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But You're Still Dead!

  
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:53 / 02.07.04
Based on Chad's post I've remebered what bugs me about so many of the technological 'what if we...'s that people have come up with for cheating the death of their bodies which, due to my ignorance I'm probably unfairly lumping in with groups such as Extropians. I may be wrong on that, but it's not largely important.

The exact methods differ, but the broad thrust is a copying. Chad's view is that you somehow live on as a bunch of virulent memes in other peoples' heads, so effectively copying yourself into their heads, probably accidentally, but other popular methods seem to be copying yourself onto an Internet-like network, or copying yourself into cyborgs bodies, or the Transmetropolitan method, which is to copy your brainwaves onto a map of nanites and use the chemical energy of your dying body to kick start it's engines.

Now, I'm not appealing to the notion of an ineffable human soul, but these aren't going to solve someone with a thirst for immortality are they? Sure, tomorrow there's something going around that believes it's you, but you're still dead, right?

Maybe I'm getting hung up on terminology, but when I've read how people think this will work, they do seem to genuinely mean that 'the information stored in each neuron' is mapped over to their storage device of choice. In the process the neuron may be destroyed and it may not, but this process still either kills the person who was born as a human and the person who was born as a human isn't going to be the creature that is now a machine.

Without going into specific cases, am I off-base with this? Is there a transmission of consciousness between one and the other? Am I hung up on specifics, or do people believe that just so long as something with their memories, outlook and experiences goes on, it doesn't matter so much that it's not them?
 
 
Axolotl
10:37 / 02.07.04
This essentially depends on whether you believe that there is an ineffable spark that creates the unique being that is you, or whether you believe that you are merely the creation of all the chemicals and neurons sloshing around in your brain.
If the first one is true, you would end up with something like the constructs out of Gibson's "Neuromancer" series, mere simulacrums of a person, that could (maybe) access your knowledge, but that would be lacking that something that makes you you.
If you believe the second (which fits in better with the extropian worldview) if you managed to copy all the information in your brain, it would essentially be you, but in digital form (or whatever).
Me, I don't know which is correct, but by the time you can create a perfect copy of a brain and the information contained within, you are getting towards the zone where you may as well be talking about magic as technology. As the famous quotation goes:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 
 
DecayingInsect
11:35 / 02.07.04
I tend to agree with with the first poster. For all I know they have already uploaded my brain/mind/soul/whatever into a giant robot on mars. That doesn't mean that the body I feel myself to be in here on earth is going to be too chilled out about being run over by a bus.

On this theory of course it's not too bright to allow yorself to be beamed around on star trek.
 
 
Atyeo
12:25 / 02.07.04
Even if you believe that we are just neurons, as I do, then copying digitally still wouldn't be yourself.

I think that I am alive because all the neurons in my mind create the concept of myself. If you digitally implanted that somewhere else it would just be other neurons creating the same concept but it wouldn't be me.

I've always thought the same applies to transporter devices. We can already transport properties over small distances instantly (photons) but it isn't the same photon, it just has the same properties of the old one. If in the future we could transport every atom of a person using this technique, wouldn't we just be creating a copy of ourselves?
 
 
Axolotl
12:36 / 02.07.04
But if you couldn't tell the difference between the original and the copy would there actually be a difference? And that's an actual based on fact difference, not just the intuitive one that this exact copy wouldn't be the same as me. Would the fact that you were a copy of yourself (as made by the transporter, for example) actually be noticeable?
As a though experiment imagine if you were transported while asleep 3 inches to the right, with the original you being destroyed as part of the process. When you woke up would there be a difference?
As I said, I'm not sure, I'd like to think so, as I like to consider myself more than the result of a bunch of proteins knocking about.
 
 
gravitybitch
14:18 / 02.07.04
Is there a transmission of consciousness between one and the other? ... there is an ineffable spark that creates the unique being that is you ...vs... you are merely the creation of all the chemicals and neurons sloshing around in your brain...

A lot of this comes down to (unanswered and very sticky) questions about consciousness and identity. Nobody knows how the activities (chemical and electrical) in a brain give rise to a being with awareness of self, history, and future; or even whether a brain is insufficient and the whole extended package of body, community, and environment are also necessary components to consciousness and "self."

