kennyc wrote:I have. You though seem to have a misunderstanding of what mind and particularly consciousness is.

I don't think so. What do you think this misunderstanding is? Or if that is too direct, what statement do you think is erroneous?

Here is the claptrap that is substance dualism: http://www.philosophy-index.com/philoso ... ualism.php

The problem is that consciousness, 'you' is neither of that false dichotomy. Consciousness is a process that takes place in the brain as part of the mind. It is dynamic and changing constantly. The claim was that if that pattern can be copied then souls exist which is bullshit.

No it wasn't.

Thommo wrote:No it wasn't.

laklak wrote:If "you" can be copied, moved, or otherwise separated from your meat suit then the dualists are correct. Souls all the way down?

I'll leave it at that unless Lak has clarification.

Interesting to see just how far we have to go for Kurzweil and his fellow believers to be right. Slightly more (about a hundred times) than the difference between a single celled organism and a human being remaining!

Thommo wrote:

Interesting to see just how far we have to go for Kurzweil and his fellow believers to be right. Slightly more (about a hundred times) than the difference between a single celled organism and a human being remaining!

Notice that the graph you have posted is years old - it has no points beyond the late nineties, so the extrapolation into the latter part of the 21st century does not take into account progressive departure from Moore's Law.

Thommo wrote:

home_ wrote:

Thommo wrote: Breaking the continuity breaks the only claim with which we identify some atoms with some other atoms. It's not you.

Ok, point taken. So we have to figure out how to transfer Babbage engine part by part onto silicon chips while its operating.

Yeah, if you do that, you've got a much more interesting claim on your hands. You need to imagine a Theseus ship style 1 at a time replacement of neurons with C-neurons (some kind of digital replacement that serves the same function as the part you remove*), to justify the relevant continuity.

I wonder if anybody would actually bother doing this, even if it was possible.

Assume there was some advanced computer technology we can't yet imagine, that enabled us to easily simulate brains, bodies and worlds in minute detail. And assume we could scan a whole brain in some way. It's still going to be a lot easier just to upload a copy of that brain.

Compare the following:

1) In the future there will be people who will upload themselves into computers and live forever.
2) In the future there will be uploaded copies of people who will live forever.

If immortality is good (and I'm not sure it is actually) then why is (2) worse than (1)? In both cases there are simulated humans who get to live forever *.


* the idea that they could really live forever is also highly dubious. The beings in the simulation are as much at the mercy of the laws of their simulated world as we are of ours. Theoretically they could be backed up and restored if anything bad happened but they don't control this themselves. They can't even guarantee that people in the world outside will continue to run the simulation at all.

....and what does death mean to a digital simulation? (some claim the universe is a digital simulation and the men and women merely players upon the scene)

Chrisw wrote:I wonder if anybody would actually bother doing this, even if it was possible.

Assume there was some advanced computer technology we can't yet imagine, that enabled us to easily simulate brains, bodies and worlds in minute detail. And assume we could scan a whole brain in some way. It's still going to be a lot easier just to upload a copy of that brain.

Compare the following:

1) In the future there will be people who will upload themselves into computers and live forever.
2) In the future there will be uploaded copies of people who will live forever.

If immortality is good (and I'm not sure it is actually) then why is (2) worse than (1)? In both cases there are simulated humans who get to live forever *.


* the idea that they could really live forever is also highly dubious. The beings in the simulation are as much at the mercy of the laws of their simulated world as we are of ours. Theoretically they could be backed up and restored if anything bad happened but they don't control this themselves. They can't even guarantee that people in the world outside will continue to run the simulation at all.

I quite agree with you from a holistic point of view, but regarding the individual, the difference is between "tomorrow there will be people in the world who are starving" and "tomorrow you will be one of the people in the world who is starving". Most people have difficulty accepting their own mortality.

There is something of a difference in what I proposed (neuron by neuron replacement) from a purely simulated brain though - the former would have to, by definition, continue to operate your fleshy body and would not be reliant on a simulation for existence - it would be a brain, not a simulation of a brain.

kennyc wrote:https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=digital%20emulation%20of%20neurons

Looking ahead to an age where Moore’s law will provide more transistors than can be concurrently active under
the von Neumann computer architecture, computer designers must now consider novel low-power alternative models
of computation.

Thars yer problem!

Thommo wrote:

Chrisw wrote:I wonder if anybody would actually bother doing this, even if it was possible.

Assume there was some advanced computer technology we can't yet imagine, that enabled us to easily simulate brains, bodies and worlds in minute detail. And assume we could scan a whole brain in some way. It's still going to be a lot easier just to upload a copy of that brain.

Compare the following:

1) In the future there will be people who will upload themselves into computers and live forever.
2) In the future there will be uploaded copies of people who will live forever.

