Author Topic: Let me............... Tel-e-port you!  (Read 85109 times)

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Offline BloodEagle

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
The word 'fork' is being used way too much in this thread.  :P

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
So here's the real question, then...if You #1 and You #2 get wasted and wind up "experimenting," does it just count as masturbation? :p

The word 'fork' is being used way too much in this thread.  :P

Nah, man, you're just forking yourself!

 

Offline Ford Prefect

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
[buddhist]There isn't even one "you," never mind multiple yous.[/buddhist]
"Mais est-ce qu'il ne vient jamais à l'idée de ces gens-là que je peux être 'artificiel' par nature?"  --Maurice Ravel

 

Offline Kosh

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Right. While forking is not particularly hard to understand from a biological or physical standpoint, the legal and social implications are mad!

(Which is probably why so many people find it so counterintuitive.)

And The_E's right, even if your last fork is from, say, a day or a month before your accident, the backup will still be 'you'...as much as the person you were a day or a month ago is you.

Instead of forking is there some way to effect a total transfer?
"The reason for this is that the original Fortran got so convoluted and extensive (10's of millions of lines of code) that no-one can actually figure out how it works, there's a massive project going on to decode the original Fortran and write a more modern system, but until then, the UK communication network is actually relying heavily on 35 year old Fortran that nobody understands." - Flipside

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Offline The E

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Depends on the recording technique being used. There are theoretical models that rely on the meat brain being replaced neuron by neuron with microprocessor equivalents.

But, once you have a process of converting a human mind into digital information, copying it is a trivial exercise. Downloading that information into a body is only marginally more complex than uploading it, so sooner or later, someone is going to take the Agent Smith approach to manpower requirements.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
But, once you have a process of converting a human mind into digital information, copying it is a trivial exercise. Downloading that information into a body is only marginally more complex than uploading it, so sooner or later, someone is going to take the Agent Smith approach to manpower requirements.
Oh goody, that's just what we need. :p

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Right. While forking is not particularly hard to understand from a biological or physical standpoint, the legal and social implications are mad!

(Which is probably why so many people find it so counterintuitive.)

And The_E's right, even if your last fork is from, say, a day or a month before your accident, the backup will still be 'you'...as much as the person you were a day or a month ago is you.

Instead of forking is there some way to effect a total transfer?

Huh? What's the difference? Each 'fork' is complete. You could kill one of the forks and call it a 'total transfer', but what's the point? There's not actually anything more being moved...

It sounds like you're still missing something.

And yeah, The_E is correct.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
An easy way to untangle your misunderstanding is to say 'the copy is now BoB1', and the 'old you body' becomes BoB2, in the same way that 'you five years ago' is no longer TrashMan.

Which is where you are wrong. Bob1 does not become Bob2. Bob1 is Bob1 and Remaion Bob1 regardless of how many Bobs are out there.
Do you just assume that your concicness jumps into another body? But how can that be if two or more active bodeis exist at the same time? Each Bob has his own experience and regards himself as "self". Bob 1 isn't suddenly aware of what bob2 is doing or seeing.  Each Bob looks at things trough his own eyes.
When Bob1 dies, he doesn't suddenly switch to look trough Bob2's eyes. He's done. Done for. Gone.

Bob2 might be perfectly healthy and happy, but Bob2's essence of self is not Bob1's essence of self. You can't have 2 different point of views that are the same point of view.

I really don't know to put it any simpler. It doesn't matter how perfect a copy the other me is. There is only ONE sense of "self" one has. Why should I care that the other me is still alvie and kicking? MY life experience has ended. *I* am dead. The other me is a seperate entity.

It really cannot be any simpler than this.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2009, 02:59:59 am by TrashMan »
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
All of which is irrevelant to Battuta's points.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
And all of Buttas points are irrelevant to that.
Your POV doesn't change.
Nobody dies as a virgin - the life ****s us all!

You're a wrongularity from which no right can escape!

