Immortality

[VarrusTheEthical]

To be honest, I bring up the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle because it is the main thing that pops in my mind when I try to think of a potentially insurmountable barrier to mind uploading. That, I concede, does assume that uploading requires atomic level detailing of the brain. I however, reserve to right to be skeptical of mind uploading.

Which isn't to say that I have a great moral objection to mind uploading. The main issue that I would have with uploading my mind to a machine is: Would that really be me? Or, would it a completely separate being who just happens to have my experiences loaded into it's memory? I'm inclined to suspect the latter rather than the former, especially if the upload process in not lethal. If that is the case, the next question would be: what rights would this new being who has by memories be entitled to?

Now if you're like me, and believe that you have a soul, then you would have to find a way to reconcile that with uploading. If mind uploads are possible and I was inclined to believe that it was "me" that was being uploaded, then I would assume that my "soul", as I understand it, would transferred to the machine. If what is in the machine turns out to be separate being or person, I would be inclined to believe that new "soul" was created, and my soul is still in my physical body.

Or I would just screen "Heresy!" and break out the sledgehammer, that works too.

[Batman]

Why would anybody in their right mind want to be immortal? Am I the only one here who saw 'Highlander'?

[Narkis]

Because, presumably, immortality in the real world wouldn't include angry medieval dudes hunting you to cut your head off?

[Batman]

I was referring to the 'everybody you love dieing of old age' aspect, actually.
Of course, that would be mitigated by immortality being widespread and easily available-at which point we run into the problems of a society where, by and large, nobody ever dies of old age...but new people keep being born regardless. I'm sure you can figure out the problem.

[Number Theoretic]

The main issue that I would have with uploading my mind to a machine is: Would that really be me? Or, would it a completely separate being who just happens to have my experiences loaded into it's memory? I'm inclined to suspect the latter rather than the former, especially if the upload process in not lethal. If that is the case, the next question would be: what rights would this new being who has by memories be entitled to?

This is exactly my main objection to mind uploading. However, it seems to strongly depend on the exact technology used in this process.
IIRC there are three main "flavors" of mind uploading:

1) "Destructive" mind uploading: Your brain will be cut in very thin slices, each one will be scanned in very high resolution. The data will then be used to reconstruct an exact functional copy of you in silicon logic or in a virtual environment.

2) "Nondestructive" mind uploading: Imagine an MRI scanner on steroids, capable of capturing your entire physical brain state. You will continue to exist after the scanning, however there will be a copy of you, which brings us to the Army of Shrooms.

3) "Upload by successive functional replacement". Over a moderately long period of time, parts and regions of your brain will be replaced by synthethic components which exactly mimic the functionality of the organic parts they replace. Possibly the brain needs a minimal time to recognise and integrate the new parts, but don't nail me down on this one, my knowledge here is limited.

Now if you're like me, and believe that you have a soul, then you would have to find a way to reconcile that with uploading. If mind uploads are possible and I was inclined to believe that it was "me" that was being uploaded, then I would assume that my "soul", as I understand it, would transferred to the machine. If what is in the machine turns out to be separate being or person, I would be inclined to believe that new "soul" was created, and my soul is still in my physical body.

I also agree with you on this one. In context of the three mind uploading flavors described above, i'd say the only method able to retain our soul is method 3, because it retains our "consciousness continuity": Neither do we die in the process, nor will there be a creepy copy of us created, while we stay in the old body.

[VarrusTheEthical]

I was referring to the 'everybody you love dieing of old age' aspect, actually.
Of course, that would be mitigated by immortality being widespread and easily available-at which point we run into the problems of a society where, by and large, nobody ever dies of old age...but new people keep being born regardless. I'm sure you can figure out the problem.

How about you keep the immortality magitech to yourself and become a good old-fashioned demi-god. You can say things like "Bow before you new god!" or "Fear my power!" or other cliched villain lines. You can't forget the empowerment fantasy side of immortality.

[VarrusTheEthical]

@ Youngling

Though I'm hardly an expert in this field, one issue I could see with #3 is that instead of the person's brain gradually adapting, they are instead gradually overwritten as the artificial parts replace the organic brain. So you're essentially formatting your mind and being replaced by an AI construct. Of course, the question of what happens to the soul in all this is philosophical, since I doubt souls are ever going to be scientifically proven.

