Cryonics and uploading as leaps of faith? (was Re: Uploaded Omniscience)

From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 09:00:47 MDT

  • Next message: Brett Paatsch: "Re: Hackers beware: quantum encryption is coming"

    Lee Corbin writes:

    > The psychological problem that most people have
    > against uploading, of course, is that of "being
    > inside a computer", or of knowing that one is really
    > just on a silicon chip.

    Perhaps its because I haven't read enough about it, but,
    the reservation, I have against uploading, and also
    cryonics is that I just not convinced that, appearances
    not withstanding, the me that goes in, will be the me
    that comes out.
     
    Perhaps it is a bit different between uploading and
    cryonics because uploading changes the matter substrate
    on which one perceives one exists more radically.
     
    Let's stipulate that the means to do a complete atomic
    level recreation of all parts of a cryonically preserved
    person, including the sense of self, and a consistent set
    of memories from one's early childhood up until the
    moment one voluntarily consented to undergo a cryonic
    procedure. Like consenting to a life saving general
    anaesthetic. Let's assume the nanotech is good enough
    to rebuild the exact atomic replica of person X.
     
    My current sense is that, to everyone else person X
    *will* appear to be the *same* person both before
    and after. Person X prime, (Xprime), will perceive himself
    to be person X, but it seems to me that neither Xprime's
    opinion, nor the opinions of other people are fully
    satisfactory when one puts oneself in the place of person
    X considering undergoing cryonics or uploading. It seems
    that person X's predisposition to cryonics or uploading is
    something of a leap of faith or perhaps the sense of having
    nothing little to lose.
     
    How can X know that Xprime is any more than a very
    complete copy? The same process that reproduced one
    Xprime from the information in X could also produced
    multiple copies.
     
    Let me try and use what seems to be an appropriate
    analogy. A candle flame, 'energy' can be transferred or
    spread from one candle (a matter substrate) to another
    without being extinguished. The flame might also be
    extinguished on the original substrate and relit. Or with
    nanotechnology we may rebuilt a candle that, atom by
    atom, is the same as the original candle and relight it,
    but the *particular* flame, the *particular* energy flow
    on the substrate will still have been interrupted. Indeed
    it will have been snuffed out.
     
    It seems to me that "death" may be analogous to the
    candle flame (i.e. a continuous flow of energy dancing
    on a matter substrate). Because we eat and exchange
    atoms throughout our lives the analogy could be
    extended to say wax is added to the candle whilst the
    flame continues to burn. But, extinguish the flame, stop
    the continuous energy flow, and perhaps you extinguish
    the continuing phenomena, the 'super-consciousness',
    (to coin a term covering conscious and unconscious
    processes) that are the subjective experience of life. I
    guess what I'm positing is that, one's life, one's self,
    may depends on continuity. Perhaps something
    important to the identity of a person is lost if the energy
    flow or 'super-conscious' is interrupted. Actually the
    consciousness is interrupted sometimes in life but not
    along with the unconscious so far as I know.
     
    Following a successful cryonics procedure everyone,
    including the reconstructed X, Xprime, thinks X has
    been preserved, this I freely concede. But X the
    original, is no longer around or in a position to confirm
    that X the original, X's super-consciousness, X's self,
    rather than an excellent replication has actually emerged
    from the process.

    So, does it finally come down to a "leap of faith" on behalf
    of the potential cryonaut or the potential upload that
    *they*, X, will *actually* survive?

    Or, and this I would like to be convinced of, are there in
    fact deeper levels of understanding still available to an
    inquiring mind, *this* side of the cryonics or upload
    procedure, perhaps in physics, or perhaps around
    (or avoiding) the fuzzy phenomenon I've termed the
    super-conscious, that would allow one to more rationally
    avoid the sense that the prospective cryonaut or upload
    are undertaking a one way journey that is in many ways
    every bit as much a "leap of faith" for them as the "leaps
    of faith" taken by people of religious viewpoints since
    time immemorial?

    - Brett Paatsch
     

     

     

     



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 26 2003 - 09:09:29 MDT