My current opinion is that there is a something to "me" that is unique and ineffable and not amenable to technological transfer, but I don't have any theory or data for that belief. I also suspect that memories will be transferable (eventually) and if you can transfer enough memories into a big system with room to play, you might be able to come up with a construct that will react like the person the memories came from - sort of an "expert system" of Uncle Walt, or whoever. No theory or data for that one either, but it seems like a reasonable(!) extrapolation...
 
 
Atyeo
14:30 / 02.07.04
But if you were copied and were still alive then there would be two of you. Surely you couldn't be experiencing both of their conciousnesses (is that a word?) at once.
 
 
Axolotl
15:26 / 02.07.04
No, you wouldn't be experiencing them both but both consciousnesses (by which I mean consciousness in plural)would be experiencing the same thing. Obviously from the point of creation differences would begin to creep in as experiences impinged upon the self. But at the point of creation they would be the same and therefore from the outside indistinguishable. However the problem comes when lookin from the inside, would the copy experience life the same as the original, i.e you?
I am not expressing myself all that well and we seem to be dealing with teleporting and the transhuman ideas at the same time, so if I make no sense I apologise.
As Izabelle says we are dealing with some pretty major philosophical ideas (that possibly veer into headshop territories) which I am not really equipped to deal with without some research, though the wikipedia has some good stuff on transhumanism.
 
 
Tamayyurt
18:19 / 02.07.04
Like Riker and his Transporter Twin... they were both Rikers at one point, but then as their lives diverged they became different people (sort of).
 
 
TeN
19:29 / 02.07.04
The whole idea of that kind of "immortality" is rather degrading of "the self." Let me explain: if you were run over by a truck today, but seconds previous to that, every particle in your body was copied to make an exact replica of you, who would be exactly similar in every way, "you" would still be dead, right? I mean, the "new you" wouldn't think of it this way - it would be like he had just went to sleep (he would have all of your memories, so would consider himself the "real you"). "You" on the other hand would still be lying face down in a pool of blood on the highway, so of course you'd consider yourself dead (although you probably wouldn't be thinking much at this point). The reason this is degrading to "the self" is that everyone around you (your "copy" included) would not mind much that you were dead, the "new you" would be exactly like you, in every possible way - there would be absolutely no difference whatsoever. "You" are not important to them, only your physical being, personality, memories, etc. - all the things that make up you. This raises some serious questions about identity and individuality - is it wrong to treat the copy as the original? does the "self" really exist, or are we all simply clusters of sense data, which are just as good copied as they are in their original form (like computer programs)? Personally, I think the answer to the second question is yes. As for myself though, as a life form, my first goal is self-preservation - so basically, I'd be the last person to step into a star-trek-esque transporter. (I don't want no "copy-me" taking my girl!)
 
 
odd jest on horn
00:23 / 03.07.04
Random thoughts:

Some very prominent physicists believe in the "Many worlds interpretation" of quantum physics. Essentially, everytime an event happens, the universe splits into many universes. This means that people are continually being copied gazillion of times into other universes, all the time. But there's still only a "you" that is experiencing yourself, right now. I.e. the copy that is thinking this thought, right now, still has a sense of self.

Another:
Let's presume that the process of copying happened relatively slowly. Every millisecond, an army of nanomachines would copy one of the neurons in your head and replace it with a functionally identical cyberneuron. The nanomachines would transmit the info to another army of nanomachines, that would make an identical cyberneuron. The copied neuron would be kept artificially in sync with the other one.

Now, would you argue that the original person was dead after the nanomachines had replaced every single neuron in it's head? No matter how slowly the process happened? At what point would the old persons essence slip away? In relation to this it's interesting to note, that when we learn new things, new connections between neurons are made and old ones severed. Does a persons inner essence change when ze learns a new thing?

Ok, given that the copy has now been steadily building, and the neurons in it have been kept in sync, when the sync is released, do we have two copies of the same person or not? Would gh0d interfere and make the sync release go awry and the copy would die immediately?

