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/sci/ - Science & Math

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2364588 No.2364588 [Reply] [Original]

Ray Kurzweil often relates uploading one's mind to a computer to immortality. Why? You're going to die anyway... There will just be another consciousness similar to yours that will outlive your own brain. Immortality, or the perpetuation of a single consciousness, can only be achieved by augmenting the human body.

>> No.2364601

The best way to do it is changing one neuron at a time.
But if you're going to die and the only tech dispo is mind uploading, well, let's do it!

>> No.2364620

Actually, "You" are the brain and central nervous system. Everything around it exists for it's support. If you could "upload" yourself to another medium, i don't see how is that going to be another consciousness and not your own.

>> No.2364627

Digital reproduction of intelligence sidesteps irreversible decay of biology. As long as the sun burns, you can renew your brain.

>> No.2364630

>>2364620
>He thinks he knows everything.

>> No.2364633

>There will just be another consciousness similar to yours that will outlive your own brain.
This is basically a classic problem of identity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_change#The_Ship_of_Theseus

IMO, the point is moot. You're copying yourself, and one of you dies. So what? The problem is more clear-cut if the process is fatal, but we should be prepared to deal with the possibility of consciousness-copying that doesn't cause death of the original brain.

>> No.2364638

Doctors often relate surgery to life saving. Why? You're going to die anyway... There will just be another consciousness similar to yours that will inhabit your body when it wakes up from anesthesia. Lives can only be saved by the grace of our one true Lord Jesus Christ.

>> No.2364642

Anyone who knows Computer Science will explain why the concept is idiotic. There is no such a thing as 'moving data'. When you 'move data' you turn all the bits off in one place and turn them on in another in an identical arrangement.

To put it in other words, if you were to have a pair of lightbulbs, one turned on and the other off, and then you'd turn the one on off and send an identical signal to the one turned on, then you'd be mimicing the process of moving data.

tl;dr moving data is just nullifying data in one spot and reproducing its structure elsewhere.

Uploading your mind is possible. Transfering your conciousness isn't.

>> No.2364649

>>2364642
>Uploading your mind is possible. Transfering your conciousness isn't.
The rest of your post was cogent. But you'd better explain this one further.

>> No.2364651

>>2364642
>To put it in other words, if you were to have a pair of lightbulbs, one turned on and the other off, and then you'd turn the one on off and send an identical signal to the one turned off, then you'd be mimicing the process of moving data.

>> No.2364652

>>2364588
lrn2slowupload

>> No.2364653

>>2364642
So basically you're saying you believe in dualism?

>> No.2364664

>>2364649
Sorry. I should have said (and what I was trying to say is) that transfering your conciousness is not possible in this fashion. I cannot objectively state if it can be done in another way.

You can 'upload' your mind (in time) the same way you can upload a file to the internet: make a copy of it to be stored elsewhere, but that would mean nothing for the original.

>> No.2364679

Consider a proposition: Persistence of identity is an illusion. You will always be experiencing what you are experiencing right now. Your memories are from some other consciousness, and in the future, some other consciousness will remember being you.

>> No.2364683

>>2364620
You can't move your mind onto a hard drive. You might, at some point in the future, be able to copy it, but that would be no more like the original than a fax.

>> No.2364706

>>2364653
See
>>2364664
I misphrased myself with that last line. To expound further, take the follow example: You have a construct made of three blocks of lego stacked on top of each other (in this order): One blue, one red, one white. You then take another blue block, stack a red one on it, and stack a white on top of it. Then you take apart the original construct.

Did you transfer it? no. You copied its structure and then dismantled it.

This does not has the same implications (and questions) as the teleportation quadrum because, in this case, you cannot build the new construct from the same pieces. You must use new blocks.

>> No.2364707

>>2364679
Most people aren't comfortable with giving up their sense of self. It is a useful construct, anyway.

>> No.2364718

>>2364642
Exactly. You would have the comfort of knowing about your own posthumous Ozymandias cyber-pedestal, but YOUR neurons are staying put until the day you die.

