[geeks] [rescue] consciousness immortality [was: Sun Sparcstation 20 hard disks]

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
" 
" >> But, that aside, yes: I'm arguing that you may have a "one person
" >> goes in, two come out" process in which the two that come out are
" >> basically indistinguishable, so that neither has a stronger claim to
" >> being the original than the other.
" > one ought to still be organic while the other is solid-state...
" 
" Oh, if your target substrate is different technology from the input's,
" then yes, it is easy to tell which is "the original".  When talking
" about distinguishing copies from originals, I've been assuming that the
" destination body is basically identical to the source body.

if the target substrate is also organic, then presumably there's an age
difference to set them apart.

but surely the organic target will age and die just as the source did?
wouldn't energy be better - or at least as well - spent working to
control aging?

" >> (Unless that turns out to be how it happens to work, of course, but
" >> I don't think we're talking about single-shared-mind scenarios
" >> here.)
" > since twins don't exhibit any sign of single-shared-mind, i think we
" > can rule that out...
" 
" Identical twins come close enough for me to have some doubt.  (Watching
" Henrik and Daniel Sedin play hockey is an example.)  Remember, we're
" talking about entities substantially closer to identical than ordinary
" "identical" twins, who carry identical genes but have otherwise been
" distinct, and thus evolving differently, since the
" small-number-of-cells stage.

parapsych/paranorm researchers have been trying for decades to show
any sort of shared-thought link between twins, with the only results
being 'none'.  otoh, child-psych researchers studying multiple-birth
children see that they develop almost a private language, and they
scarcely need telepathy to know what each other is thinking; each has
the best of all possible private models with which to predict.

" Or at least I am.  It's possible that silicon-substrate and
" protoplasm-substrate bodies will exhibit single-shared-mind - but it
" strikes me as relatively unlikely.  (At this point, we actually don't
" even know whether silicon-substrate bodies can support anything we can
" reasonably call a mind at all; I think that will be a necessary first
" step.)

it'd take a massive advance in silicon-chip complexity, many orders of
magnitude [i'm trying to recall the factoid of how many neurons there
are in the human brain - a quadrillion?  that'd be a million times as
many gates as the biggest chips today, granting parity between gates
and neurons], but i don't see why one couldn't imitate the
electrochemical organic brain in purely electronic silicon, assuming
one knew in detail how it worked - and i don't see how one could
transfer its function anywhere unless one did.

i can't imagine what sort of aether organic duplicates would share
mind and thoughts in, but we certainly know how to make silicon
communicate...
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought