Altered Carbon

[RGX]

Originally posted by danb+10 August 2004 - 21:36--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (danb @ 10 August 2004 - 21:36)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-RGX@10 August 2004 - 22:35
@ Ck: Mhmm...

Tut tut, sshh [/b][/quote]

[ck-uk]

Originally posted by RGX@10 August 2004 - 22:35
@ Ck: Mhmm...

i dont understand...mate&#33;

[Snee]

I&#39;ll try to make this brief as this will have to be my last post for the night.

OT:
@Crystal and Dan: I&#39;m on another computer than my regular one now, and I haven&#39;t got an irc install on this one, so I&#39;ll have to say good night this way.

Sorry I left so abruptly, I had to go take that shower and so on, and when my connection went down anyway, I just shut down, and left it at that.



@RGX: Your argument about the copy becoming soulless is interesting, while I&#39;m not an active believer in souls, I won&#39;t deny the possibility.

If there was a connection between our physical minds and some sort of ethereal entity, the question gets a new dimension of sorts: Will the connection be transfered to the copy, will it gain the soul of the original? And what will happen if this doesn&#39;t happen?

Will the copy simple refuse to come alive? Will it lack something, will it be a machine made out of flesh?

Or will there be no difference at all to anyone, including the copy?



@manker: I find the way you regard your mind to be intriguing.

I think I&#39;m inclined to view my mind as an object, as information etched in flesh, unique and irreplaceable, or at least very nearly so.

You on the other hand seem to consider yourself as something independent of the flesh it currently resides in, as information the stored on a disc, but not the disc itself.

Or even yet, as something intangible, like an idea, or a concept.

Pure information, even, I get the impression, to the point that you wouldn&#39;t mind there being multiple copies as long as the information that is you goes on in it&#39;s entirety.

I find this a very appealing way to look at oneself, as an idea is very hard to kill, if nothing else.


Correct me if I&#39;m wrong, and feel free to expand on the subjects.

[DanB]

Night SnnY

This has been a very interesting thread to read btw

[manker]

Originally posted by SnnY@10 August 2004 - 23:33
@manker: I find the way you regard your mind to be intriguing.

I think I&#39;m inclined to view my mind as an object, as information etched in flesh, unique and irreplaceable, or at least very nearly so.

You on the other hand seem to consider yourself as something independent of the flesh it currently resides in, as information the stored on a disc, but not the disc itself.

Or even yet, as something intangible, like an idea, or a concept.

Pure information, even, I get the impression, to the point that you wouldn&#39;t mind there being multiple copies as long as the information that is you goes on in it&#39;s entirety.

I find this a very appealing way to look at oneself, as an idea is very hard to kill, if nothing else.


Correct me if I&#39;m wrong, and feel free to expand on the subjects.

No no, I regard my mind in almost the same way as you do. As unique and irreplacable. Yet should some innovation, such as cortical stack uploading, become a possibility then provided a perfect copy of my brain could be obtained and formed then I&#39;d regard my mind as being recordable information awaiting a back-up.

I&#39;m merely theorising the possibilities of it being transferred to a place other than my head, I don&#39;t for one moment think it possible but if it was then I&#39;d embrace it provided the procedure was necessary and with a high probability of success.

In other words I&#39;m saying if the technology was there for me to exploit I&#39;d do so and expect to be the same person after the procedure, it was my understanding that you and RGX would not be so welcoming to the possibility of a mind transfer and considered it would be the death of either &#39;you&#39; or &#39;your soul&#39; should it occur.

[tracydani]

I believe that I am what is in my brain(hard drive). My body is only me in as far as how I am effected by my experiences through it. Change bodies and get new types of experiences due to the new body reacting differently to things then the old.

Kind of like if I ran a marathon right now, I&#39;d be changed somewhat by how well I do and how my body reacts to the stress involved. Then change me into a body that is in proper marathon shape and have me run it. No matter what, I will still be the person who practically died running the marathon, even if I can also say I won it

I guess I believe my consious self is my memories. If they are all transfered, then I am still me. I also believe my soul is the same(if there has to be a soul).

Basically I believe we are all just advanced computers. Far enough to be self aware.

So if you were to take me and erase all the cigarette burns from my body(don&#39;t really have any) and any memories I would have had getting them, then it never happened to me. I will still have been effected indirectly I guess, because decisions I have made previous to the removal of the burns would have been made based on those experiences.

This leads to what I fear will happen in the future if we get to the point of making these kind of transfers/changes. We face being manipulated by those in power(or by some 13 year old hacker) without ever knowing it. We may end up living according to all the experiences given us. They will still be us, but we will not have had made the decision to do certain things, it will have been made for us.

This could have a tremendous effect on our collective consience(which I believe in but do not really know much about). Do we as a race prosper due to these manipulations, or do we weeken and fail?