>> No.2364738
File: 13 KB, 291x328, roger ebert post-surgery.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2364738

>>2364620
>He thinks when he uploads himself, there will be a tunnel and he'll ride a bike at lightspeed down the tunnel to get to the internet!

>> No.2364747

I think people are going about it the wrong way. The brain+spleen-in-a-box-in-a-robot approach seems to be far more promising, though it would still need significant medical advancements.

>> No.2364739

>>2364683
It seems extraordinarily unlikely that it would ever be possible to upload the states of all the neurons in your brain to anything. There are more neurons in your brain than stars in the galaxy. Your neurons aren't wired in such a way that they can be queried as to their connection strengths or other properties.

>> No.2364749

Yeah, a lot of people seem to miss the fact that a copy of me is not me. I have this same objection to the transporters in Star Trek.

>> No.2364755

>>2364739
Computation power is increasing so exceptionally I can fully believe it will be possible some day. Computers are still in their infancy.

>> No.2364757

>>2364739
>There are more neurons in your brain than stars in the galaxy.
Actually, the Milky Way galaxy is estimated at 200-400 billion stars, while the human brain is 50-100 billion neurons. But you're right, it's a big number.

>Your neurons aren't wired in such a way that they can be queried as to their connection strengths or other properties.
Yet.

>> No.2364761

Why the fuck would I pass my well-earned knowledge and personal memories for free to some pathetic machine that doesn't even have a soul, let alone MY soul?

>> No.2364773

>>2364761
What is it about /sci/ that attracts the religious types? Shouldn't you be reading The Language of God by Francis Collins?

>> No.2364774

>>2364755
That limits the ability to "run" as simulation of your neurons in real-time. Not the ability to store a representation. But you're right, we need more power. And probably different architecture. Like memristers, which combine computation and storage like neurons do.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors/0

>> No.2364792

>>2364588
>Perpetuation of a single consciousness can only be achieved by augmenting the human body.

Care to leave a thought here?
>>2364783

>> No.2364808

>>2364627
Life will have death in any form and medium.
Even with a digital mind, you can still come to physical harm. Moreso, you could come to be damaged through electromagnecits.

Immortal does not mean invincible.

>> No.2364822

>>2364642
That's the real wonder of it there.
When say a mind is recorded digitally.

All of the neuron-networking can be mimicked.
But can our newly-made data govern itself once made?

Nobody will know for some time.

>> No.2364835

>>2364808
Haha oh wow. I can just imagine the government making magnets illegal :3

>> No.2365357

God, everyone in here is stupid.

Frame of reference doesn't transfer just because you've made a copy of the mind.

In essence, you are your body, and the mind is part of your body.

If you donated your kidney to a kid, you don't personally suffer or feel the ill effects of him abusing it, do you? It is no longer a part of your system, your 'body'.

Just the same, if you make a copy of yourself, an identical clone with all your memories, you do not assume you will share each other's perceptions from now on, do you?

Likewise, the mind is nothing more than yet another vital part of our body system. Even if you upload your mind, your personal journey is at an end as soon as your body stops functioning. There is no mechanism of transference of point of reference.

Your copy will wake up and think "Oh, I got knocked out.", and people may find it difficult to impossible to distinguish between this copy and yourself, but you, the existence inside that body that was just hit by a car, never do. Your story is over.

>> No.2365402

The brain is just a bunch of neurons linked together, right? What if you were to have a computer simulate a bunch of neurons, and hook the computer's neurons up to your brain's in the same way two neurons in the brain are linked together. You keep adding neurons until your consciousness is spread about equally over your brain plus the computer. Then slowly cut off your brain's neurons until all of your consciousness remains on the computer.

>> No.2365414

>>2365402

That method MIGHT work.

But I shudder to think about the difficulties in developing something like that.

After all, our brains are a result of coevolution and codevelopment with our bodies. Put into an inhuman framework(even less human than poorly or abnormally functioning AIs), who the fuck knows what kind of harm our psyches might endure?

Brain emulation is only half of it. We'll also need 'body emulation'

>> No.2365419

>>2365357
Well, what about siamese twins that are linked at the head?
Shit can get weird- shared perceptions and the like.

