> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of J. R. Molloy
> Sent: Friday, 14 December 2001 2:29 AM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: Sincere Questions on Identity
>
>
> From: "Colin Hales" <colin@versalog.com.au>
> > In copying you are disconnecting a sentience from it's I/O
> > (sensors/actuators), keeping all its memories, copying it, and then
> > reconnecting the copy to it's own set of I/O, in a
> different physical
> > location. From that instant you have two sentiences on
> divergent life-paths.
> > Of course they are not the same. For in-depth analysis of
> this phenomenon
> > consult that prodigious journal of wisdom - Red Dwarf,
> where Rimmer and a
> > copy of himself gradually diverge from total sameness to completely
> > different to enemies. All in a half hour show.
>
> Thank you (and Rimmer) for providing the definitive analysis of the
Identity
> Question.
>
A pleasure.
> > I asked the list a long time ago if anyone had ever
> 'graded' sentience. I
> > never got any reply but I grow more concerned that we may
> need a system of
> > licences to control the creation of sentience beyond a
> certain level. A true
> > sentience, that knows that it knows that it knows - replete
> with experiences
> > and values and relationships - should not be allowed to be
> > copied/killed/mutated willy nilly.
>
> Then again, what sentience, that knows that it knows that it knows, would
take
> it upon itself to dictate which beings should be allowed whatever? The
> ultimate sentience transcends such petty decisions.
>
Us!
> > The life of the sporadic holo-doctor on
> > Star Trek Voyager is still a life - can you imagine the
> series without
> > him/her/ve/whatever?
>
> Of course a fictional story devised for children needs an immature
character
> to appeal to viewers. Can you imagine a world in which people fail to grow
up,
> so that they continue to need imaginary characters to complete their
lives?
>
Guilty as charged, your honour. I'm just a big kid.
All the sci-fi I've watched has been, to me, a long series of thought
experiments.
I use them because most people can relate to them in some way.
At least I'm assuming that for the people on this list.
It beats using "XYZ person, Obscure back issue of Journal of Something, ref
23.4 line 7" to make a point.
> > There is a book - SciFi - Robin Cook...can't remember the
> name?? where
> > humans live multiple serial lives in different bodies. When
> they've burned
> > out a body they go into a machine. It makes a carbon mesh
> copy of the brain,
> > they gestate a new body, and grow the new brain with the
> pattern of the
> > original. Voila....immortality. Or is it?
>
> Sounds somewhat like a parallel to real life, where children
> inherit the genetic procilivities of their parents. Some (square) people
> think of families as a kind of immortality.
A new brain is a blank book, waiting for life's authorship -except insofar
as those functions pre-coded into the body - the autonomous side (even they
need a lot of tuning).
>
> > The only thing you can say for
> > sure is that the original human went into the machine quite
> by choice, happy
> > in the knowledge that something good was going to happen. A
> dead body came
> > out. The rights of the potential sentience in the new body were not
> > addressed in any serious fashion. Nor were the rights of
> the 'potential
> > continued sentience' of the old body.
>
> That sounds even more like conventional bio-reproduction. Humans have
> rationalized the continuance of themselves through their
> children since humans
> discovered that children are similar to their parents. The extreme
> techno-extropic position is Hans Moravec's Mind Children,
> which are very
> different from the parents, yet carry on the tradition of
> parents making
> children which surpass themselves.
I think we're heading for a morphology/semantics mess re what a 'copy' is.
Are we talking about the immortality of DNA/MEME or an entire sentience,
complete with memories?
genes and memes are 'doing the dawkins dance' and survive by battle savy.
If I want 'me' to go on, whilst I can make myself feel a little better
knowing my genes are in my kids, I know it's not me.
If I want to kid myself i'm immortal I'll get a religion. So many to choose
from.
>
> > Whilst in the machine the sentience could still be 'related
> to' verbally,
> > although what they replace all the sensory and organ I/O
> with beats me.
>
> This device of verbal relationship provides the magic element that
> disconnected parent/child evolution lacks. Notice how
> intensely, almost
> desperately, parents try to communicate with their newborn children.
>
> > It'd be a weird experience. Imagine all those hormone secretion
> synapses in the pretend neuron mesh trying to 'squirt' non-existent
> hormones into ...what?
> > I digress.
>
> The digression is worthy of discussion. Hormone computing has
> only very
> recently emerged as a feasible and potentially very powerful
> tool for creating
> artificial intelligence.
>
> Gotta leave now...
> Perhaps we can go into this in more depth later.
>
Hormone computing. Hmmm.
Re the book above - I was talking about what a literal copy of a complete
brain in a foreign mesh nothing like a body would be doing with all the
I/O. A large chunk of brain is all about visual and aural decoding and also
actuation procedures (=cerebellum). What would this 'mesh' be doing with all
that?
I bet it'd be like one of those 'waking anesthetics'. I also bet that, at
least in a software sense, all the control loops normally driving organ
adjustments would be in overdrive, trying to control non-existent body
temperature, for eg. I bet you would feel permanently starved or permanently
stuffed, food wise. Blind. Numb. No taste. At least in the book you could
'talk' and 'Hear'. At what position would the mood and emotion settings
settle? Presumably locked where you were at the instant of the scan. Imagine
feeling anger or fear permanently (until you rebirth, of course). What would
happen if, say, you forgot to visit the bathroom before copying? - you'd be
mentally crossing your non-existent legs for a non-existent pee forever.
Imagine permanently 'seeing' the internal surface of the scanner (the last
thing you saw). How 'plastic' is this mesh. Can you learn?
Tricky stuff, this copying into an artificial environment. We may have to
copy the environment in as well or replicate the I/O in real-ware.
*breaks out of train of thought* What am I doing here? I got things to do.
cheers
colin
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