again it is radically impossible to upload your consciousness digitally. it can't happen. you could perfectly map every neuron and synapse into data and run a perfect simulation but it wouldn't be you, for the simple reason that a digital file is just a record of information about a thing
I always thought this about Adam Malkovich in the Metroid series. Like "trapped in a computer".
Easier to become a full conversion cyborg, ie brain-in-a-jar.
as an amputee, i am somewhat worried that might hurt pretty bad forever
im being a little hyperbolic. i don't take anything for phantom pain and it's like. a 1 on the pain scale with flares that go up to a 2 or 3. but the nervous system loses its shit a little when neural pathways in the body appear missing or not responsive
yeah i think for brain in a jar as a thought experiment you've gotta basically assume "perfect simulation of all expected bodily sensation as inputs to the jar brain" for exactly the reasons you describe. every part of the body (present or absent) is significant
if you wanted to keep it in the realm of hard sci-fi i think you could maybe get away with just -caine nerve blockers and as-needed opioids. idk if you can redose something like novocaine/tetracaine forever but one injection can work for like 2-3 months
i guess it depends what kind of experience you were aiming for the jar brain person to have - if writing fiction I guess you would try to write the physiological/medical (?) parameters towards whatever would enable that experience
that seems at least possible
That's the dream
Also these SV boys are all ignorant, lying scumbags who deserve to be chased through the streets with whips.
yeah they need to take one lesson in humanities so maybe they can be just 0.001% human
and also chased through the streets with whips
We know our selves are more than just our brains, everything from gut health to nervous systems and blood flow influences our mood and behavior, the only way to achieve this is through a full-body interface IE. The Matrix, and that would just be VR with extra steps.
yeah, this is the other thing; the brain-centric model of the self is hopelessly simplistic. Yes it's the most complex part of the picture, probably, but experience is embodied. You don't HAVE a body, you ARE a body, and every part of it influences your subjectivity
when music is digitised, information about that music is sampled tens of thousands of times per second (the more samples the better quality, up to a point). read back those samples in series without gaps and you hear the music again. but the music hasn't "moved" anywhere
even if we were to put a pin in the fact that we really don't know what consciousness is, and assume perfectly sampling the brain sidesteps this, it would only ever be a copy. "You" would be left behind/die though the copy might experience a transition (if it's not a p-zombie)
there is a handwavy counter to this which suggests that if you gradually replaced human brain tissue with digital parts you might be able to achieve this. but idk. to me this still seems like you're dying piece by piece, even if a convincing illusion remains. it's still a radical substrate break
if what you're doing for is a convincing digital puppet of someone who's dead then sure. if you're promising subjective continuity from an embodied human experience then i really don't think so. not with digital technology at any rate. Maybe if an entirely new technology, not digital, arose but 🤷
this is one of the main plot points of soma, one of the darkest pieces of media i've ever observed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(v...
yeah I've played it, it's brilliant! i think still the only text I've ever experienced that really tries to grapple with the question and not get trapped by the fallacy
Alan Resnick also tackled it pretty well I think youtu.be/xg29TuWo0Yo
seeing as how i react to anything is different depending on whether i had breakfast that morning… unless they figure out how to give a computer blood sugar this idea is a non-starter
anyway even though it also sadly ratifies the same fallacy you should watch AMC's "Pantheon" for a very interesting treatment of this topic cw: truly disturbing animated horror youtu.be/YE49pA_eDX0?...
You and I are things. Things are. There isn't some magical 'areness' involved in being. So, there is no reason a sufficiently powerful computer couldn't be you in all the ways that matter. Except that the ability of a computer to 'run' you isn't the question here. 1/2
It's whether these tech bro morons can get such a program in the first place. It's cargo cult crap. They don't know how actual brains work well enough to even guess how to emulate them, so they copy whatever details seem important. If they even bother to do that. Chances are, it's all a scam. 2/2
i am absolutely radically materialist on this question and agree there's nothing special; my objection is to the idea of a continuity of experience between the analogue and the digital domains specifically as they are radically physically disconnected
We're a species that goes unconscious for chunks of time, gets brain damage, and has trouble defining the self as a single entity across time. We've got issues with continuity of experience without machinery in the mix. Maybe we deal with it when it comes up. Maybe it's a step too far. Unsure.
You might be able to achieve some kind of...... Experiential continuity with the Ship of Theseus approach, hypothetically there would be no point where you "turn off"
yeah maybe, i just feel like consciousness is such a contingent epiphenomenon that it couldn't be divided up piecemeal like this. I'm not convinced this really changes much
There’s a quote further down one article that kinda sums up my misgivings with this, which is that everything right now is all about storage so you’re expecting someone hundreds of years from now to just kinda inherit a giant stack of brains and start resurrecting them
lol yes i love this about cryogenics generally. it's such a rich guy brain thing to believe that people will be desperate to bring you back hundreds of years in the future
The Pantheon Steve Jobs guy got it right by basically starting a cult while he was still alive so there would be enough people to keep working on bringing him back after he died
There's a weird idea in the rationalist community that "simulations of you are Actually You" and ought to be treated with the same moral weight as your present, intuitive self. This factors into their fears with Pascal's Muggings and basilisk scenarios
Specifically things like "this evil superintelligence can hurt me by creating simulations of me" or "I should act according to the algorithm that gives me the best payoffs in the situation that my present self exists in a simulation by a perfect predictor"
Given this bizarre view, they handwave away the contradiction of fatal mind uploading.
God these people suck and that philosophy makes you wonder if they're already p-zombies
That dumbass needs to play SOMA
yeah SOMA still really the only text that really gets it!!
Shhhhhh Thom let them chop up their own brains Let the Emperor eat his mercury pills
there will be a lot of desperate poor people brains chopped up before one of the silicon valley dipshits permits it done to them!!
I dunno! I think that you're gonna see the ultrarich do it way more often than the poor. You remember cryogenic freezing, the last time they tried this? They still got Chad Moneyman III in a very expensive facility where his estate pays monthly while Joe Dishrag didn't have the money
i just mean they'll be paying Poors to be guinea pigs! Roundworms and monkeys will only get you so far
Oh I don't think they're gonna test this at all I mean there's gonna be the scientific tests, yes, absolutely, but I don't think we're gonna get past rabbits before Actual Science is like "hm this is impossible" And then you've got the woowoo millionaires who have been doing it for ten years by then
well let's hope that Zuck becomes the Bryan Johnson of brain uploading then
Steve Jobs is dead because he thought he was smarter than all doctors that ever lived, and could lifehack his way to godhood via acupuncture and eating right instead of "medical treatment" I suppose what I'm saying is that hope springs eternal, baby 🙏
iirc he did that juice cleanse diet that that Australian influencer who faked having cancer was promoting lol
I have pondered this problem. Original me would still die. Copy of me would have the experience of living on, but the death of original me is still a perceived reality. The only way out seemed to be a slow transfer, like with a coprocessor implant, where you gradually migrate to not perceive death
Cyberpunk 2077
We’re terrified of our mortality, what can I say?