 

Offline asyikarea51

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
This huge debate which I can barely understand just makes me want to re-watch that film where Jet Li fights himself.

Or the "governator" in the film about Saturday in the week... "OMGWTF FAKE!"... then comes the DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNN moment with that eye thing, :wtf:... "OMGWTF I'M THE FAKE?!?"

One of those 99.99%-chance-of-not-happening-situations-in-the-real-world when the truth in front of you is actually worse than any horror flick experienced before... total mind#@$% :doubt:
Inferno plz
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Offline Kosh

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Quote
Huh? What's the difference? Each 'fork' is complete.


I'd rather not have the original Kosh destroyed or allowed to die. I'm perfectly ok with making copies of myself but the original needs to go on somehow otherwise it is not true immortality. Even if Kosh1, Kosh2,.....,Koshn continue, me, Kosh prime, is still stuck in a meat based mind which is not something I find comforting. Personally I'd prefer moving to forking.
"The reason for this is that the original Fortran got so convoluted and extensive (10's of millions of lines of code) that no-one can actually figure out how it works, there's a massive project going on to decode the original Fortran and write a more modern system, but until then, the UK communication network is actually relying heavily on 35 year old Fortran that nobody understands." - Flipside

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Offline TrashMan

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Not even teleportation helps here really.

Teleportation destroys the original. The one who teleported dies. For him, the whole deal SUCKS.
Sure, the copy won't notice...the other won't notice. But the original will. And if the original is you, than that's the only thing that really matters.
Nobody dies as a virgin - the life ****s us all!

You're a wrongularity from which no right can escape!

 

Offline Turambar

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Not even teleportation helps here really.

Teleportation destroys the original. The one who teleported dies. For him, the whole deal SUCKS.
Sure, the copy won't notice...the other won't notice. But the original will. And if the original is you, than that's the only thing that really matters.

Yeah but the copy is "you" too, and from "your" perspective everything went great.  In this case, the copy isn't any less "you" than the original "you"
10:55:48   TurambarBlade: i've been selecting my generals based on how much i like their hats
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
But only the perspective of the one you who is You is important. What happens from the perspective of ANYONE else is irrelevenat.

If you are Bob1, then only what you see, feel and experience is important. When you die, you don't see, feel or experience what Bob2, or 3 or 57 does.
Each Bob copy is a SEPARATE ENTITY.
Nobody dies as a virgin - the life ****s us all!

You're a wrongularity from which no right can escape!

 

Offline übermetroid

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
What if you fork, play around for a bit (explore, fight wars, go to school, ect...) and the recombine? 

What happens to your entity then?  I think of it like I am opening more tabs on my web browser and each one is gathering information.  Each tab is a new fork, and when the information is gathered (web page loaded), the fork is combined with the masses.

And you know acelerando is free, right?    Good read.  Glass house cost money, but it is good too.
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

  

Offline Topgun

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
My take on this is that we don't exist as our brain matter, instead we are the processes that occur in our brain. so, yes, I believe we can upload our minds into a robot or something. whether or not we get "forked", I don't know, but I think that we would only exist in one of the bodies, while the other body will be brain dead.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Not even teleportation helps here really.

Teleportation destroys the original. The one who teleported dies. For him, the whole deal SUCKS.
Sure, the copy won't notice...the other won't notice. But the original will. And if the original is you, than that's the only thing that really matters.

Nope, there's no reason teleportation has to destroy the original.

And you undergo teleportation hundreds of times throughout your life. The material that makes up your body now is not the same as the original one. By your argument, you've been destroyed!

But only the perspective of the one you who is You is important. What happens from the perspective of ANYONE else is irrelevenat.

If you are Bob1, then only what you see, feel and experience is important. When you die, you don't see, feel or experience what Bob2, or 3 or 57 does.
Each Bob copy is a SEPARATE ENTITY.

Sure, but ALL OF THEM ARE YOU. How do you know that 'you' won't end up being Bob2? Or Bob3? Or Bob57? Oh wait, you will! You'll be ALL OF THEM!