So what if you linked your living mind to the copy, and transmitted information in between the both of them?

You would receive information from the copy's sensors, and the copy would receive information from your senses as well. You would merge as one consciousness. Then, simply remove piece by piece of the sensation from the organic end until the original brain is just "extra processing power" for the synthetic brain.

Finally, we can remove the organic brain, and your consciousness is maintained in the synthetic brain.

Is this plausible?

>> No.2365420

>>2365414

urgh.

not AIs. Bodies.

>> No.2365424

>>2365419
>>2365402
I see we had the same idea.

>> No.2365443

>>2365424

It's the most plausible suggestion.

But like I said, there's probably quite a bit of risk of trauma without a whole lot of precautions taken, and I'm not even sure how you develop something like this without utterly destroying people in the process.

>> No.2365474

Why is persistence of consciousness important anyway?
When I go to sleep, do I worry whether I've really existed all this time when I wake up the next morning?

What was I doing before I was born? Nothing. What will I do after I die? Nothing.

Just the fact that something, anything could live on with my experiences and experience more life on its own would be comforting enough; it's the ultimate extension of "living on in the memories of friends and family", except it's living on in the mind of another being.

Still, we don't know the exact nature of consciousness anyway. It is still entirely possible that consciousness is dualistic or transcendent.

Some will say "no, you are just your neurons, we know this because altering the physical aspects of the brain can alter personalities".

But that's not proof at all. What if the brain is just a vessel? Does not water take the shape of its container? Perhaps consciousness is the same thing.

It is entirely possible that if you created an exact copy of someone's brain, that they would indeed experience perception from both sources until one is destroyed.

We don't know because we've never done it or anything like it before.

>> No.2365473

>consciousness
good luck defining what it is

I'm from a CS backgroud, and as far as I know it could be modelled by just adding another layer of neurons to the rest of the brain whos jobs is to interpret what the rest of the brain does, how it funtions, the processed information just goes through another layer. I don't see anything special about it, and certainly not something that can't be modelled.

>> No.2365494

I feel like if you recreate the brain artificially and transfer all of one's consciousness (the physical process + memory) to a new body...if this person was aware of the fact that they now existed in a machine, I imagine there would be some sort of major shock that would completely alter the consciousness's concept of its own being, thereby completely changing it into a new consciousness.

Or the entire thing would short circuit and die because of the overload and shock?

>> No.2365622
File: 156 KB, 576x432, 1293867585020.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2365622

>>2364679

>> No.2365685

There's nothing religious about the definition of consciousness; it is the collaboration of multiple neural networks working to interpret multiple stimuli. The reason for logic in humans is an intermediate step between detection and response because the best solution is not always the most obvious or reflexive one.

If we uploaded a human mind to a computer it would need a similarly built system of receptors. It could not be identical because the chemistry of a computer and that of a living organism is very different. Uploading is something of a misnomer because we would in fact be constructing a new consciousness and not cut-pasting the information to a harddrive. It would not be us but a completely new entity. Furthermore it would be cruel to bring into existence a mind with purpose built to make use of limbs, muscles and all else that will not exist unless designed for in android form. There may be some aesthetic taste in it for some people though if they cheat themselves into thinking they will live on in this form.

Aside from the romanticized concept of a platonic psyche; the reality appears to be that consciousness is a construct of many individual receptors and their respective functions. Our sum is far greater than the whole.

>> No.2365722

What if I have nanobots copy my brain structure and if anything happens to me, someone could put the nanobot brain back in? Presumably cloning of the body would be possible by then so it wouldn't be a problem if my old body is destroyed.

>> No.2365739

>>2365722
That may work.
I wouldn't want to live forever though. My genetic coding isn't wonderful enough to survive so far into the future.

>> No.2365769

>>2365739
I don't see why people always say they don't want to live forever. Don't you want to see what the future is like? What humanity can accomplish? If we are the first generation that obtains immortality, we will be revered as the 'firsts'. Think of all the wisdom we could accumulate.

