Posted: Dec 07, 2016 10:47 pm
I'm not confident that there are answers to a lot of these questions, not with our state of knowledge.
Something I have been thinking about for some time now centers on the idea of uploading our minds into machines. But it really doesn't require that at all, that's just what lead me to the line of thought. At some point, we will gain total control of ourselves, biologically, physically, etc, meaning, have the capability to alter our bodies and minds however we may desire, within the limits of the technology. This could be due to uploading to a machine, but the same applies to the wetware. If someone doesn't accept this, they would necessarily be a dualist whether they know it or not.
So, maybe 100 years from now, or a thousand, we'll get there. We could tailor our minds in pretty much any way we wanted, there'd be an app for that most likely. Now for the hard to understand bit. What then would emotions be? Would they have any meaning, assuming they have any now, they certainly have a great deal of meaning to the one having them. Would it mean anything to say to someone I love you, if you could turn that off and on again on a whim? I think this is worse than 'unweaving the rainbow', how science is supposed to destroy beauty by understanding the underlying nature of something. Feynman showed how misguided that idea is. If all feelings, all emotions, are something to be be tweaked and twiddled with a knob, how important can they be? How will those future 'human' define themselves? This opens the possibility of turning yourself into the opposite of who you are or were, maybe even by accident. And that's a nightmare if you think about it.
Earlier talk of dreams reminded me of a few times I've had dreams where some friend or acquaintance did something to cause me significant harm in some probably weird or impossible way you get in dreams. The next day, if I ran across this person, I found myself spontaneously reacting to their presence with negative emotions like I would have if the dream had actually happened, though with considerably less force. Are there any implications of having such emotions?
Something I have been thinking about for some time now centers on the idea of uploading our minds into machines. But it really doesn't require that at all, that's just what lead me to the line of thought. At some point, we will gain total control of ourselves, biologically, physically, etc, meaning, have the capability to alter our bodies and minds however we may desire, within the limits of the technology. This could be due to uploading to a machine, but the same applies to the wetware. If someone doesn't accept this, they would necessarily be a dualist whether they know it or not.
So, maybe 100 years from now, or a thousand, we'll get there. We could tailor our minds in pretty much any way we wanted, there'd be an app for that most likely. Now for the hard to understand bit. What then would emotions be? Would they have any meaning, assuming they have any now, they certainly have a great deal of meaning to the one having them. Would it mean anything to say to someone I love you, if you could turn that off and on again on a whim? I think this is worse than 'unweaving the rainbow', how science is supposed to destroy beauty by understanding the underlying nature of something. Feynman showed how misguided that idea is. If all feelings, all emotions, are something to be be tweaked and twiddled with a knob, how important can they be? How will those future 'human' define themselves? This opens the possibility of turning yourself into the opposite of who you are or were, maybe even by accident. And that's a nightmare if you think about it.
Earlier talk of dreams reminded me of a few times I've had dreams where some friend or acquaintance did something to cause me significant harm in some probably weird or impossible way you get in dreams. The next day, if I ran across this person, I found myself spontaneously reacting to their presence with negative emotions like I would have if the dream had actually happened, though with considerably less force. Are there any implications of having such emotions?