From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 18:06:47 MDT
Jeff Davis writes:
> --- Hal Finney <hal@finney.org> wrote:
> > We can combine Lee's proposal of a machine which
> > (potentially) destroys
> > and re-creates your consciousness 100 times a second
> > with the idea of
> > evolution evolving consciousness to produce a
> > horrific concept: a world
> > which has evolved consciousness which works like
> > Lee's machine!
> >
> > In this bizarre world (call it World X), animals and
> > intelligent beings
> > are conscious as they are in our world, but due to a
> > quirk of their brain
> > chemistry, their consciousness is destroyed and
> > re-created 100 times a
> > second. Yet this has no impact on their behavior,
> > because it happens so
> > quickly.
> >
> > Without their knowledge, slaughter and death is
> > occuring on a horrendous
> > scale, with every conscious being on World X dying
> > 100 times a second.
Yeah but as a consequence this sort of world of
discontinuous creatures removes in large part the
conceptual barrier to uploading (it doesn't touch the
engineering of the transfer problem but we weren't
talking about that.)
> >
> > The terrible part is, since this does not affect
> > their behavior, there
> > is no reason for evolution to avoid this outcome. A
> > being which has
> > continuous, connected consciousness, like us, has no
> > survival advantage
> > over one who suffers the fate of having his
> > consciousness constantly
> > being destroyed. Therefore there is a substantial
> > chance that worlds
> > where consciousness evolves may indeed be just like
> > World X.
Yep.
> Thank
> > goodness that we were one of the lucky worlds!
Very droll :-)
I don't know about the 1/100 of a second bit but we
(scientists) can and no doubt are builidng up knowledge
bases of the mechanics of consciousness and neural
processing in animal models. We are reducing the
mystery and "the leap of faith".
It was good to see Rafal insert a little science into
the philosophy naming the regions that are associated
with particular activities, but I wonder how close any,
even the most eridite of us are to coming up with
a design for uploading our wetware selves to non
wetware substrates let alone being in a position to
do it.
I'd be kind of pleased if a couple or even one extrope
could laugh that one off. It can be a pure pleasure
being wrong when the prognosis was negative.
> >
> > In fact, I just had a horrifying thought... too
> > terrible to share with
> > others... about our own world. I shudder to even
> > imagine it. But could
> > it be true?
> >
> > Hal
Of course it could. But isn't it funny how one persons
best of all possible worlds can be another's worst.
> Not only could it be true, but it **is** true(gasp!).
>
> Synaptic cycling--fire, pause to reset (horrors!),
> ready once again to fire--means we are kilt and
> resurrected every fraction of a second exactly as Lee
> hypotheticalized(egad!).
>Well, perhaps not 'exactly'
> so, since the synaptic firing may not be globally
> synchronized, every neuron marching in step.
Indeed the synapses are firing *at* something.
Other neurons, which then fire or not depending
on intensity of that received. But none of this
marching in step nonsense unless I am seriously
mistaken. Marking in groups or platoons
maybe but not *all* in step.
Clearly, to some, I don't know enough about the
nature of consciousness in our world to be
able to tell how far Lee's scenario varies from
what actually happens. But I do know we can explore
it and in exploring it we reduce the leaps of faith.
I did read a book titled CONSCIOUSNESS:
HOW MATTER BECOMES IMAGINATION
(Gerald M Edelman and Giulio Tononi. Pub 2000)
nd although I wrote all over it I think I only took
in about 30% of it and have since forgotten a good
part of that. I would recommend it though. It gets
a plug o the cover ftom Oliver Sacks, who wrote
THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR
A HAT, which I am reading currently but very
slowly.
>
> [Then again, I read not so long ago, that the neurons
> engaged in a coherent thought all fire in a
> synchronized fashion. I guess that means that, to
> whatever extent you're 'incoherent' and ego-less--I
> don't know how to describe this or if it even makes
> sense--like say with intention and active
> participation in the thought stream turned
> off--Oooooohm, oooooohm, oooooohm--then your identity
> is continuous since synaptic asynchronicity means some
> neuronal fraction is 'always on'--some firing, some
> resetting, some resting and ready to fire.
>
> Thus, if you--there's that troublesome little semantic
> conundrum: which 'you' or aspect set of a temporally
> and/or compositionally dynamic 'you' construct,
> slippery little devil, are we talking about here--are
> in 'thought-quieted' receive mode, that you, the
> thought-quieted you, is 'there' with uninterrupted
> continuity (except of course at the vastly shorter
> Plank time/quantized time 'interval', but never mind
> that). Only when 'you' (that problem again) intrude
> on this continuous asynchronicity by **responding** to
> the sensory input stream (and I haven't even bothered
> to consider about the automatic/reflexive
> 'lower-level' processing of the input stream which
> that
> 'unconsciously'(preconsciously?) filters and shapes it
> into grist for the mill of higher level thought slash
> 'consciousness'), and forcing the trade-off of
> destructive/constructive synchronicity, only then do
> you 'suffer' the fate of millisecond scale cyclic
> identity extinguishment/reinitialization.
>
> Just a thought, ...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
> thought,...a thought, ...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
> thought,...a thought,...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
> thought,...a thought, ...]
>
> <SYSTEM FAILURE>
- Brett Paatsch
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