[Number Theoretic]

I'm no expert either but i suspect that whether functional parts are overwritten or integrated into the neural correlates of consciousness depends on the "granularity" of the replacements. For example neurons are constantly generated and die constantly (maybe on a low rate, but nevertheless) and we don't even notice. The new nerons are adapted by the brain's processes on the fly.
Now beginning the replacement process on a cellular level (featuring "artificial neurons") could work but we are not even close to anything that even remotely resembles such an "artificial neuron" that could work as a replacement for a real neuron in the brain. Also this process can be painstakingly slow if we just wait for neurons to die and then replace them. So the machinery must be able to gradually grow in place, mimicing the structures it seeks to replace. Finding the right tradeoff between granularity and replacement speed is as much science fiction as the idea of nanomachines replacing the neural wetware of the brain but i think it would be crucial to retain a person's consciousness in the process.

[ThomasP]

Consciousness is only an illusion of continuity in the first place, and a big part of that is the cultural belief that we have discrete, eternal souls. Once you get past the dualism and realize that consciousness is entirely a product of neurological activity, it's easier to see that what we think of as a continuous existence is nothing but a bunch of snapshots woven together into a very convincing hallucination of self.

Immortals would adapt. We may find them very strange and alien after vastly extended lifetimes, but they would adapt. Trying to parse the thoughts and experiences of such a being from our context is impossible, almost by definition.

[VarrusTheEthical]

Now beginning the replacement process on a cellular level (featuring "artificial neurons") could work but we are not even close to anything that even remotely resembles such an "artificial neuron" that could work as a replacement for a real neuron in the brain. Also this process can be painstakingly slow if we just wait for neurons to die and then replace them. So the machinery must be able to gradually grow in place, mimicing the structures it seeks to replace. Finding the right tradeoff between granularity and replacement speed is as much science fiction as the idea of nanomachines replacing the neural wetware of the brain but i think it would be crucial to retain a person's consciousness in the process.

Actually, I think that whatever way you go about it, the most important thing is to recognize the personhood of the being that results from the upload. Remember that in the end we are dealing with an intelligent and self aware being, even if that being may not in fact be a continuation of the "original" consciousness. It's not unlike the responsibility a parent takes when they bring a child into the world. The obvious difference is that this particular "child" would have access to lifetime of experience to draw upon the moment it is "born".



P.S. Sorry for using you title instead of your name, Theoretic. Don't know what I was doing.

[Dr Roberts]

I was referring to the 'everybody you love dieing of old age' aspect, actually.
Of course, that would be mitigated by immortality being widespread and easily available-at which point we run into the problems of a society where, by and large, nobody ever dies of old age...but new people keep being born regardless. I'm sure you can figure out the problem.

But that problem would hopefully inspire the age of Expansion in to space and under sea or make you need government permission to have a child and it would be done in the lab to ensure the most perfect child possible with of course different aspects to appearance.

[SpaceMarine93]

The problem with brain uploading is are you actually transferring your ORIGINAL mind into a machine or are you just making a COPY of your mind? Its disturbing that everyone seems to be so comfortable with having back up copies of your mind, because well, if you die, it would be your original mind which had died and ceased to exist, whereas a copy of your mind would be started up and continue where you left off thinking it is you, and no one could tell the difference. You would still fail your original objective of immortality via brain uploading since your original self would be dead.

If you have to do copying and uploading as a means of immortality you would have to copy every detail of the person's mind or body down to the QUANTUM level, since only at that would it be considered to be original. If you can't do that then brain uploading wouldn't work as a means to immortality.

And remember - a brain works by making new connections every time you think. If you put your mind into a machine which can't do that, could your mind still think properly?

If brain uploading is only about making copies and not about preserving the original, I for one opt to use nanotechnology to transform my brain into a machine computation counterpart that acts like a human mind (perhaps a thousand times better), molecules at a time, so its your original mind being sustain all the way through.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with brain uploading is are you actually transferring your ORIGINAL mind into a machine or are you just making a COPY of your mind? Its disturbing that everyone seems to be so comfortable with having back up copies of your mind, because well, if you die, it would be your original mind which had died and ceased to exist, whereas a copy of your mind would be started up and continue where you left off thinking it is you, and no one could tell the difference. You would still fail your original objective of immortality via brain uploading since your original self would be dead.

Citation needed.

What definition of "I" are you using, for which when I am uploaded, "I" die and "pseudo-I" replaces me?

[Guardsman Bass]

The problem with brain uploading is are you actually transferring your ORIGINAL mind into a machine or are you just making a COPY of your mind? Its disturbing that everyone seems to be so comfortable with having back up copies of your mind, because well, if you die, it would be your original mind which had died and ceased to exist, whereas a copy of your mind would be started up and continue where you left off thinking it is you, and no one could tell the difference. You would still fail your original objective of immortality via brain uploading since your original self would be dead.