>> No.2365787

I've never liked the concept of uploading.

It just acts as a copy, its simply emulation.
I'll be fine as a badass cybord with cell repair for my neurons.

>> No.2365814

>>2365787

I'm thinking that this is essentially the best thing we can ever hope for in that regard, since it isn't really possible to define the conciousness of an entity

>> No.2365825

>>2365769
Well with the method you proposed the brain will be a copy from a time before knowledge was accumulated. If nanobots constantly update your brain you have the issue of an aging brain unless you can iron out the degenerative process.

Still, I would hate to be a dog in an evolutionarily superior universe. It's not the wisdom one can accumulate but the tools with which one is able to do so that I value my existence.

>> No.2365884

The sad reality is that this will likely happen in our children's lives, or the lives of their children.

We're going to be one of the last generations that truly understood mortality, while those after us will be the only generation left that saw their parents die naturally.

>> No.2365896

>>2365884
Maybe, but there still is a possibility that we'll be the first transhumans. The REALLY sad part is that the scientists who will pioneer the means to achieve virtual immortality will not likely live to reap its benefits. It'll be a hand-me-down.

>> No.2365915

"How We Became Post-Human" by N. Katherine Hayles is a must read on this subject. I think Kurzwiel even retracted his upload theory, it was in a Q&A for The Singularity is Near, he said it in an off hand fashion that he doesn't think it's possible to scan the human brain. But Hayles book tracts why such a theory could even be taken seriously since its so obviously false, I highly recommend it.

>> No.2365969

>>2364679
This!

It took me a very long time to accept this but it's the only conclusion that makes sense. Also it makes any further identity arguments you make unassailable.

Also it makes you sad.

>> No.2367920

>implying we truly know if such a thing as the soul is real or not

sheep

>> No.2367933

ITT: People who read the cracked article about technology and immortality then did some more research

>> No.2369589

That Cracked article was such a Kurzweil parroting fanboy love letter, I'm glad most everyone in the comments shot holes in it.

But if I may do some fanboy parroting, Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan is about scanning a mind and uploading to a robot body; his Rollback is about genetic induced immortality.

>> No.2369697

I bought Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near on eBay, it's going to be delivered in 2-3 days.

>> No.2369764

this sort of thread makes me think about killing myself just to see what happens....or not see, you know what i mean

>> No.2369781
File: 10 KB, 126x126, 1271336135986.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2369781

>>2364679
ive been considering this for a long time and it fucks my mind up so badly

>> No.2369804

The point of "mind uploading" is to somehow convert your neurons to electrical impulses that would be able to work in a computer. Not necessarily a hard drive, but like a CPU. Even if this is possible, I don't see how you can actually move your conscience, because even if brain emulation is possible you most likely won't actually be "you". You just have the same thoughts and memories, but it's not "you" that's controlling it. Idk this shut is fucking complex.

>> No.2369808

Utterly moot.

All current information technology operates on a "read->reproduce" basis. There is no transference. So, the device that would "upload" your mind into a computer would simply read your brain and copy it.

Its trying to say you moved a house by drawing a blueprint, mailing the blueprint, then reconstructing it with whole new materials, then destroying the original house.

>> No.2369827
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2369827

I find that OP is deluded with the concept of a self, which does not necessarily exist. The cells you are at the moment will soon die but you will still be here. Granted your neurons are the same, you aren't. You are just a collection of organisms that have come together to obtain enough knowledge of the world to appear sentient. Every moment that passes is an undisected segment of time in which the you that existed in it, died in it. You are not the same person you were yesterday, an hour ago, one second ago. As time progresses, you die an infinite number of times to sustain the emergence of another almost exactly like you.

Uploading your "consciousness" to a digital mainframe would be no different. You may think you've been around for many years but in fact you have only inherited the memories of the many yous that existed before you.

Have fun realizing this.

>> No.2369889

>>2369827
And the trick to "mind uploading" would be continuing that sequence of instants on another, less fragile medium.