If immortality is good (and I'm not sure it is actually) then why is (2) worse than (1)? In both cases there are simulated humans who get to live forever *.


* the idea that they could really live forever is also highly dubious. The beings in the simulation are as much at the mercy of the laws of their simulated world as we are of ours. Theoretically they could be backed up and restored if anything bad happened but they don't control this themselves. They can't even guarantee that people in the world outside will continue to run the simulation at all.

I quite agree with you from a holistic point of view, but regarding the individual, the difference is between "tomorrow there will be people in the world who are starving" and "tomorrow you will be one of the people in the world who is starving". Most people have difficulty accepting their own mortality.

There is something of a difference in what I proposed (neuron by neuron replacement) from a purely simulated brain though - the former would have to, by definition, continue to operate your fleshy body and would not be reliant on a simulation for existence - it would be a brain, not a simulation of a brain.

It may be possible for yiour proposed artificial brain to operate your body, but that does not mean that it would think like you, because there would not be the spare capacity predicted in the days of Moore's law being valid for decades to come.

I was a bit to economical with my wording. By "you" I mean whoever or whatever is sitting behind my eyeballs right now, typing this on my laptop. The "me" that woke up with an itchy ass this morning and is too lazy to make another espresso it desperately wants. My consciousness, my sense of self, is inextricably tied to the meat suit I currently inhabit, when that suit ceases to function my consciousness does too. If my electro-chemical uniqueness is somehow copied or moved to another substrate, be that silicon or biological, I would assume that copy would have it's own "me", but that wouldn't be the me "me". I favor the idea that "me" is a necessary and inevitable result of a certain level of electro-chemical complexity, and that self (and perhaps more importantly the awareness of self) is hardly rare, my dogs exhibit behavior that is best explained by self-aware consciousness. If the pattern of my consciousness (for lack of a better description) is copied to a computer and it looks at meat suit me (and I'm still inside the meat suit fuck this is getting complicated) and says "Hi me!" then it ain't my me, it's other. However, if when you flip the switch I find myself looking at my old, empty meat suit then something was transferred along with the pattern, and mind/body dualism must be correct.

Let's not even get into what would happen if I found myself looking at both my meat suit and the computer at the same time.

EDIT Or worse, the switch is flipped and the me me is inside the computer and there's a different consciousness in the meat suit. It's still of the required complexity to generate consciousness, and nature abhors a vacuum. Would it be a tabula rosa?

Yep, clearer but I still disagree that that says anything whatsoever about dualism (which to me is the existence of mind without ANY physical reality) or souls which are even more vague.

If brain is gradually replaced neuron by neuron with computer chips, then you wouldn't notice. Computer chips would slowly take over all of the tasks that are currently performed by neurons. At each step during replacement 'you' would still be 'you' (just as cells are replaced each day and we don't notice it). At the end, 'you' would run on silicon. I don't see any problems with that.

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

home_ wrote:...

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

I've got news for you, home_ - Moore's law has already stopped working! There was a thread about it recently. Perhaps you missed it.

EDIT: It is worse than you think, home_, because there is an absolute limit to the packing density and switching speeds of semiconductor devices, even if silicon is replaced by faster materials, such as the III-V's.

DavidMcC wrote:

home_ wrote:...

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

I've got news for you, home_ - Moore's law has already stopped! There was a thread about it recently. Perhaps you missed it.

No David. We've discussed this. You are confused again as usual.

kennyc wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

home_ wrote:...

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

I've got news for you, home_ - Moore's law has already stopped! There was a thread about it recently. Perhaps you missed it.

No David. We've discussed this. You are confused again as usual.

You are the one who is confused if you think Moore's law is still working! It has failed. Indeed, I attended lectures at work inthe '90's, in which it was predicted that it would fail. The predictions came true.

DavidMcC wrote:

home_ wrote:...

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

I've got news for you, home_ - Moore's law has already stopped! There was a thread about it recently. Perhaps you missed it.

Which thread? I know that we've hit clock limit, but new processors are more and more parallel,.. Number of computations per second is still going up, unless I missed something.

... PS, I like the insulting bit! It's really rich for you to say I'M confused. You are almost as bad as the creationists.

home_ wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

home_ wrote:...

If Moore's law slows down, it just means that it won't happen in 2045 but later. We'd also need a very good understanding of how brain works to do this kind of replacement. At this point, we're probably decades away from that. But some future generations may be able to do it.

I've got news for you, home_ - Moore's law has already stopped! There was a thread about it recently. Perhaps you missed it.

Which thread? I know that we've hit clock limit, but new processors are more and more parallel,.. Number of computations per second is still going up, unless I missed something.

Yes and new fabrication and implementation techniques yet to be commercialized. David is clueless about computer technology. The only ultimate limit is the Planck limit.