might get a piece of software that generates behavior that is indistinguishable from yours as far as any third party observer is concerned. But leaping from "Bob over there can't tell the difference" to "therefore, it's conscious and it's you" is a wild leap of faith. And hey, maybe it would be. I can't demonstrate that it wouldn't be. But neither can you demonstrate that it would.

So, one possibility is that consciousness is the result of specific patterns of exchange, and simply by recreating those patterns you can recreate consciousness. Another possibility is that consciousness is more like light shining through a stained glass window, and those exchange patterns are the window. Duplicating a network does not necessarily result in light shining through it. Another possibility is that consciousness requires electrochemical exchange, and therefore software simulation would not result in consciousness any more than drawing a picture of gunpowder being ignited on a piece of paper would result in a explosion. And lots of other possibilities, probably many we haven't even considered.

We don't know.

The thing is though, that certainty is kind of very important here, because a reasonably probable outcome on the "oops, it doesn't actually work it just creates mindless automatons that act similarly" side of things is that everybody uploads, resulting in genocide of the species.

There's a lot of weight on getting this right.

[wierd]

"Consciousness" is another intangible, unmeasurable, unverifiable feature, LB.  You might as well conflage "Has soul == Consciousness" at that point.  More functional definitions of consciousness lead to strange places-- like quantum particles exhibiting signs of it.

Rather, one should ultimately conclude that "human consciousness" is a subjective term, and move on. At that point, your arguments are merely navel gazing.  It opens the doors to many other kinds of subjective "Consciousness." 

You cant base an argument on subjectivisms, and call them empirical. It does not work that way.  From what we can determine, "Consciousness" is different for each and every person who ascribes to have it. There is no fixed definition of it, so arguing that something wont have it can just as well be applied to other people, as you have already stated. You cannot definitively assert that any other human is actually a self-actualized intelligence. By your own arguments earlier, this also means you cannot affirmatively assert that the simulant is lacking that capacity either.

It's a moot objection, with no real significance.

[LordBucket]

No, I was not arguing about any rightness- only that the argument itself is not useful, as you rightly pointed out prior to that.

The problem I have with your argument, is that it is circular. "I observe and observation, therefore I exist" does not explain or lead to the conclusion that you actually exist the way that you have observed.  Take for instance, the empirically sound, but macro-scale batshitness of quantum mechanics.  (EG, things that happen at the quantum mechanical level are outright impossible at the macro level, but yet they still happen. What one observes in the macro-scale is not representative of the true reality that the macro-scale is comprised of.

...no.

I could very well be a brain in a jar, or this could already be a computer simulation. I acknowledge that. That doesn't change the fact that I nevertheless am experiencing qualia.

I am making no claims about the accuracy of my experience as a representation of an external world. I can't know that an external definitely even exists.

What you observe about yourself may not be as empirical as you assert, and you cannot prove otherwise

I'm starting to suspect that maybe you don't know what that word means:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empirical

1. derived from or guided by experience or experiment.
2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory, especially as in medicine.
3.provable or verifiable by experience or experiment.


If I'm having an experience, I can know that I'm having an experience. My observations by definition, are empirical. Because that's what that word means.

Telling me that my observations are not empirical...yeah, how about go back and re-read my post now that you know what the word means.

You are merely reporting what you observe. You are not explaining how you observe it, or how that observation makes you, actually, exist.

Correct.

I'm not doing those things because I don't know them. Neither do you. As you yourself point out, I could be a computer simulation. I'm not in a position to know whether this reality is simulated or not, because the only means I have of gathering information about my experience, is my experiencing of it.

But that doesn't change the fact that I am having an experience.

a patron in the museum would not be able to tell any meaningful difference between the "original", and the transmitted "copy."

That's nice, but why are you using a third party? Consider you and me right now. Do I know what you're experiencing? Probably not. Why would you ask me to tell a "meaningful difference" in what you are experiencing? Of course I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a conscious you and a zombie that acted just like you.

We agree that I don't know what you're experiencing. But do we agree that you know what you're experiencing?

Do you? Don't you?

Are you experiencing qualia? Right now? If you ceased to exist, would that cessation result in a difference experience than the one you're having now? I assume yes. For me, the answer is yes. If your answer is no, you're a zombie.

My observations of the universe indicate that I am just a collection of atoms with some curious emergent properties. Those properties are tangible, therefor, the "I" that is me, is also tangible as a collection of state information concerning that process.  As a consequence, "I" can be duplicated.

...wait, what?

You just said, quote:

your argument, is that it is circular. "I observe and observation, therefore I exist" does not explain or lead to the conclusion that you actually exist the way that you have observed

How are you going from stating that observations are not a reliable measure of objective reality, to concluding that based on your observations you are what you think you are?

"Consciousness" is another intangible, unmeasurable, unverifiable feature, LB

You do understand that you're claiming to be a zombie, right?

Of course, if you are...then you wouldn't "understand." You would simply be generating text with no more awareness of it than a rock falling on your keyboard.

Is that really what you're claiming?

[i2amroy]

FWIW it is possible to do brain surgeries, even serious ones where they remove parts of your brain, without ever making you go unconscious. In fact some surgeries actually require you to be conscious, because they need certain parts of your brain up and functioning while they are doing the surgery (don't ask me for better reasons then that, I'm not a brain surgeon ).

I see no reason why you couldn't do that with removing parts and then putting new parts back in instead of just removing nonfunctional tumors.

[wierd]

I am claiming that I am an emergent process.  Any "Secret sauce" is purely a consequence of the interaction of the constituent components that give rise to the process.  It's a lovely consequence of Bell's Theorem. There are no hidden local variables. Quantum Mechanics has consistently held up to scrutiny-- at the smallest observable level, the universe, and everything inside it (including US), is describable as discrete quanta of information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

In short, I do not ascribe with certainty that I am actually observing anything. It is entirely possible that I am merely carrying out the universe's predetermined program, and merely THINK I am observing, due to limitations of information theory.

[LordBucket]

As for whether it would just create a mindless copy of a person or the person themselves using this method? I'm willing to take the chance. No, I'm not dismissing the chance, but am willing to take the risk.

Well, I suppose as long as you understand the risk. Granted, if the alternative to taking that risk is definitely dying, I admit the possibility of dying becomes less daunting.

Though, as mentioned at the bottom of this post, even if it does work...there are possible scenarios where dying might be better.

this is a very... "improper" philosophical discussion

I don't think it was originally intended to be one. But given the subject it was pretty much inevitable.

[wierd]

If anything, it illustrates how biggotry against synthetic simulations of minds by organic minds is very easy to start.  The mere subjectivity of what it means to be conscious can lead to all kinds of nasty things.

Does a computer have rights, simply based on the software that it runs? What are the legal ramifications of that? Etc.