And some more:
There are some people that believe that there's a non-copyable process goin on in our mechanical heads. Ie, that consciousness happens at the quantum level. According to contempory physics, copies of quantum processes will not behave in the same way, even when exposed to exactly the same conditions. Consciousness is thus not copyable. In relation to the slow copying, these people would maintain that it was impossible in principle to keep things in sync at all.

And finally:
People who actually die and are revived. If all the active state is lost, and there is nothing left but the neurons' structure, what has become of the person? Is the person who comes back to life a different one?

Are you sure you are the same person that went to sleep last night in your body? Is the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a different essence from the one that inhabited his body before electrotherapy? Where did the new essence come from?
 
 
Jack Denfeld
02:42 / 03.07.04
Are you sure you are the same person that went to sleep last night in your body?
This thought used to scare the living shit out of me when I was a small kid. I don't think I ever came to terms with it as much as I just pushed it aside in my mind.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:27 / 03.07.04
further to odd jest's post, two other things to consider: Every 11 days each cell in your body has been replaced with a copy that's exactly the same except for the telomeres.

Mulltiple personality disorder: Controversial, there's now some doubt as to whether it 'really' exists, but if it did are these completely seperate individuals living in one mind, or just different perceptual filters over the same core self?

Phyrephox As a though experiment imagine if you were transported while asleep 3 inches to the right, with the original you being destroyed as part of the process. When you woke up would there be a difference?

I would argue a very real difference, even if everyone else (and the new version of 'you' if they weren't aware of it) notices. Now it might not matter to me if my best friend/partner/fuck buddy was replaced by an exact duplicate but it would matter to them. And this is what I perceive as the odd thing about a lot of these transhuman theories. As long as there is a 'John Carter' for people to interact with it doesn't seem to matter to John Carter that it's not going to be him they'll be talking to.
 
 
gravitybitch
16:18 / 03.07.04
So what's the difference between being completely replaced over the course of 11 days or in an eye-blink?

(And, if John Carter believes it's still going to be him doing the talking, then of course it won't matter to him that he's been replaced...)
 
 
electricinca
17:17 / 04.07.04
Don't the cells that make up our bodies including the brain slowly die and get replaced anyway. So the scenario of the nanobots replacing the neurons one by one is effectively happening quite naturally.

The brain I have now contains none of the neurons I had a decade ago and yet it contains the same memories that I had of earlier events in my life. Of course we get into another philosphical discussion over whether the memories we have are actually true memories or whether they have been implanted like some Blade Runner replicant.
 
 
gravitybitch
17:48 / 04.07.04
Nerve cells tend not to replicate (although they actually do, contrary to the dogma of a few years ago...)

The figures for turn-over you see so often have to do with replacing molecules - bits of cell membrane get absorbed back into the cell, broken down, rebuilt, recycled. Proteins for signaling turn over very quickly, are continually released, modified, and reabsorbed, while your DNA gets replaced more slowly.

Basically, your whole body is in a state of flux at all levels from the atomic on up. So why is one method of replacement ok, and another seems to give lots of people the willies?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
17:42 / 05.07.04
You can go one better and say that continuity is an illusion; that each moment of human perception is a separate entity, remembering being a string of other entities back to the moment of first consciousness - in other words, there is no "I", just a kind of temporal colony organism arranged in a line through time - assuming, of course, that time itself possesses flow, rather than being a series of timeframe instants differentiated by the amount of entropy in each one.

The copying/transference debate is more interesting to me. David Brin's book Kil'n People proposes a 'standing wave' of human consciousness, which I think is an interesting idea. The point, crudely, is that the body is the hardware, and you need to transfer not just the data but the running programme to a new host if you want to achieve transference. Now, whether you could at the same time copy that standing wave, bifurcating identity, is another thing altogether - some would say, by definition, no.

You don't need neuron-by-neuron replacement to for the thought experiment, either; suppose it were possible to replace damaged brain tissue with bio-neural chips (don't laugh, I know the words are from Star Trek, but they've started grafting neurons to chips and I don't know what else to call it). As neural pathways mapped across the chip, replacing lost ones (not an easy process, most likely) the person would remain who they were, but incorporate a piece of mechanical brain. I suppose that, over time, the entire brain might be replaced in this fashion without the identity being lost, so long as the chip was capable of supporting all funtions of the brain - including any as-yet-unknown quantum properties and so on.