An easy way to untangle your misunderstanding is to say 'the copy is now BoB1', and the 'old you body' becomes BoB2, in the same way that 'you five years ago' is no longer TrashMan.

Which is where you are wrong. Bob1 does not become Bob2. Bob1 is Bob1 and Remaion Bob1 regardless of how many Bobs are out there.
Do you just assume that your concicness jumps into another body? But how can that be if two or more active bodeis exist at the same time? Each Bob has his own experience and regards himself as "self". Bob 1 isn't suddenly aware of what bob2 is doing or seeing.  Each Bob looks at things trough his own eyes.
When Bob1 dies, he doesn't suddenly switch to look trough Bob2's eyes. He's done. Done for. Gone.

Bob2 might be perfectly healthy and happy, but Bob2's essence of self is not Bob1's essence of self. You can't have 2 different point of views that are the same point of view.

I really don't know to put it any simpler. It doesn't matter how perfect a copy the other me is. There is only ONE sense of "self" one has. Why should I care that the other me is still alvie and kicking? MY life experience has ended. *I* am dead. The other me is a seperate entity.

It really cannot be any simpler than this.

Look, mate, this is pretty ****ing elementary. Go back and read the example I posted with the 'backup brain'. (I take it you didn't.)

The easy thing you're missing is that it's just as true that YOUR EXPERIENCE CONTINUES, and the other you, the copy, died. That's true no matter whether Bob1 or Bob2 dies. Because they're EQUALLY VALID YOU.

You're acting as if something precious and irreplaceable stays with the Original You. But your question has already been answered in the simplest ****ing way possible. Just look at it from TrashMan2's POV. "I'm alive, I'm alive...okay, the copying just happened...hey, look, there's my copy! I guess that's the original body, but I'm the real TrashMan. Oh, ****, he died! But it doesn't matter, I'm still alive."

He's you! You wouldn't get all worried if the copy died every time and the original persisted, would you? Yet the two are ****ing indistinguishable! When the copy dies, that's you dying? And he doesn't care that you're still alive in your head, because he's dead! His life is over!

But I'm going to bet you're not worried, after all, because it's only the copy. But to the copy, the copy is you, and you're the damn copy!

One of you is going to die and end forever, yes. Completely true. But you're falling into the trap of assuming that that's always going to be you - because, while it's always going to be you, it's also going to always be not you.

This is a true statement as well, see: "I really don't know to put it any simpler. It doesn't matter how perfect a copy the other me is. There is only ONE sense of "self" one has. Why should I care that the other me is dead? MY life experience has continued. *I* am ALIVE. The other me is a seperate entity."

Quote
Huh? What's the difference? Each 'fork' is complete.


I'd rather not have the original Kosh destroyed or allowed to die. I'm perfectly ok with making copies of myself but the original needs to go on somehow otherwise it is not true immortality. Even if Kosh1, Kosh2,.....,Koshn continue, me, Kosh prime, is still stuck in a meat based mind which is not something I find comforting. Personally I'd prefer moving to forking.

You don't get it. The original Kosh has been destroyed hundreds of thousands of times. You are now a copy.

There is absolutely no difference between moving and forking, except that in moving, the original you is destroyed.

You've got to realize that in one sense TrashMan is correct: after the moment of the scan there will be two divergent entities, and if Kosh Original dies, then yeah, he's dead. But that doesn't matter. It's no different from simply destroying the original at the copy of the scan.

"Whoa," you're saying, "so the scan will kill me?" You are again making TrashMan's error of always assuming that the 'dead' guy is the original. You will just as equally be the copy.

Again, you've done this millions, billions of times before. You're just hung up on the idea that there can somehow only be One Camera of Me. All of the resulting You will have a camera, and you'll all be You. You'll also be all the dead ones too. There isn't some Precious Fluid of Koshness that will only end up with one of them.

