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[Descan]

Also, not sure what you're agreeing with, Tir? You mean *current* technology, right? And I don't even know what you mean by "as compared to the application from a human mind."

I was skimming the last pages in this thread ._. (And the thread topic reminds me of a discussion our psych professor brought up as she's into neurology on Immortality via Technology, and yes I mean current technology )

So by skimming, I meant 'I assumed y'all were talking about how technology is being applied as an extension of a person' and then based off a tangent from:
 

You're using current technological limitations (language is a LOT more complicated than sound, for one thing) to argue a philosophical point.[...]

Oops to me if that was rather out of place!

I don't really know if it was. My point saying that was, because technology changes and generally gets better over time, making an argument of "We can never do this!" on the basis of "You can't show me someone who's done it already!" is absurd. Heavier-than-air flight, landing on the moon, splitting the atom, etc. By that same logic, all of those things were flat out impossible, until they were done. If that's what you were talking about, then sure!

Hammer: I'm not interested in whether consciousness directs action or consciousness comes after action. I just wanna live forever, and I want it to be me that's doing the living, not a clone or a robot that thinks it's me. And frankly, I don't see the connection between "Free will doesn't exist!" and "Therefore the person in a computer that thinks they're you won't be you!" Especially when I agree with that latter statement in some situations and not others*, and I have no thoughts on the former statement, because I don't really care about free will.

*Personally I never held truck with the idea that HOW you arrive at a state has no bearing on WHAT that state is. Sure it holds true with experiments, clean chemistry, and physics equations. But the real world is messy, and reactions, people, places, things, they all hold the imprint of their past and that impacts them, in ways subtle and gross. Even if a state is "A brain-origin mind inside a computer," HOW one got from a brain to that computer has impact on what that mind is, especially from the perspective of the mind-in-the-brain and the mind-in-the-computer. The goal is for them to both be the same mind.


(NO I'm not a dualist, it's just easy language to use to separate the concepts of "Meat substrate" i.e. brain, and the whatever-the-fuck that's typing these words, even if they're intrinsically linked and one derives from the other. Derivations have word labels all the time, that doesn't make them separable things!)

[Tiruin]

[...]
Anyways, the idea of the brain as a computer is rough analogy. Our understanding of the brain is limited, but we know it is deterministic, like a computer and I think consciousness, what makes you aware, is 'output' from the brain, not a source of input. The illusion is that we think consciousness is determining our actions, when it is likely the other way around.

Thus, it makes me think 'digital uploading' of one's mind is impossible. Since your mind is a sort of unique reflection or shadow of the functioning of a brain, it is not reproducible, it's not just information that can be replicated endlessly like digital information can be.

Okay I guess this is a philosophical discussion after all. I think the answer to if a consciousness could be moved from brain to machine is possible is to upload a mind, then replicate it and see if the consciousness has any connection between the copies.

Well, then you could argue you created a new consciousness each time you copied the mind. Like that time you made a baby from inanimate, unconscious material you and your girlfriend exchanged.

Toootally reminded of my CogniPsych x3
However I've to point out that even if such were possible--that machine would not necessarily equate the person before it. It will be able to create or be exposed to experiences and interaction, covering the experiential and developmental aspect of one's personality or thinking, but it will not be able to create or receive new thoughts other than what was input into it in the first place :O

Our understanding of the brain is not limited--it is limited in concrete knowledge, but the problem isn't that it is limited, but that it is the translation of abstracted concepts into concrete details. :O

I don't really know if it was. My point saying that was, because technology changes and generally gets better over time, making an argument of "We can never do this!" on the basis of "You can't show me someone who's done it already!" is absurd. Heavier-than-air flight, landing on the moon, splitting the atom, etc. By that same logic, all of those things were flat out impossible, until they were done. If that's what you were talking about, then sure!

Yep That's what I was talking about. 'impossible' being a limitation of perception rather than a limitation of tangible reality. It may differ from the first concept which is why it was thought about as impossible, and if otherwise--then it is improbable, rather than impossible.

[HAMMERMILL]

]I don't really know if it was. My point saying that was, because technology changes and generally gets better over time, making an argument of "We can never do this!" on the basis of "You can't show me someone who's done it already!" is absurd. Heavier-than-air flight, landing on the moon, splitting the atom, etc. By that same logic, all of those things were flat out impossible, until they were done. If that's what you were talking about, then sure!

Yeah, but you don't have a good argument if your talking about something that 'could maybe be possible'. I could say technological progress means we can fabricate a god from an expensive device somebody could make. So I proved god exists because you can't say somebody won't build a god-fabricating machine someday (and god can travel through time).

Science already tells us a lot about reality. We don't need to make assumptions until our understanding of reality matches up to something within our understanding of it. I don't believe brain as input, or a reproducible consciousness, is within the bounds of reality, judging by the breadth of facts we know of reality.

Our understanding of the brain is not limited--it is limited in concrete knowledge, but the problem isn't that it is limited, but that it is the translation of abstracted concepts into concrete details. :O

Probably, yeah.

[inteuniso]

I've been working on graphene for this past week.

This stuff is sapient and will probably lead to our technological immortality.

[HAMMERMILL]

I'm not interested in whether consciousness directs action or consciousness comes after action. I just wanna live forever, and I want it to be me that's doing the living, not a clone or a robot that thinks it's me. And frankly, I don't see the connection between "Free will doesn't exist!" and "Therefore the person in a computer that thinks they're you won't be you!" Especially when I agree with that latter statement in some situations and not others*, and I have no thoughts on the former statement, because I don't really care about free will.

