CryoNet #32507 - #32508

CryoNet - Thu 25 Mar 2010

    #32507: Re: Down with Uploading [robomoon]
    #32508: Freeposity & Sparks [Ettinger]

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Message #32507
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:16:34 +0100 (CET)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Down with Uploading
References: <[email protected]>

Atoms (A and B) at minimum are at different locations, hence are distinguishable. That's the minimum in atomic differences for some individuals who are likely to adapt to the standards of middle class people signing up and making money for cryonics without greater hurdles. Many viable atoms in their brains will be the same during cryosuspension. The atoms from their brains will be traceable in distances to each other.

Generally, most people don't sign up for cryonics. They are not getting enough money, ateist (or benevolent religious) relatives, close family members who are supportive to cryonics, and other benefits which make it easy to get into a contract with a cryonics provider. Thus, they are lacking enough of the incentives to get away with a selfish arrangement for life extension which doesn't work for other family members or supporters.

Atoms in most of brains will end up in the soil below the ground. Mind Uploading doesn't help them and the locations of hydrogen atoms A and B from their brains are becoming untraceable on Earth. Thus, they cannot be distinguished from each other by any other criterion than statistics or rule of thumb. According to Leibniz and without guessing, the atoms will be considered the same. The question is, what uploading can be appropriate for them?

A recommendable procedure for those who don't make it into suspension of their brains could be Beme Uploading with mindfiles almost exclusively supported by Terasem. Of cause, locations of hydrogen atoms A and B can still be estimated the distance from the nearest to the most remote grave for corporal remains. Yet we see a chance in the wideness of the solar system where that distance must be greater. So I'd be happy to become a robot on the moon to continue with my forefathers', a Scientific Librarian and the other an Engineering Physicist.

> Message #32503 (*shortened*)
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:12:05 EDT
> Subject: Down with Uploading
>   
> The  relevance of this to cryonics is marginal but not zero. It is 
> political or  PR-related.  
> I  think there is a small but not insignificant group who think that, since
> 
> quite a  few 
> cryonicists are also Uploaders, they are tarred with the  same brush. 
> This  was instigated by my recent second looks at some works by uploaders, 
> 
> including 
> Perry, Tipler, Moravec, and Kurzweil. 

...cut...

> First, this assertion actually asserts nothing except a  certain preference
> 
> in 
> use  of language. It has no consequences. It is also useless because if  
> the 
> question arises, are A and B distinguishable, the answer  is always yes. An
> 
>  
> example might be two hydrogen atoms, which some would say  fill the 
> bill. But the atoms at minimum are at different  locations, hence are 
> distinguishable, e.g. by a mass detector of appropriate  sensitivity. In 
> addition, being at different locations, they necessarily  differ in other 
> ways  too, such as the gravitational fields to which they are subjected. 

...cut...

//

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Message #32508
From: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:36:05 EDT
Subject: Freeposity & Sparks

All of the questions raised by Freeposity and Jordan Sparks,
and many others, have been addressed in Youniverse. My
challenge here is to try to deal with them much more
succinctly and yet more convincingly. Probably impossible,
but I'll give it a shot from time to time.
 
How do I know I'm not a simulation? I don't know that for
sure--we don't know anything for sure except our own
immediate feelings--but the arguments in favor of that 
hypothesis are full of holes. I have also shown that it
might not be impossible for a simulated person to test
that hypothesis. 
 
Freeposity also asks, "Also please explain how your mind 
is not a collection of memories and a collection of data 
processing algorithms." The point is that the uploaders
need to explain how they know the mind is ONLY a
collection of memories and algorithms. A collection of
such on paper would be as much a person as a 
collection in a computer, yet few would claim that a
bunch of writing on paper is or could be a person.
 
Jordan says that only the pattern is important, not the
material, noting that atoms are replaced from time
to time in our brains anyway, and a duplicate brain
would have the same thoughts and the same value.
 
I deny that a duplicate of me would have the same
value to me as the original. I don't deny that someone
who used the "Beam me up, Scotty" routine might 
become accustomed to it, but that proves nothing. 
People have become accustomed to misery and
death. 
 
No one has effectively disproven the necessity of
physical continuity for survival. The fact that our
continuity is incomplete shows that we need to
look harder for ways to justify our feeling of
survival. (Are you the same person as
your infant self? As your possible future superhuman
self? As your possible PAST superhuman self in
another branch of reality?) I believe I have done this.
My tentative answer is that "you" are basically your
qualia, and a quale is a physical construct--perhaps
a standing wave in the brain--with extension in space
and time. Your current self partly shares physical
existence with your past and future selves. You 
overlap your predecessors and continuers, and
hence in part share their identity. 
 
Let me end today by mentioning the Turing Tape. 
This is a conceptual computer devised by Alan
Turing more than 70 years ago, which he proved
to be a UNIVERSAL computer, capable in principle
of performing any computation that any digital 
computer might, albeit very slowly. The device is just
a long paper tape marked into squares, on each of
which there is or is not a mark. There is a mechanism
to move the tape backward or forward, one square
at a time, and a mechanism for making or erasing
marks. At any moment, the set of marks constitutes
the program and also the data store and the current
"state" of the computer. Surely you can see that such
a computer is only a manipulator of symbols, and
at a given moment is just a set of symbols, no more 
alive than a book.
 
Robert Ettinger




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