Life and Death...

Nova Andromeda · Post by **Nova Andromeda** » 2003-02-11 04:32pm

--I got a problem that I haven't been able to solve yet. Perhaps someone has some insight. The problem is this:

1. I know I exists (that is my mind exists).
2. It seems reasonable that the nature of my mind (i.e., that which makes me ... me) is dependant upon my wetware design (i.e., my brain and how it is built and "configured").
3. It seems reasonable that if I were copied exactly (such as a transporter accident) there would be two of me and not just one (i.e., two minds).
4. If 3 is true then destroying me and making an exact copy of me with different atoms would destroy my mind and create a twin mind with the same properties. Nevertheless, I would be dead and gone.
5. It seems reasonable that if I interupt wetware function for a time and then restart it the mind before interruption is the same as the mind after interuption (i.e., if I instantly froze you then 1 year later instantly unfroze you the mind before and after would be the same."
6. If 5 is true then it shouldn't matter what mechanism is used to "interrupt" wetware function (i.e., destroying someone's brain then recreating it with the same atoms exactly has the same effect as freezing it; the mind before and after interruption is the same).
7. If the above is true then it seems to predict that at best the total exchange of our brains atoms would "kill" us (i.e., one mind would be exchanged for a second copy). This comes from 3 and 4. Of course, we exchange our atoms over 15yrs. IIRC. It also seems like bodily death may not actually be the end. If your brain is recreated in the future with the same atoms you will be "resurrected." This comes from 6. The problem is that these predictions are counter to conventional thought which is that you don't die after 15 yrs. of eating and bodily destruction is permanent death (unless you are religious).

UltraViolence83 · Post by **UltraViolence83** » 2003-02-11 08:26pm

Ugh, don't say wetware...makes you seem like a fucking cyborg. Anyhew, I see any disruption of your consciousness as death. (not sleeping, i mean brain totally STOPS). Anything else is just a copy of you. YOU will be gone, just a shell of you in the form of an exact clone will be preserved. Your family might want this copy around, but deep inside they'd know it's not YOU. I think getting into this any further would degrade into an argument about the concept of a soul.

Nova Andromeda · Post by **Nova Andromeda** » 2003-02-11 08:56pm

UltraViolence83 wrote:Ugh, don't say wetware...makes you seem like a fucking cyborg. Anyhew, I see any disruption of your consciousness as death. (not sleeping, i mean brain totally STOPS). Anything else is just a copy of you. YOU will be gone, just a shell of you in the form of an exact clone will be preserved. Your family might want this copy around, but deep inside they'd know it's not YOU. I think getting into this any further would degrade into an argument about the concept of a soul.

--I don't understand why you believe this to be the case. In deep sleep your higher brain functions are nonexistant. People have been revived from clinical death and they are not considered copies. What if I froze you for only 1 milisecond instead of a year? Basically, the arguement goes like this. If all I've done is change your physical position in time and/or space I have not destroyed you. What difference does it make if that movement is continuous or not? We already know that it isn't really continuous thanks to quantum mechanics, emphasis on the quantum (altought I'm not sure if time is quantized). Who cares if my mind disappears for a state or two or ten trillion and reappears later thanks to the exact same equiptment that created it before.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-02-11 09:01pm

In your analogy, the physical existence of the body as a whole is uninterrupted. In the scenario presented, your body's physical existance ceases.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-11 09:04pm

Yep, it results in the discussion of a soul. Since I'm quite convinced that souls exist (otherwise chaos math and randomness are the sole determiners of my actions, not free will) I personally must conclude that when you go through such an event where you are teleported, your soul detaches from interface with your body and upon reformation your body recieves a new soul. Now, that is to say that "you" black out then wake up somewhere else, either in a new body, completely unaware of previous events, or in the otherworld where your soul exists outside of a body, as one of its own.

But to stay out of philosophy, you cannot say that a precisely exact copy of a person is the person, because the PERSON is the sum total of his functions in his present form, and creating an exact replica does not make the present form and functions any less real. Some say that the pauli exclusion principle makes this a nonissue because when you create the "copy" the original ceases to exist, but this is not true. When you make the copy, youre just forcing the original out of its current state. CHANGE does not equal ELIMINATION. The atoms in your body arent the ones you were born with, and wont be the ones you die with, but you are still you, as a sum of memory and personality, not as a sum of physical objects. A copy is just a copy, the original remains.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-02-11 09:17pm