Man, I'm saying your consciousness is an artifact, a shadow, a by-product of your brain. Your consciousness is directly tied to and secondary to the function of your brain. It's unique to it. If you take drugs, get lobotomized, it alters the function of your brain and thus alters your consciousness. Thus your perception of your self.

So you can't have true consciousness that transcends a specific physical form without free-will.

[LordBucket]

Neither do I.

[HAMMERMILL]

I dunno how to explain it any better.  I don't see how the former and latter can be distinct and separate from one another.

[SirQuiamus]

I don't see how the latter follows the former.

brain is babby and consciousness is bathwater

brain is nose and consciousness is snot

why do you want to remove nose and flush babby?

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

What if an individual was near death or had been rendered as trapped inside their own body by having connections between the brain and the rest of the body damaged to prevent movement?  In either case, would it be better for them to attempt the upload?  Even if they end up just as a shadow, would that be better than simply ceasing to exist or be in the torment of being trapped in their body?

[Descan]

I don't believe brain as input

You keep saying that, but it's demonstrably false.

[LordBucket]

Even if they end up just as a shadow, would that be better than simply ceasing to exist

The shadow is them "ceasing to exist." Go stand in the sunlight. Look at your shadow. Now make a piece of cardboard shaped enough like you that it casts the same-shaped shadow. Congratulations! You've now created a shadow. If you now kill yourself, does the fact that the shadow from the piece of cardboard still exists make it "better" than simply killing yourself without making the piece of cardboard?

or be in the torment of being trapped in their body?

If you want to suicide to escape pain, i have no problem with that. But don't point to your facebook page and claim that so long as that exists, it's ok for you to jump into an incinerator because that facebook page "is you." It isn't.

I dispute the idea that duplicating brain patterns in software would result in the transfer of your consciousness into the computer running the software. But a lot of people apparently believe that it will. What it might do, however, is create a mindless Siri clone with conversational patterns than resemble how you speak. And if people see that mindless thing and conclude that "uploading works" and then start suiciding in large numbers so they can live digital immortality...I think that would be a very unfortunate result.

[Descan]

I always find it funny how both sides of the argument* have aspects of dualism. On the "can't transfer consciousness to a computer easily" side, there's the idea that there's an ineffable aspect of the mind/brain combo that isn't far enough ingrained in the actual arrangement of neurons that replicating that arrangement in a computer will replicate that aspect, so by uploading someone by a simple scan-and-duplicate, you just create a separate copy and the original will die.

And on the "if it thinks it is you, it is you" side, the idea that a perspective can jump across god-knows-how many light years instantly into a new brain-substrate, and the potential idea if BOTH brains are active that the single mind sees out from both, is an inevitable continuation of that idea.

*excluding the people who flat out say "No such thing as consciousness," which I disagree with on the grounds that, whatever you want to call it, there's something about my sense of self I like and want to preserve, and "consciousness" seems as good a term as any.

[LordBucket]

If you split a person's brain, what happens to their sense of self?

Unsubstantiated opinion:

Consciousness is awareness. It doesn't particular matter of what. The "you" that you are/perceive is not a discrete entity. The "entity" that is being perceived as self is fluid.

For example, imagine a building with a bunch of stained glass windows. Light is shining through the windows. It doesn't particularly matter where one window ends and the next begins, light will shine through them regardless. If you have:

(window) (wall) (window)

...you, as an outside observer would tend to think of that arrangement as being "two windows." But if you knock out the wall and put in more stained glass between the two, it now appears to be only one window. if you put up more wall in the middle of a window:

(win)(wall)(dow) (wall) (window)

...it now looks like there are two small windows next to one big window. The light shining through all of this doesn't care. If you cut up a brain into smaller pieces, you'd simply have smaller windows. If you were to network every human brain together, for example, you'd simply have a great big window.

From the point of view of the windows, each window would always perceive itself as "self." When you learn a new fact, or switch from closed eyes to opened eyes, your greater perception/awareness doesn't typically cause you you perceive yourself as a different entity. Water in a bucket is still water in a bucket regardless of whether you add more water to the bucket. If you put some water into a bucket, and then look at it and say "this is some water in a bucket" and then add some more water into the bucket you don't look at the water and conclude that it's two different waters. It's "water in a bucket." And if you take some of the water out, you still have "water in a bucket" not "half a water" in the bucket.

I propose that consciousness is similar.

[chaotic skies]

I'd do this in a heartbeat, quicker if possible. Where do I sign up? Although this is similar to the whole AI dillema; what happens when someone/something's intent is to kill a large amount of people, and we allow them to upload? Suddenly, they have access to the entire Human race. Literally. Even if we go to space, the spaceships and stations we build are controlled by computers. And it's not just the fleshy organics, either; they could attack anyone else that's been uploaded, and potentially wipe life from the universe.

[Descan]

Transferring your mind would require the whole thing to work unbroken, and I don't know how that would work.

* Descan toots own horn again.

Just about the only way I can think of to have it work would be to, like I said, do it slowly, adding on bits to the brain that it migrates into over time. Eventually the goal is that SO MUCH of your brain is inside the machinery, that the organic stuff is just a side-show, and it dying off/being removed wouldn't matter any more than losing a few neurons does now.

Alternatively, a slow-and-steady replacement of all your neurons. Like a nanomachine that goes in, scans the connections, replicates those connections, then destroys the original neuron and takes its place. Repeat for all neurons. In the end, you're a cloud of nano-machines, but there was no single point in time where the change-over can be said to have occurred. Like weathering a mountain, there's no specific point in time where you can say "That mountain is no more," when you couldn't have the moment prior, but in the end, you still end up with a plain where a mountain used to be.