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[Jreengus]

Considering I just called my own God an asshole I should probably be trying for damage control here, but yeah, the Old Testament God was like a lot of the Gods that long ago. Not a nice chap, to put it mildly.

God seems to get nicer as the bible goes on, I mean consider the garden of eden. God punishes Adam and Eve and all their descendants because they ate from the tree of life. Leaving out the fact that he implies that the only reason for this ban was to prevent them from becoming as gods, he punishes them for learning the difference between good and evil. As in when they commited the crime they had no idea that disobedience was bad, they didn't know whether any action they did was right or wrong. This is pretty much the basis of an insanity plea. Seriously why does he expect them to obey his commands if he didn't build them with any way of realising that not obeying his commands is bad?

[Aqizzar]

If you really carry it out, He was basically setting them to an impossible task.  Here, sit in this garden or all eternity.  You can eat anything in it, except these special apples that will give you the power of intelligence.  Remember, don't eat them, they're too awesome for you.  So just sit here, forever, while I go off and do my important God stuff.

Considering it's God, how he could He possible not see what's coming there?  I have to wonder if the Devil even had anything to do with it.

[eerr]

If you really carry it out, He was basically setting them to an impossible task.  Here, sit in this garden or all eternity.  You can eat anything in it, except these special apples that will give you the power of intelligence.  Remember, don't eat them, they're too awesome for you.  So just sit here, forever, while I go off and do my important God stuff.

Considering it's God, how he could He possible not see what's coming there?  I have to wonder if the Devil even had anything to do with it.

At that rate you might as well call the devil a construction of god.

[Aqizzar]

Well, considering God made the whole Universe and angels don't have free will (or something like that), technically God did make the Devil.  As Jim Jefferies pointed out, God puts out a book talking a bunch of shit about the Devil.  The Devil has never put out a book telling his side of the story, clearly making him the bigger man.

[Jude]

The human mind cannot become part of a computer.

Theoretically there's no reason why not.

In practice probably not.

Everything of the mind is complex storage involving the right balance of chemicals, hormones, and protein chains. For a computer to replicate that, it would have to be able to reproduce those exact specifications.

Well yeah, but what if we COULD reproduce those exact specifications? You'd have no basis for saying the computer program was not a person.

We would simply be reduced down to that tub of chemicals, and we would lose all of our ability to create new memory and experience the now,

Why?

because we would have stripped away our nerves and neurons and all the real components of our brains. In short, good luck with living in the past.

If we could make a computer that could simulate all of human cognition then it wouldn't matter that we stripped away our nerves and neurons.

Also, making a computerised clone of yourself is not immortality. It may be for that version but the original you is still going to die.

If you upload your mind completely onto a computer and then your original body dies, how is that not immortality? There's no essence of you that would somehow not be preserved. Essentialism is a fallacy...

[Jreengus]

Also, making a computerised clone of yourself is not immortality. It may be for that version but the original you is still going to die.

If you upload your mind completely onto a computer and then your original body dies, how is that not immortality? There's no essence of you that would somehow not be preserved. Essentialism is a fallacy...

If I have a lego house and I build a new and identical one then destroy the old one the new house may be identical in every single way but it is not the original house. A copy is a copy, if a copy of something lives forever then the copy lives forever. The original does not. Sure if you substitute the original with the copy then this makes no difference except to the original but in the case of attempting to achieve immortality thats the most important person it can make a difference to.

[Realmfighter]

We are, in essence just electrical signals in our brain.

All you see, feel and experience is just your brain processing data.

You could be destroyed, and then remade every instance and you would never tell the difference than if you stayed the same.

[zchris13]

But that would SUCK.  And be such a major pain in my engineering rear end that I know I would never do that.  I mean, seriously? Nobody will ever do that. EVER.  Too much wasted stuff.

[qwertyuiopas]

If you build a lego house then:
a) deconstruct it, build a tree, then take that apart to rebuild the original house
or
b) build an identical one and discard the old
or
c) swap out just one piece for another

Is it the same house?

Someone walking in and seeing it on your desk will think it is, but is it really?

And if it is for c), then what if you swap out another? And another?

What if you build on a second floor? Is it still the same house?

[redacted123]

-

[alway]

The crux of the issue for me is that the two can exist at the same time. If your copy is "alive" and you are alive as well and a separate entity, then how can you say that it is you?

