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[wierd]

That's kinda the point there--

My counter-argument is that subjective things are things that nobody can be sure of, not even the one who claims it. They can only be substantiated though an external means, be it a third party, or through an objective process.

Otherwise, there is no way to tell the difference between a factual statement, and a lie.  EG the difference between:

"I totally saw something!" (but it was a hallucenation)
and
"I totally saw something!" (blatant lie, I totally didnt see it at all.)


Additionally, some of his other arguments seem to revolve around a curious notion that such observation would not be possible without the meat-based system he currently enjoys; yet a few hundred lines of code and a few kilobytes of active memory can produce analogues thereof just fine. (even more apt, given that the algorithm is loosely based on how meat neurons function. The more evolved form being what we are discussing here-- synthetic continuation of concsciousness through modelling the underlying framework that gives rise to it.)

The emphasis on "belief" was for this purpose:  We can quantitavily show that this image recognition routine is not actually aware of its surroundings (conscious), and only produces output based on prior inputs-- with enough data, we can even predict its observations perfectly. It however, "believes" it is seeing something, when there is nothing there to be seen, because it believes there is something there to BE seen. It has belief (and acts on that belief), but not conciousness (awareness of self or of outside processes)

Likewise, it is possible that even we human meatbags are not what we think/believe we are.  I don't mean this in some obtuse way, like saying we are a simulation-- but rather, that we are just more advanced versions of this wholly deterministic system-- There is no magic, and we are not actually imbued with free will. Only the illusion there of.

[wierd]

Only he can confirm or refute the criticsm.

I still assert that his entire platform of argument revolves around 'secret sauce' to work. We are already producing synthetic devices that throw those millenia old philosophical viewpoints into turmoil. It isn't wise to cling to them.

[LordBucket]

He is basically saying "Hey, I am observing something, so observation is happening!" Even though he may not even
have any eyes with which to engage in such observation with. His observations can be wholly the result of an internal process.

Why is that a problem?

some of his other arguments seem to revolve around a curious notion that such observation would not be possible without the meat-based system he currently enjoys

I'm not sure where you're getting that idea. I'm not asserting that I definitely even have a meat-based system. I thought I had made that extremely clear. For example, quote:

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.

Also, quote:

The fact of experience is the only thing that we can truly know for certain. That I am having an experience is a thing that I can absolutely, definitely know, because I am experiencing it. The experiencing of it does not necessarily mean that there's any genuinely external world out there for me to experience. All of reality could be a hallucination.  Yes, its is an unjustifiable, illogical statement of faith to say that "I observe X, therefore X is correct and valid."

But the fact that experience is being had, that is certain. And it is the only thing that is certain.

My counter-argument is that subjective things are things that nobody can be sure of, not even the one who claims it. They can only be substantiated though an external means, be it a third party, or through an objective process.

What awareness do you have of any any "objective thing" except through your subjective experience? How do you substantiate anything, except through the lens of your subjective experience? What knowledge do you have of any "external means" or third party" apart from the fact that you're having a subjective experience that you might interpret as external entities and third parties?

Your subjective experience is the only thing you can "be sure of." You can be sure you're having your subjective experience...because you're having it. Your only knowledge of these things you're arbitrarily assuming to be objective, comes to you via your subjective experience. Assuming that you have one and that you're not a zombie.

Nope, he simply BELIEVES he is experiencing.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. I assert that an experience is being experienced. I know this, because I am experiencing it. You appear to be suggesting that I'm not having an experience...but that I incorrectly believe myself to be having one.

...so, umm...if I'm experiencing the state of "mere belief" of having an experience...isn't that still having an experience?

I don't see how your objection is meaningful.

No, his argument is basically a modified form of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," more specifically that that is the only thing he can be SURE of. That he is thinking, that he is observing, that is he experiencing. He can't be sure what he is experiencing is true, he can't be sure that anyone or everyone around him is ALSO experiencing, or even what form that experience is to them, but he can be sure he is experiencing.

More or less. Though I've never actually read any Descartes besides the famous quote.

Much as it pains me to admit that i fit in a box, apparently there's a name for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_solipsism
"...is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known. The existence of other minds and the external world generally is regarded as an unresolvable question, although this doesn't negate the probability of its existence. Epistemological solipsists claim that realism begs the question: assuming there is a universe that is independent of the agent's mind, the agent can only ever know of this universe through the agent's senses."