Citation needed.

What definition of "I" are you using, for which when I am uploaded, "I" die and "pseudo-I" replaces me?

Why does he need a citation? He's just making the point that a copy of your mind being simulated on a computer is a different consciousness than the one that is running in your organic brain, so if the biological "you" dies, the original "you" is dead and gone.

[NoXion]

Wouldn't immortal souls make the process of uploading even easier? Detach soul from brain. Copy any information not stored in soul. Attach soul to new substrate. Upload complete.

[Number Theoretic]

Wouldn't immortal souls make the process of uploading even easier? Detach soul from brain. Copy any information not stored in soul. Attach soul to new substrate. Upload complete.

This requires the technical ability to extract the soul from the brain and to reattach it to the newly uploaded one. Could be difficult, especially if it turns out that it is impossible to reattach a soul back to a brain, even if it is almost identical to the one from which it was detached in the first place.

[ThomasP]

Citation needed.

What definition of "I" are you using, for which when I am uploaded, "I" die and "pseudo-I" replaces me?

Why does he need a citation? He's just making the point that a copy of your mind being simulated on a computer is a different consciousness than the one that is running in your organic brain, so if the biological "you" dies, the original "you" is dead and gone.

The you that is running in your brain now is different than the you that was in your brain 10 years ago.

That you is dead and gone -- and yet this constant turnover doesn't really bother anyone. The intuitive notions of "original" and "different" don't apply so readily to consciousness, which by definition isn't a continuous, unchanging "thing". It only feels like it, and the feeling itself is part of the magic trick.

[Number Theoretic]

That you is dead and gone -- and yet this constant turnover doesn't really bother anyone. The intuitive notions of "original" and "different" don't apply so readily to consciousness, which by definition isn't a continuous, unchanging "thing". It only feels like it, and the feeling itself is part of the magic trick.

Yes, but it is exactly this illusion or magic trick that counts. Dying and getting my brain sliced in order to get a copy of me ressurected in a computer or robot body sounds to me like a drastic breaking of this illusion. It's the process that matters. If you break it, that person ceases to exist and you can't transfer it just by looking at it with a scanner and making a replica of it. At least as far as i understand it.

[Guardsman Bass]

Citation needed.

What definition of "I" are you using, for which when I am uploaded, "I" die and "pseudo-I" replaces me?

Why does he need a citation? He's just making the point that a copy of your mind being simulated on a computer is a different consciousness than the one that is running in your organic brain, so if the biological "you" dies, the original "you" is dead and gone.

The you that is running in your brain now is different than the you that was in your brain 10 years ago.

That you is dead and gone -- and yet this constant turnover doesn't really bother anyone. The intuitive notions of "original" and "different" don't apply so readily to consciousness, which by definition isn't a continuous, unchanging "thing". It only feels like it, and the feeling itself is part of the magic trick.

The difference is that there's a sense of continuity with my prior mind from ten years ago, even if it's simply an illusion when you look deeper into the brain. A electronic copy of my mind, on the other hand, is not part of that continuous process - it's an entirely separate entity, experiencing separate events in the same way that identical twins might start out almost genetically identical (but then differentiate based off of different experience).

[ThomasP]

Yes, but it is exactly this illusion or magic trick that counts. Dying and getting my brain sliced in order to get a copy of me ressurected in a computer or robot body sounds to me like a drastic breaking of this illusion. It's the process that matters. If you break it, that person ceases to exist and you can't transfer it just by looking at it with a scanner and making a replica of it. At least as far as i understand it.

I think people are too attached to the idea that consciousness is a rock-hard thing, like you can dig into the brain and find a "Self Module". But by all indications, there is no such thing. The "self" that feels like a unitary being is actually woven out of neural modules working in networks, and a layered hierarchy of those networks. "You" is nothing more than the integration of sensory processing and motor-control that took one extra step and created a narrative of continuity and connectedness.

There's actually quite a depth of philosophical writings on this subject, stretching back to David Hume's bundle theory. More recent treatments include Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons, Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop, and most recently Julian Baggini's The Ego Trick, all of which are highly recommended for a deeper treatment of this thought experiment.