"I have died a thousand times, and yet I live on." ~ Alway, year 235500 

In all seriousness though, many scifi stories use this sort of thing for teleportation. The whole premise behind a stargate is that you were deconstructed and then reconstructed at the target location.
However, this is really an undecided issue... and one which will likely have to be faced by the end of the century. The problem is, we have no workable definition of intelligence, sentience, or even life.
There is one thing I can say for sure though: the two entities would diverge as soon as the copy was made. The original would probably live out its remaining time, while the copy would be in the interesting position of watching their own demise.

[Jude]

The crux of the issue for me is that the two can exist at the same time. If your copy is "alive" and you are alive as well and a separate entity, then how can you say that it is you?

OK, but like with the lego house - what if you just swap pieces out one at a time? What if you gradually upload parts of your brain onto the computer, and  those parts cease functioning in your biological body?

Also, your body is constantly swapping out parts. You aren't made of the same cells you were made up of 10 years ago. So what kept you, you?

The other thing about making copies is that the "essence" difference is not actually important. If you have a copy of your lego house, sure it's not "the same" one. But for all practical intents and purposes, it might as well be the same house. It's just an artifact of human thinking that insists there is a fundamental essence of each object, that it is not just the sum of its parts. That's why people insist on believing in souls and such.

But if replacing all the cells in your body doesn't cause you to stop being you, then what if you were duplicated, creating an exact double with all of your memories - all the way up to the moment of duplication, such that both of you had full memories of your whole life and of being cloned? Then which one is you? Given that you two are completely identical, if one were  then snuffed out, how would it make any practical difference, since whichever one lived would, in its own mind, be the real one, since that person would have a full life of memories? And if that happened, how would that person be "you" any less than you are now, having replaced all the parts you're made up of, many times over?

[Cheddarius]

Okay, let's say that an insanely overzealous body-builder decides to switch out each cell of his body a millesecond after it's created, to prevent decay. But they're all labeled or some crazy thing like that, so later, when his body is totally renewed from time X (no cell from time X is in his body now), all the cells from time X are taken back and reconstituted into a human being (ignore all the things like maybe the cells would have died by then, it's a thought experiment. Just pretend he has a magic cryogenic freezer or something). Clearly, the reconstituted being, having all the same cells, is the same person - so either there can be more than one of a person (I'm not saying more than one copy, I'm saying more than one real thing), or there cannot be more than one, which means that it must be the reconstituted dude, and the other dude is a poser.

[Vester]

We are, in essence just electrical signals in our brain.

All you see, feel and experience is just your brain processing data.

You could be destroyed, and then remade every instance and you would never tell the difference than if you stayed the same.

What are you talking about? Under this, there could be two versions of you at the same time. Are both of you the same? Do you share your consciousness (which is itself poorly understood)? What if different things happen to you? Is the experience shared?

[Jreengus]

The crux of the issue for me is that the two can exist at the same time. If your copy is "alive" and you are alive as well and a separate entity, then how can you say that it is you?

OK, but like with the lego house - what if you just swap pieces out one at a time? What if you gradually upload parts of your brain onto the computer, and  those parts cease functioning in your biological body?

As you point out later this happens a lot, if someone came up with something like this I would do it.

Also, your body is constantly swapping out parts. You aren't made of the same cells you were made up of 10 years ago. So what kept you, you?

The fact that I am me sure my cells might be gradually changing but thats changes happening to me, not a duplicate being made out of different cells whilst I die and it goes out to live my life.

The other thing about making copies is that the "essence" difference is not actually important. If you have a copy of your lego house, sure it's not "the same" one. But for all practical intents and purposes, it might as well be the same house. It's just an artifact of human thinking that insists there is a fundamental essence of each object, that it is not just the sum of its parts. That's why people insist on believing in souls and such.

As I pointed out earlier the only person it makes a difference to is you. If you don't mind dieing so that as far as everyone else is concerned you live forever then go ahead, but I'd much rather have my consciousness live forever rather than a perfect copy.

But if replacing all the cells in your body doesn't cause you to stop being you, then what if you were duplicated, creating an exact double with all of your memories - all the way up to the moment of duplication, such that both of you had full memories of your whole life and of being cloned? Then which one is you? Given that you two are completely identical, if one were  then snuffed out, how would it make any practical difference, since whichever one lived would, in its own mind, be the real one, since that person would have a full life of memories? And if that happened, how would that person be "you" any less than you are now, having replaced all the parts you're made up of, many times over?

They wouldn't and I'm sure that would be very pleasing to everyone else around me as well as the copy. But I would still be dead. How are you not getting this, if you want to live for ever then the feelings of a complete copy who is indistinguishable is not of interest to me.