Go back to the example with the two brains in one head. One gets plucked out and moved to the replacement. Up until the moment of the move, however, the brains were in perfect synchrony. I think you'd agree that your brain was moved into a different body you'd still be you, the 'original You' wouldn't be dead...and yet the two brains are identical, so whoever gets moved is inarguably you.

To think otherwise is a logical absurdity. We are what's in our brain. If there are two perfectly identical brains (plus relevant embodied cognitive elements), then it is us. The same person.

The essential thing to remember is that at the moment of copying both resultant copies experience complete, continuous consciousness which leads them to believe that they are the original. If it's easier for you to handle, think of both of them as a new you, and imagine that the old you is gone...and then reverse that. They're both the old you. The stream of continuous consciousness is clear.

I'll quote myself for TrashMan to read in case he's skimming the post:

Here, for Scotty and TrashMan: think of it this way to work yourself out of the logical trap.

You have two brains in your head. One's your backup brain, which just copies your real brain exactly. In fact, you can switch between them in real time if you like! It's great. Totally awesome, no difference at all.

One day, you die. As you've arranged, your brain gets pulled out of your head and put in a new body. You wake up. "Whoa!" you say. "Pretty ****ing weird. Lucky I got pulled out."

Remember, the two brains are interchangeable, now. Totally the same.

So you go on your way, confident that you're the real you. And you are. I don't think anybody would argue it. You live in your brain, right? And now your brain is just in a new head. It's all good.

But then, your other brain miraculously comes back to life! And now there are two you. You look back at your old body and you're like 'whoa, not me any more.' And meanwhile, you're looking at your new body and being like 'whoa, not me any more!'

Crazy, huh? And yet they're both equally you.

(You'll note that at no point did I specify which brain gets pulled out and transferred...because it doesn't matter! They're interchangeable.)

tl'dr version: TrashMan shouldn't be worried about something he's already done thousands of times. He thinks that he is the same person as TrashManFiveYearsAgo, even though he will never turn into TrashManFiveYearsAgo.

His brain right now is a copy of his brain five years ago, just a really bad synchronized one. If he got a brainscan at Moment A, he would immediately go flying into the brainscan and become TrashMan over there. He would then think of the original body as a copy which he had left, and be cool with it.

Meanwhile, he would also sit in his original body and look suspiciously at his new copy.

Unless TrashMan believes in the Precious Fluid of Trashmanness - i.e. he believes that there is a soul separate from the purely physical body - then he simply has nothing to worry about. So long as the brain is replicated in perfect detail, it must, by necessity, be him.

« Last Edit: November 03, 2009, 09:48:14 am by General Battuta »

 

Offline Black Wolf

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
You know, calling the gradual change in the precise matter that makes up your body as exactly the same as a sudden jump from one body into another is just downright silly. There is a fundamental difference.

NB also, in the general concept of transhumanism, if you somehow took your mind out of the slew of chemicals in your brain and replaced it with a computer, you'd no longer be the same person, even if your thought patterns or whatever were identical, because it'd almost certainly not appropriately replicate the effects of biochemistry on emotion and mental state.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
You know, calling the gradual change in the precise matter that makes up your body as exactly the same as a sudden jump from one body into another is just downright silly. There is a fundamental difference.

What's the fundamental difference? At all? It's fundamentally the same process.

Would you be cool with it if the atoms of your brain were pulled out one at a time, replaced with new atoms, and used to build a perfectly identical brain next door? Because that's what's happening here. It's copying, it's just the original gets destroyed in our 'day to day copying', so we're okay with it.

Quote
NB also, in the general concept of transhumanism, if you somehow took your mind out of the slew of chemicals in your brain and replaced it with a computer, you'd no longer be the same person, even if your thought patterns or whatever were identical, because it'd almost certainly not appropriately replicate the effects of biochemistry on emotion and mental state.

The general assumption is that the whole body would be simulated, actually - trust me, people think about this all the time. It's called Embodied Cognition. I mentioned it in the last long post.