A more rapid intervention might not have time to take on established patterns, so the person would effectively inherit a damaged brain; one without neural connections.

Don't get me on to the business of revival. The possibility that you're not the same person after being re-started gives me the heebies.
 
 
DecayingInsect
11:07 / 06.07.04
According to John Searle "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?" e.g. at

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.comp.html

electronic replacements for neural tissue would not have the same 'causal powers' as the original wetware.

Perhaps, then, if they started replacing your brain with silicon, however gradually, you would eventually feel that your mind was disintegrating. Perhaps no-one but you would even notice your transformation into a souless cyborg.

Is there any way we can rule out this scenario based on current understanding of consciousness? Who will be first up for the implants?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:29 / 07.07.04
But we're now talking about 'replacing', which is different to 'copying', which was where I starting this topic from. Some sort of nano-bactereological machine that replaces a neuron with a silicon replacement in a similar manner to how our bodies do that naturally at the moment is a much more muddled concept than someone copying their brain and then continuing and thinking that if they snuff it they wke up as their replacement. Gives me the willies anyway, like when I read The Meme Machine for the first time...
 
 
Lord Morgue
02:46 / 21.07.04
Depends on whether you see yourself as the meat in your skull, or the system patterns that reside there.
Anyone read Hans Morevec? He pioneered most of the concepts of mind-download into robot bodies, etc.
Well, I asked for a bush robot, they gave me a George W. Bush robot, and now everybody is mad at me. What's an infrastructure?
This reminds me of a short story I read, where a scientist was unspooled down to a single long molecular string, shot into a neutron star, and by some quirk of quantum mechanics, this would knock out an identical string, but composed of all new matter, from a neutron star on the other side of the universe, where some sentient spider-things were waiting to reassemble our adventurous scientist. Problem was, her boyfriend left her, saying she was dead, and the thing that came out the other end was a soulless golem. Oh, and I think he might have snuck a doomsday bomb into her bone marrow, so the spiders bit her head off and defused her, but they built another one of her so everybody was happy, except the original scientist and the first teleport clone, who were both still technically dead, and the boyfriend who I guess had to go back to the singles scene. And the spiders, who she got to admit they would have eaten us if we weren't poisonous to them.
 
 
asan102
05:13 / 22.07.04


I would argue a very real difference, even if everyone else (and the new version of 'you' if they weren't aware of it) notices. Now it might not matter to me if my best friend/partner/fuck buddy was replaced by an exact duplicate but it would matter to them. And this is what I perceive as the odd thing about a lot of these transhuman theories. As long as there is a 'John Carter' for people to interact with it doesn't seem to matter to John Carter that it's not going to be him they'll be talking to.

I too have thought about this in the past, sometimes keeping me awake at night. I think that while a duplicate would certainly be "the same person", it would be different — I guess the best way I can put it is, that person would not be controlled by me. While I realise I'm the way I am because of the chemicals and such in my brain, there's something more than that — something that makes me aware, something that gives me the power to observe, to be an outsider from creation. The very fact that I am aware of myself as an entity tells me that there is something more than just the chemicals. However, I of course don't understand what exactly this "something else" is, so maybe it's of a nature where, if another me was created, "I" would be both of them. Perhaps this explains some of the supposed psychic powers of twins? They aren't quite the same person, but they are close enough that they share part of the same existence.

Are you sure you are the same person that went to sleep last night in your body?

This really, truly scared me. It occurred to me that, when I go to sleep tonight, I might die. The person who wakes up tomorrow is just a genetically and psychological entity that is the same as me, but as soon as my brain shuts down, whatever this "uniqueness" is, is lost.

This may seem stupid, but I was thinking about his and something occurred to me — maybe the whole dreaming process is just a body being re-born? The whole rapid-eye movement and all that — it's just the process of a new "Uniqueness" being applied to the body, and becoming familiar with it? Dreams are your new "Uniqueness" sifting through the filing cabinet of your brain and trying to connect everything in a meaningful way.