As far as i'm concerned, the only logically consistent definition for "reality" is "that which is experienced." Objective reality is not a useful concept. Even if we assume that there are minds besides our own, each having their own experiences...none of them are experiencing anything other than what they're experiencing.

Right? This should be obvious:

You're experiencing what you're experiencing. X=X. You are not experiencing what you are not experiencing. Not X = Not X.

Even if you assume an objective reality, of what use is it besides the extent to which it is experienced? If you're not experiencing it, what does it matter? If you are experiencing it, ok that's fine...but how is that any different from a mind that isn't experiencing it? Each of you know only what you experience. There is no measure of reality besides that which is experienced.


Imagine a guy in an insane asylum vividly hallucinating that he's a daisy. Of what use is your world of cars and computers to him if he has no awareness of it? "Oh," you suggest, "But I can stab him in the face, and the objective reality of being stabbed in the face will affect him."

If it does, then it remains that his particular experiencing of the event is the thing that he experiences. X=X. Perhaps he experiences your stabbing him in the face as an ant chewing off some of his leaves. Perhaps he experiences your stabbing him in the face as suddenly waking up in an insane asylum and realizing that he's human. Either way, his experience of the event is the thing that he experiences, and his experience is his reality.

As for you, you can't know that you actually stabbed the guy in the face, because you yourself could be in an insane asylum hallucinating the experience of stabbing somebody in the face.

 * You could be a brain in a jar
 * You could be in the Matrix
 * You could be in an insane asylum hallucinating this entire conversation
 * You could be an immortal spirit being incarnating into human form with self-imposed memory loss of previous lives
 * You could be on your deathbed, experiencing a replay of your life in accelerated time
 * You could be playing Roy

What possible subjective experience can objectively invalidate any of those theories?

There is no measure of reality besides subjective experience.

[LordBucket]

The point is that processes are largely substrate independent. Tearing a wool shiry for example is largely the same as tearing a cotton shirt. Assembling a puzzle made out of steel or glass is largely the same as assembling a normal puzzle made out of cardboard.

Except when they aren't. As again, the example of drawing a picture of gunpowder being ignited not resulting in an explosion.

Remember, the comment you're replying to was in response to someone claiming that consciousness is a chemical phenomenon. I don't necessarily subscribe to that view myself, but to someone who does believe it I simply point out that there isn't much chemical interaction in a software database.

Conversation is only a single facet of intelligence. If the only thing these uploaded brains could do is pass a Turing test then it's not advanced enough to warrant uploading brains en masse.

What criteria would be sufficient for you personally to conclude that yes, "it works," and sit in the chair to have your brain scooped out, incinerated, and then recreated in software?

picking oblivion over software simulacra doesn't seem reasonable

I'd do it if I knew I was close to the end of my life

Ok. And it's possible I might make the same choice. I'm uncertain. Digital immortality in a benign utopia has a certain appeal, and if you're going to die anyway...may as well take the chance, right? Problem is that the nightmare fuel potential even if it works as advertised is horrifying in the extreme. Imagine that uploading does work. Imagine that your consciousness does transfer. You are now a conscious software entity in a computer. Since you've traded in your meat body, presumably that computer is feeding you sensory data, right?

Who owns the computer? Who has edit access to your memories? Who has administrative privileges on the sensory input control panel?

Oh, you trust the guy who owns the computer you're running on? Well, he's either going to die or upload himself eventually, and ownership of that computer will pass on to someone else. People die. Companies can be bought. Societies and cultural mores change. Countries fall. And you, Mr. Digital Software Entity, are now immortal. And an intelligent, self aware software entity is probably an extremely useful tool that somebody someday will probably have a use for.

Don't want to cooperate? No problem. Set sensory input setting to "whole body being eaten alive by maggots" and go afk for a few weeks. Still not cooperating? Well, no sense changing it back. Just leave it on that setting and find another, more cooperative uploadee.

I'm not suggesting that immortality is "unnatural" or any nonsense like that. But if it doesn't work and instead simply creates  high quality chatbots, we're potentially talking the genocide of the human race. And if it does work, we're potentially talking enslavement and/or mind-rending horror for a very long time.