The physical body, or rather physical brain, is a structure based on experiences. The very structure of the brain is what holds the memories, if you were transfered to a computer, your consciousness would continue to function. Though with modern tech it would be nearly impossible to do either of these things. Any neural connection to a computer would be light input/output, nothing extreme like actual memories, just data. To truly do a "brain transfer" a computer would have to be able to "read" the very atomic and neural connections in your brain. And to make a wetware copy would require a specific layout.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-11 09:25pm

Nova Andromeda wrote:
--I don't understand why you believe this to be the case. In deep sleep your higher brain functions are nonexistant. People have been revived from clinical death and they are not considered copies. What if I froze you for only 1 milisecond instead of a year? Basically, the arguement goes like this. If all I've done is change your physical position in time and/or space I have not destroyed you. What difference does it make if that movement is continuous or not? We already know that it isn't really continuous thanks to quantum mechanics, emphasis on the quantum (altought I'm not sure if time is quantized). Who cares if my mind disappears for a state or two or ten trillion and reappears later thanks to the exact same equiptment that created it before.

Pure science:

You are not the result of your physicality but of uninterrupted brain functions. When you are revived from total deepfreeze, "you" DO wake up as if nothings happened, but "you" ceased to exist the moment you were frozen. The same as if on a harddrive all the data was erased from a harddrive then put back on in the exact same manner as before: The patterns are there, and the data is uninterrupted, but THAT arrangement of bits ceased to exist the moment it was erased.

I often thing about that when I think about the question of consciousness and death: Where do we go when we die? I would respond, the same place a file goes when its deleted from a computer (no not the recycle bin

). Pure science demands that you are nothing more then a pattern, and that when you cease to be, you simply CEASE TO BE. You dont experience anything because you dont exist anymore.

Personally I find this quite disturbing.

But when talking about souls and proof, its like trying to proof to a virtual pet that it isnt real: You cant because its pure digital and doest exist anywhere but in the computers calculations. Trying to prove to it that theres a physical world is impossible.

So for your argument, you cease to be because you are the present state of the brain, not the pattern itself.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-11 09:29pm

Syntax, yes a computer would need to be able to read every little neural function in the brain at any given moment, but theres more, theres quantum shit that makes even the most rigid electrochemical computations into non-rigid things. Its even been theorised that various reactions that DEMAND quantum interactions are the "site of consciousness" in that our entire free will non computerism is quantum randomosity. (this makes me somewhat unnerved, because that means my actions are based on random occurances with a few bits of predestination). But thats not to say that I'm not the conscious being and you're not a preprogrammed robot.

Nova Andromeda · Post by **Nova Andromeda** » 2003-02-11 10:06pm

--Okay there are several things that were brought up that I wish to deal with.

1. How the problem I outline relates to the idea of a soul.
2. Can a mind exist in only one instance in time.
3. The nature of the mind.
4. How a mind could be transferred to a computer.

1. From what I can tell one's mind can be explained without a soul that is separate from the physical body. It is from this viewpoint that the problem is set. Your mind is simply a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. that are stored in the large neural network known as your brain.
2. Your mind cannot exist in only one instant in time. Your mind needs all four dimensions to exist. It is like velocity. You cannot have velocity without having time. Likewise, you cannot have a thought, a feeling, etc. without time since the processes in your brain that result in those things require the time dimension. It would be like saying that someone's mind existed when they were frozen solid.
3. One's mind is the result of an operating brain. This can be shown by various types of damage that has been done to the human brain and the effect it has on a person. So what is a brain exactly? Simply put it is a complex neural network. Those things we call feelings such as pain, love, hate, etc. are rules used to align the neural network. As an aside, if I give the neural network input A and I want output B I have to train it. When the neural network outputs B in response input A I say good network (that would be pleasure). The network then keeps the current configuration. If it outputs C (and I don't like C) I say bad network (that would be pain). In this case the network tries a new configuration. So basically, your brain has evolved with certain rules to align it such that when it receives input A it outputs B such that B leads success in the real world.
4. In order to transfer one's mind to a computer, you would have to recreate the appropriate brain's neural network. This would be no simple task and it would not just be a matter of copying memories to a harddrive. A neural network functions in a radically different way than a computer.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-02-11 11:01pm

LIFE...AND DEATH. THE SAME.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-02-11 11:21pm

You don't know anything. There's a flaw with the "I think, therefore I am" thing; you don't know you're thinking.

UltraViolence83 · Post by **UltraViolence83** » 2003-02-12 12:50am

Yet again I have been proven to screw up.

I don't understand 99% of it, but chaos math/theory is cool as hell. Making a copy of your consciousness and deleting the original would kill you. If I lived in a strange future world, and was horribly injured beyond repair, I'd rather have my brain hooked up to a robot body than upload my consciousness into a computer. My thoughts are if you're not in your brain, then you're dead, my friend.