Can anyone point out some more reading on this subject? I've become enlightened.
 
 
flufeemunk effluvia
01:21 / 24.07.04
I dont see how my individual "conciousness" could be transferred though...
Unless my current "state" as it were was transferred by means of something else, I could essentially be dead while something else replaces me.

*shuddery*
 
 
Mister Snee
14:47 / 05.08.04
Just to weigh in briefly, a friend of mine smoked a pinch of Salvia Divinorum a few weeks back for the second time in his life, and had an extremely unusual experience. He was a two-dimensional blue tile flying through some otherworldly space, visiting differently coloured tiles. When he came to a certain tile, one that was all black, he realized that his body and his life were there. It was the most interesting tile he'd seen so far so he wasn't sure why but he tried to hold onto it.

To the two of us with him this appeared as him sitting up quite suddenly, reaching out to each of us with one hand saying "guys! guys! Hold onto me! Hold on!!" He was quite worried he would be pulled away and back into space...

But we held tight and then he was not. And he still says he doesn't know where he went when he smoked that Salvia, but he's certain he's still gone. The essence occupying his body now, he says, began as that cruising blue tile that intersected with something interesting and grabbed hold... and that that's who/what he is, really.

Obviously his memories and such are unaffected but he has this feeling of just having a different soul. Some strange psychological deja-vu phenomena started occurring for him some time later for a week or two, then faded.

Is my friend lost in space? :O
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:36 / 06.08.04
Could the stuff he experienced while 'outwith' have just made him a bit porky for the space he was occupying. I've only done acid once but I did have the sensation, exacerbated by sleep, that the I that was experiencing everything was broken down and built anew.

Does he behave differently to before?
 
 
LykeX
20:07 / 11.08.04
And this is what I perceive as the odd thing about a lot of these transhuman theories. As long as there is a 'John Carter' for people to interact with it doesn't seem to matter to John Carter that it's not going to be him they'll be talking to.

I don't see this as odd at all. The thing is, we never really know who anyone else is. We don't really know who we are ourselves besides some vague feeling of "being me". The fact that we are having this discussion proves that we don't.
So, if people don't know who you are essentially, their only option is to relate to you on the basis of the things they can perceive: appearance, actions and expressed thoughts.
Therefore, if something replaced you which looked like you, acted like you and thought like you, how can they possibly say that it isn't you?
In any kind of body snatcher scenario, people always figure it out because the impostor does something strange, acts in a slightly different way, or has some subtle physical difference. Without those changes, how can anyone tell?

This is freaking me out.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:46 / 12.08.04
I can understand other people not knowing or caring if the person they are talking to is the person that started off life or is a copy that the original person made at some point, it's that the person themselves doesn't seem to care too much about that distinction either, especially when it's literally about the difference between life and death and that's what they want to avoid...
 
 
eddie thirteen
04:10 / 15.09.04
I realize this isn't scientific at ALL, but the whole thing about "what if I died in my sleep and someone woke up who thought it was me but it wasn't me because I'm, you know, dead and stuff" made me think of Ruth Montgomery's idea about walk-ins -- basically, enlightened spirits (ghosts or non-human entities) who approach and make deals with people who are, for lack of a better term, slackers...the deal being that the spirit takes over the person's life and identity. It's a gradual, six months to a year process in which the spirit essentially makes a copy of the person's memories and personality, and then -- one day -- you are no longer you. But you have no idea, as the bargain with the possessing entity is forgotten; all anyone around you knows is that you're suddenly way more motivated and altruistic (the entities are invariably positive) than you ever were before, and (in all likelihood) that you also bathe more frequently, smell better and probably in short order no longer live in your parents' basement and you actually have a girlfriend. According to Montgomery, this is a sweet deal for all involved, as the slacker moves into a heavenly state and the possessing entity is eager to work all that groovy life magic you were much too lame to ever contemplate.

However, Ruth Montgomery also believes that Gerald Ford was a walk-in. Which gives me some pause.
 
  
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