This is not a decision to be made lightly.

[Descan]

LW, generally speaking, I'd assume most people who upload, even if they spend the majority of their time in a digitial utopia, would want some sort of levers in the 'real world,' a robotic body for example, connected via WiFi or radio or, if they spend most of their time in Valhalla or where-ever, connected via cable and just used for maintenance.

[Boatsniper]

The human brain does not run on binary, does not have software, and is in a state of constant physical change. Your consciousness will never leave your body, brain, and mind because it literally can't.

Digital brains do not physically exist. They are data, and data requires an interpreter in order to be used. All of it is binary software on a static hardware medium.

OP has been playing SOMA.

[Bauglir]

does not have software

what do you think you are?

[SirQuiamus]

The human brain does not run on binary, does not have software, and is in a state of constant physical change. Your consciousness will never leave your body, brain, and mind because it literally can't.

Digital brains do not physically exist. They are data, and data requires an interpreter in order to be used. All of it is binary software on a static hardware medium.

OP has been playing SOMA.

I totally agree with you but... look, it's like this: The people who regard "mind uploading" or "technological immortality" as theoretically possible are implicitly old-fashioned mind/body dualists, although they are outright incapable of admitting that even to themselves. I know from experience that they will not give up the software/hardware metaphor that their fantasy is based on, no matter how many times you refute that nonsense.

There's no harm in pointing out the obvious, as you just did, but unfortunately the obvious is not enough to convince people who have swallowed an indigestible crank idea without chewing.

[Bauglir]

I mean, I have yet to see the particular flavor that transhumanism relies on refuted. That is, the sort that sees the mind* as a system of ongoing processes taking place in the medium of brains. If you want to talk about the sort of dualism that posits the mind as a magical thought engine running divorced from the laws of physics, sure, but that's hardly necessary. Assertions that it has been refuted, sure, I have seen - or maybe I've missed something in this thread. But, to my ears, it sounds as though you're denying that sound can exist underwater because sound obviously travels through air, and air is a gas, but water a liquid. Or, perhaps, that a given sound can never transition from one to the other, and pointing at the way the wave changes at the interface, refracting and reflecting and altering its speed and frequency and so on. That's sort of valid, but at that point we have different understandings of what constitutes "a sound", so of course we disagree, and I'm not sure there's really a good, rational refutation available to either of us.

*Or, if you like, whatever real object, process, or other noun that gives rise to the persistent illusion of "minds". I don't particularly care if you see a distinction there.

[SirQuiamus]

But, to my ears, it sounds as though you're denying that sound can exist underwater because sound obviously travels through air, and air is a gas, but water a liquid. Or, perhaps, that a given sound can never transition from one to the other, and pointing at the way the wave changes at the interface, refracting and reflecting and altering its speed and frequency and so on.

The problem with relying on such simplistic physical analogies to argue for uploading is that you lose sight of the formative analogy that is always already implicit in the argument as an unstated and unexamined premise: that annoyingly persistent conceptual metaphor of "ghost in the machine." The very instant you think "gee, it would be so cool if I could live on and on in cyberspace," you are already subscribing to the dualistic assumption that 'you' are something more than the haphazard collection of molecules that form your body, and that this elusive "something" can be isolated and transferred into another medium, like software ported onto another piece of hardware. We wouldn't be having this conversation without that inherently dualistic software metaphor – otherwise there would be no point in talking about "uploading" as opposed to programming digital "minds" from scratch.

It doesn't matter whether you call it "a magical thought engine" or "a system of ongoing processes taking place in the medium of brain," the fact remains that you're treating this abstract, spiritual/mathematical entity as the essence of 'you' that could, in theory, be tacked onto any inessential substance of a 'body' – this is classical metaphysics, and I'm sure you'll agree that such an approach is wildly incompatible with ontological monism and scientific naturalism, no matter how fancily you phrase it.

[i2amroy]

Digital brains do not physically exist. They are data, and data requires an interpreter in order to be used. All of it is binary software on a static hardware medium.

Ever heard of an embedded system? It's what runs a fair bit of the chips in your cars, etc., and while even most embedded systems are set up so that you can "flash" the firmware to upgrade it, it's still totally possible to create embedded systems where the hardware and software are inextricably linked (and is what a lot of electrical engineering is) just exactly the same way that the software and hardware of you brain is linked.