The cliff's notes summary is that self is a functional, rather than biological, classification. Parfit argues that people survive all manner of changes in brain and body, emerging as effectively different people, but we still consider them the same "person". Memory, which we cling to as a source of continuity, is fallible -- itself a product of the brain's storytelling -- and is not enough by itself to fix identity. Likewise the physical brain is enough to create our sense of psychological unity but, again, is not enough by itself to completely define identity. Our bodies and social roles and the people around us and memory and everything else all goes into this job of defining "person".

The problem is that we're loose with our definitions of identity. We (meaning us as a culture) tend to get hung up on the quantitative aspect of identity, which is the replication of every last property of an object. But identity also has a qualitative aspect, in which exchanging two functionally identical objects makes no difference to the outcome. Intuitively, we gravitate to the quantitative notion; part of this is the brain's wiring, and part of it is because we're brought up in a culture that treats self as fixed, unchanging, and eternal -- but that kind of "sameness" is only useful for a reasonably stable object, which your sense of self is clearly not.

In Parfit's thinking, there is no simple answer to the mind-transfer problem until you can define what matters to the person asking the question. What property of sameness matters to you? Is it your biological cells, the atoms that make up your body? Or is it your memories, your internal experience of reality, the unique motor and sensory processing that, in aggregate, creates your sense of self? Is it the connections to people and places and social roles? For most of us, it's the inner life and connectedness that "matters".

Baggini says that this leads to two separate questions: the logical question of "is it me?" (the question that Parfit says doesn't really matter, as the "what matters" part of the question isn't every last quantitative property of our identity), and then the question of existence, the elements that matter about our sense of unity and connectedness. The entire notion of sameness doesn't make sense as self is, by definition, a process of on-going change; we retain a sense of selfhood over time, but this is not identical to sameness.

We wind up with a concept of "pragmatic identity", where personhood is by necessity an ill-defined notion. Practically speaking, we can usually point at a person and say "that's Dave", but we may encounter scenarios, such as extremely long life as one example, or uploading as another, where there is no simple right or wrong answer.

Personally speaking, I want the Thing Behind My Eyes to last as long as it can, but in saying that, I've come to realize that said Thing is a construct and that, no matter what I do, I won't be the same Thing in 10 years, just as I'm not what I was 10 years ago.

Throwing curveballs like flash-scan uploading and gradual replacement and whatever else runs counter to our intuitions, as we aren't used to those ideas in the same way we accept change over time, but I'm no longer entirely convinced that such changes are inherently bad, nor that they "destroy" the person. It's not about preserving biological continuity per se, but whether or not the process in question maintains "what matters" to us about our identities.

[Simon_Jester]

Why does he need a citation? He's just making the point that a copy of your mind being simulated on a computer is a different consciousness than the one that is running in your organic brain, so if the biological "you" dies, the original "you" is dead and gone.

That strikes me as a philosophical claim in need of justification. It sure sounds like our friend with the Indrick Boreale avatar considers this to be very significant, which implies a definition of "I" for which being copied is not a way to survive.

SM93, what do you think Star Trek transporters do- are they lethal or nonlethal?

Wouldn't immortal souls make the process of uploading even easier? Detach soul from brain. Copy any information not stored in soul. Attach soul to new substrate. Upload complete.

This requires the technical ability to extract the soul from the brain and to reattach it to the newly uploaded one. Could be difficult, especially if it turns out that it is impossible to reattach a soul back to a brain, even if it is almost identical to the one from which it was detached in the first place.

What if it migrates automatically?

Clearly, if I have a soul, it remains somehow "attached" to me even when I walk around in the world. It must have some way of staying attached. Why wouldn't it stay attached if my consciousness moves from one body to another?

[Skgoa]

If you have to do copying and uploading as a means of immortality you would have to copy every detail of the person's mind or body down to the QUANTUM level, since only at that would it be considered to be original. If you can't do that then brain uploading wouldn't work as a means to immortality.

And remember - a brain works by making new connections every time you think. If you put your mind into a machine which can't do that, could your mind still think properly?

No. Getting into the specifics of why you are wrong would entail freshing up my knowledge of connectionist AI. Since all connectionists are smelly nerds, I am going to leave you with this: you don't have the faintest idea about how neural networks work.