>> No.2369913

>>2364679
Continuity of consciousness may indeed be an illusion, since we are our memories. The only reason we think continuity exists is because we have memories and memories are just synapses. The actual experienced consciousness is probably just the electrical pattern in the brain. I'm an agnostic type-e dualist, which means I tend to think qualia's existence is probable, however getting me to agree to continuity is harder.

As for uploading... I have no idea if we're ever going to live long enough to reach it (even assuming we will be able to prevent aging partially - preventing degeneration of the nervous system is harder). I think the first pseudoimmortals will be minimal human-like AIs based on our neocortex(+thalamus) ran in some sort of neuromorphic hardware. Uploading is tricky because actually replicating the complexities and detail found in the human brain is difficult, especially scanning all the neurons and their synapses. I think in the far future it may become possible, but I don't know if it will be within our lifetime... human-like AI on the other hand, I think we'll live to see it as soon we'll have hardware fast enough to emulate something the size of our brain (or just neocortex, since you don't really need the whole lizard brain) and a good enough neuronal and connectivity model (there are some apparently good ones, but we won't know until we implement it). I think that just emulating the neocortex and thalamus and possibly a small number of other smaller regions will be enough as at as far as neuroscience is concerned, even with large regions of the brain missing (especially if this happened during fetal development), brains are adaptive enough to learn how to compensate without those helper regions.

>> No.2369917

>>2369889

Exactly. Uploading your consciousness is just another way of saying copy your mind. There should be no fear in saying that you will copy your mind to continue to exist while the person you think you are dies. It's something we've already been doing for a long time, we just don't realize it sometimes.

>> No.2369915
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2369915

>>2369827
I thought about it.

So I waited.

A moment passed.

And when I was still there, and I was still me, I shrugged, and went back to fapping.

>> No.2369942

>>2369915
The fact that you use an abstract idea when understanding the world doesn't mean the idea is right. Think about yourself when you were a child. You behaved very differently, didn't you? So much so that, in effect, you're no longer the same person as that child. So where did the change happen? Do these changes only occur at specific intervals? Don't they occur every time your neural physiology is altered? Isn't that every time something occurs in your brain?

>> No.2369949

except your perspective/awareness/whatever will not transfer to the copy. It will be "you" to every perspective except yours. Thus, you die, something else lives.

The only way around this is the first response.

>> No.2369989

>>2369942
I know what you are getting at, and I'm not really opposed to the idea. Its just that its more or less irrelevant. Every atom in our body is exchanged every few months. Basically, we have a new body every year. But the effect, the process of consciousness never stops for an instant, even in sleep or during anesthetic. Even if its like a movie, one frame after the other in rapid succesion, so what? The "me" in the "now" is still here, and nothing I've seen so far has convinced me that I somehow "die" with each passing moment, and someone else is reborn in my place.

>> No.2370669

Like said earlier "How We Became Post-Human" is highly recommended, it should be bundled with The Singularity is Near as a contextual anchor and counterpoint. Because reading Singularity, I kept saying to myself, "How the fuck do you think is possible Kurzweil?" Hayles had an answer.

>> No.2370682
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2370682

>> No.2370706

>>2369827
>As time progresses, you die an infinite number of times to sustain the emergence of another almost exactly like you.

is it possible that instead of a continuous "self" being an illusion, but that time itself is an illusion? We're so fixated towards thinking about the present and past and future that we don't realize it may be one in the same?

>> No.2370724

>>2370706
>We're so fixated towards thinking about the present and past and future that we don't realize it may be one in the same?
Your statement has no meaning.

>> No.2370778

I'll try to elaborate

this post >>2369827 says the "self" doesn't necessarily exist because our bodies change over time, cells die, memories change, etc. It goes on to say that we die infinitely many times because what we think of the "self" is constantly dying.

but clearly our "self" is continuous (at least intuitively), but this post says >>2369913 that this sense could be an illusion (which can easily be explained as an evolutionary trick to keep us alive, hence our ego).

So the question is (presumably), either consciousness is an illusion (or maybe we are part of a higher consciousness and it is only our ego that is part of the illusion), or the continuity itself is an illusion (time), which is what im saying.