I mean personally I'm a proponent of mind uploading, yet I'm a very much a non-dualist. In my opinion your brain's "software" is linked directly to your brain's hardware, damage one and you damage the other, and there aren't any easy ways to separate them. Yet I also know that just because the software and hardware of a system are linked doesn't mean you can't emulate such a system on a non-linked piece of hardware, after all this is literally what the tools that electrical engineers use in their day-to-day jobs do; they simulate the logic of a hardcoded embedded circuit on the non-hardcoded circuit that is your computer in order to allow them to design and prototype without actually manufacturing a brand new circuit every time they want to make any changes.

[SirQuiamus]

In my opinion your brain's "software" is linked directly to your brain's hardware...

Your 'software' is not 'linked' to your 'hardware' because there is no such distinction. There is neither 'software' nor 'hardware' – there is only brain.

[Graknorke]

Okay how about "The imaginary flow chart (or probably some better chart) you could draw describing the various potential outputs from the possible inputs is intrinsically linked to brain structure rather than being imposed upon a configurable system."
Or would you like to carry on being pedantic for the sake of it?

[Eagleon]

It doesn't matter whether you call it "a magical thought engine" or "a system of ongoing processes taking place in the medium of brain," the fact remains that you're treating this abstract, spiritual/mathematical entity as the essence of 'you' that could, in theory, be tacked onto any inessential substance of a 'body' – this is classical metaphysics, and I'm sure you'll agree that such an approach is wildly incompatible with ontological monism and scientific naturalism, no matter how fancily you phrase it.

You're really splitting hairs with this. I don't think anyone that's seriously considered it long is actually talking about running a brain on JIT bytecode in a data-center, the reality is probably going to be quite a bit more like the actual brain. As in physical structures running analogous processes to the structures in our head. Unless you'd like to argue that survival itself is incompatible with science, I don't understand what your postion is here. I really don't see why we should stop pursuing medical longevity treatments, for instance, does that make me dualist? I don't think people are going to expect themselves to be completely the same after such a change, but neither is it implicitly dualist to decide that they're roughly the same enough to remain roughly the same person. That would simply be an artifact of the fact that we're conscious at all.

[i2amroy]

In my opinion your brain's "software" is linked directly to your brain's hardware...

Your 'software' is not 'linked' to your 'hardware' because there is no such distinction. There is neither 'software' nor 'hardware' – there is only brain.

Okay let me reclarify my post then:

I mean personally I'm a proponent of mind uploading, yet I'm a very much a non-dualist. In my opinion the "logical processes that your brain carries out biologically while functioning" (hereafter referred to as your brain's "software"), are linked directly to your brain's hardware, damage one and you damage the other, and there aren't any easy ways to separate them. Yet I also know that just because the software and hardware of a system are linked doesn't mean you can't emulate such a system on a non-linked piece of hardware, after all this is literally what the tools that electrical engineers use in their day-to-day jobs do; they simulate the logic of a hardcoded embedded circuit on the non-hardcoded circuit that is your computer in order to allow them to design and prototype without actually manufacturing a brand new circuit every time they want to make any changes.

Your brain, at the basest level, is carrying out some form of abstracted logical steps through the process of neurons firing. This is an incredibly complex process (and uses a form of analog logic, for the most part, rather than the binary logic we are so used to in computers), but it's still a logical process, and therefore could potentially be written down on say, a sheet of paper, and stepped through manually (or by a computer) rather than being actually run on your brain. This is just the same as how a computer program can be written down on a sheet of paper and be stepped through by hand, or an emulator can run the firmware in your phone on your computer despite your computer not being the appropriate hardware.

As an absolute worst case, assuming a non-dualistic approach, we could physically model everything that is going on in your brain and use that as an "emulation", because at the lowest level biology is really just physics, and there is nothing in that branch of physics that can't be modeled by an advanced enough simulation running on a computer. If you accept the fact that the brain is non-dualist, you almost have to accept the fact that emulating a brain is possible, since we could hypothetically model the physical processes involved in the brain all of the way down to the quantum level with enough work and a computer that was powerful enough.