What I have been expecting for a while now, is that we will make more and more progress in the effort to hook implants into the brain. Simple prototypes are in existence, but the human brain is still a bit to complex to handle. I expect we will have implants that let like a built-in headphone, letting hear music, speech, etc., in perfect quality and maybe even give the ability to cancel ouutside noise. Think about it. The next step is same with visual input. And if we intercept the organic visual information from the eyes, we can even manipulate that to get augmented reality. Any surface could be a display. Planning to get new furniture? Download the IKEA app to see how it would look in situ. Feeling stressed? Just one thought and you are at a beautiful beach. The possibilities are endless. After that, the other senses would be pretty trivial. The ability to cancel bad smells would come in very handy. Of course, at that level of capability, hooking everyone up to a global BRAIN!wifi will follow closely. And once we figure out how to encode human memory into computer hardware, it would be just like in Matrix: all knowledge can be downloaded directly into your memory. I fully expect that service to be free. Universities and governments have a vested interest in making as much knowledge available to the general public as possible. And of course, this would at some point result in effectively having "save points" for your life. Whatever happens, at worst you loose all memories since the last backup.
But take a moment to ponder what that would mean for the people living with that technology. School doesn't need to be such a dull waste of time anymore. Instead, children would primaryly be trained in soft skills and a more intangible understanding of issues (and how to evaluate them) instead of just knowing facts. If BRAIN!siri can find any information for you and help you with anything you are unfamiliar with, so you can get on with the important stuff.
And just think about the games! How could anything get more immersive than "real" human peception? (Also: cyber sex got a lot more fun and casual sex got a lot less risky.) Or what if you are depressed and need someone to talk to? Someone who will never ever judge you and who will keep everything secret? Someone who will know when to make the right sounds and when to shut up and listen?
And one more thing, augmented reality works both ways. If I live to see all that being realized, I am going to get rich by selling a very simple app: BRAIN!AdBlock. Imagine a world without Glenn Beck. Choose the reality you want to live in! Just $599.99! (Offer void in Nebraska)

[VarrusTheEthical]

What if it migrates automatically?

Clearly, if I have a soul, it remains somehow "attached" to me even when I walk around in the world. It must have some way of staying attached. Why wouldn't it stay attached if my consciousness moves from one body to another?

As state before, it would depend on the nature of the upload. If the consciousness is indeed transferred, then the soul likely tagged along. If the the upload is a copy instead, that I would assume that a new soul is created, as the copy is essentially a new person.

[Shroom Man 777]

What if you made multiple identical uploads with exact perfect consciousnesses in them? Would your soul be split into that number of uploads, thus diminishing the vitality of each individual soul fragment involved in the ritual of transference, thus causing the manifested multiple physical beings to start degrade and like turn into snake-looking people, whose immortality hocus-pocus gets defeated all the time by some snotty-nosed brat with a lightning scar on his dorky forehead? Would horcruxes come with a sturgeon-general's warning?

But yes, multiple identical copies and souls. If we go with the World War Me idea I postulated previously, would my soul be suffering from some kind of existential spiritual schizophrenia due to being divided to multiple beings? Are souls like sea sponges, wherein if you cut them into two or three or four bits, they'll all grow into two or three or four separate organisms? It may be possible, seeing as souls do not have physical spinal cords and could be more closely related to invertebrates and mollusks and annelids rather than vertebrates and mammals with more limited regenerative capabilities.

[NoXion]

What if you made multiple identical uploads with exact perfect consciousnesses in them? Would your soul be split into that number of uploads, thus diminishing the vitality of each individual soul fragment involved in the ritual of transference, thus causing the manifested multiple physical beings to start degrade and like turn into snake-looking people, whose immortality hocus-pocus gets defeated all the time by some snotty-nosed brat with a lightning scar on his dorky forehead? Would horcruxes come with a sturgeon-general's warning?

But yes, multiple identical copies and souls. If we go with the World War Me idea I postulated previously, would my soul be suffering from some kind of existential spiritual schizophrenia due to being divided to multiple beings? Are souls like sea sponges, wherein if you cut them into two or three or four bits, they'll all grow into two or three or four separate organisms? It may be possible, seeing as souls do not have physical spinal cords and could be more closely related to invertebrates and mollusks and annelids rather than vertebrates and mammals with more limited regenerative capabilities.

I think it would be a good idea to establish the existence of the soul before asking such questions. I strongly suspect that like most of our intuitions about the universe, our conceptions of a soul will come nowhere near the truth of the matter. I thought it worth pointing out that the possibility of souls per se doesn't present a problem for uploading.

I've yet to come across a religious objection to transhumanism that doesn't amount to some form of "we shouldn't play God". My answer to that is, "why the hell shouldn't we?" God has clearly fucked up the job, and it's pretty damn clear he ain't interested in providing any real help cleaning up this glorious mess of a universe.