TD

[Snee]

Ah, I think I see.

So manker: while you consider yourself to have the type of mind I described, a unique object and so on.

...You&#39;d still accept the copying process, but only if it was the one copy, and only a perfect one to replace/continue the old one.


The source of my misconception then, is, I think due to our perspectives.

Like I said, I believe that anything but a direct, unbroken continuation of the mind I have, even physically, working from within the matter that is also my mind, is not me.

Whereas you consider the continuation of the information that is you, as long as it isn&#39;t altered during transfer, and as long it isn&#39;t altered in function, to be you.



Now here&#39;s the dodgy part: from my perspective it seemed to me then, that you were defined externally, more than internally.

That is to say that as long as you retained your exact function and mode of thought as seen by others, and as long as the copy believed it was you, it was you.

And as I had trouble defining the copy the copy as anything but apart from oneself, and therefore an external viewer...making you more of a concept held by others than the kind of individual I think I (we) are. Sort of, in the mind of the copy, a belief.

And in my mind information, the idea, rather than the mind, information that moved from mind to mind, in this case.


I&#39;m sorry I didn&#39;t catch your drift, so to speak, it would appear I had made my conclusions on how to percieve the copy before I read what you thought.


And TD, you too, do consider yourself to be information, rather than the brain it occupies.

But that the soul follows the mind, if there is one, regardless of what flesh it occupies.

Does this mean that you believe that your conciousness continues unbroken physically, throughout the copying process, as the connection to this hypothetical higher plane continues unbroken?

I agree with you on us all being very advanced biological computers, but unlike computers we weren&#39;t built with a specific purpose in mind.

I wonder if this is how life, as opposed to machinery, will one day come to be defined. Highly advanced, but spontaneously made.


And the thoughts on having one&#39;s mind hacked are interesting too.

Will your mind, but with false memories, be you?
Will it be you if you chose the memories?
And could one call brainwashing, the implantation of beliefs and even memories through suggestion, to be a form of hacking of the soul?


I know your opinion on the first two, but they are interesting questions.

EDit: punctuation and stuff.

[RGX]

I use the term soul in its broadest possible way, it could also be called conciouness....I am inclined to beleive that we have a spark or force that keeps our conciouness "in memory" if you were, and should the brain be copied or transplanted this conciouness would be lost, despite the flesh still being intact.

I like the theory of the RAM module losing power, or the brain dead coma patient....even though the blood is still pumping, the thing that made them concious, this spark, has gone.

This is all just a theory, however.

[Snee]

Originally posted by RGX@11 August 2004 - 13:58
I use the term soul in its broadest possible way, it could also be called conciouness....I am inclined to beleive that we have a spark or force that keeps our conciouness "in memory" if you were, and should the brain be copied or transplanted this conciouness would be lost, despite the flesh still being intact.

I like the theory of the RAM module losing power, or the brain dead coma patient....even though the blood is still pumping, the thing that made them concious, this spark, has gone.

This is all just a theory, however.

While I wouldn&#39;t call it my soul, the electrical activity in my brain is something I consider to be part of my mind.

Would you then feel that you were more you when copied, if the energy from your original brain could be transfered to the copy, somehow?


And something else I&#39;ve been wondering about: would it be different if the brain wasn&#39;t replaced all at once, but that we had it replaced synapse by synapse?

I think so, even if my original mind was replaced in full, but piece by piece, my conciousness would still be the same.

[RGX]

Originally posted by SnnY+11 August 2004 - 12:06--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (SnnY @ 11 August 2004 - 12:06)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-RGX@11 August 2004 - 13:58
I use the term soul in its broadest possible way, it could also be called conciouness....I am inclined to beleive that we have a spark or force that keeps our conciouness "in memory" if you were, and should the brain be copied or transplanted this conciouness would be lost, despite the flesh still being intact.

I like the theory of the RAM module losing power, or the brain dead coma patient....even though the blood is still pumping, the thing that made them concious, this spark, has gone.

This is all just a theory, however.

While I wouldn&#39;t call it my soul, the electrical activity in my brain is something I consider to be part of my mind.

Would you then feel that you were more you when copied, if the energy from your original brain could be transfered to the copy, somehow?


And something else I&#39;ve been wondering about: would it be different if the brain wasn&#39;t replaced all at once, but that we had it replaced synapse by synapse?

I think so, even if my original mind was replaced in full, but piece by piece, my conciousness would still be the same. [/b][/quote]
I would be happy to undertake the procedure if the "spark" could be stored.....perhaps it is just a small charge of bio-electricity. I would need sufficient proof that this is what causes my brain to hold conciouness, but I think it would be quite handy to be able to upload your conciousness to different bodies, perhaps even to robots. (What a thread merge).

Your memories are part of you I guess Snny, they enable you to make decisions based on past experience....if you were missing some of them who knows what it would do to your personality...