CryoNet #32899

CryoNet - Sun 3 Oct 2010

    #32899: various [Ettinger]

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Message #32899
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2010 11:48:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: various

Edgar Swank wrote in part:
 
>Information is exactly what the contents of a brain is.

This is just hand-waving, and assuming the consequent.
 
Daniel Crevier said we will eventually have experimental evidence about  
some of these questions. Of course I agree, and have offered conjectures that  
are in principle testable.
 
Mike Perry talks about a distinction between a description and an ongoing  
process. I think this is a false distinction. One can describe a painting, 
and  one can also describe a movie. 
 
Bob
 
In a message dated 10/2/2010 5:00:07 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
[email protected] writes:

CryoNet  - Sat 2 Oct 2010

#32891: Mad Uploading  [robomoon]
#32892: RE: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely,  Ever [Jonano]
#32893: Reply to Brook [Ettinger]
#32894: One of the greatest TED talks ever, includes cryonics.  Your'e... 
[Rudi Hoffman]
#32895: experimental validation of  uploading [Daniel Crevier]
#32896: Re: Reasons Why Uploading  Is Unlikely, Ever  [Mike Perry]
#32897: Cryopreservation  of periodontal ligament cells with magnetic ... 
[oberon]
#32898: Reply to Ettinger Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever Rea...  
[Edgar Swank - ACS President]

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Message  #32891
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 12:41:50 +0200 (CEST)
From:  [email protected]
References:  <[email protected]>
Subject: Mad  Uploading

In case there's no example from a movie or TV series popping  out like 
Jack-in-the-Box with an uploading plot about a feedback against  copies, how 
about a comic? Espc. a comic for females! Since C. Loveday didn't  respond to 
my comic idea on Cryonics Europe, I wonder if a copy of her  couldn't be 
doing it. Perhaps they are afraid there will be a copy of  Proofessor RoboMoon 
from the Artifishial Unteligenz Labratory, a tender  romance with AU devoted 
to AI, umph! Lovely she will be on BBC WM radio today.  

>From the final part of Message #32887 by John de Rivaz:
>  One way one might look at it is via the idea of feedback. If you tell
>  someone how negative feedback improves the quality of the information  
coming
> out of an amplifier [send the signal through the amplifier and  then 
subtract
> the difference between the input and the output divided  by the gain, ie 
the
> error and feed that back to subtract from the  input] that may well 
conclude
> that you are mad. It seems like going  back through time to correct a 
mistake
> in life. Nevertheless it works  if you get it right. If you conclude that
> people are ultimately  information -- which is clearly what uploading and
> duplication does,  then feedback considerations apply. The duplicates will
> conspire  together against the duplicator to stop more being made. A time
> must  come when the duplicator would be overwhelmed, leaving a finite 
number
>  of duplicates. Come to think of it, I think this is the plot of a film 
or  TV
> series, but can't recall the title.

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Message  #32892
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 13:19:17 +0200
Subject: RE: Reasons Why  Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever
From: Jonano  <[email protected]>

Uploading technologies will be very easy in  the future, people will be
able to change their identity, memory or  personality as easy as
changing a radio channel.

And I think it's a  good thing for cryonics patients, if we know alot
about identities, and how  to manage them, we will do less errors in
correcting & repairing them,  but before we need to be able to create
them easily. Maybe in about 1000  years, not 200 years from now.

We will also be able to select and  experience alot of pre configured
emotions that we will be inserted in our  brain and interact with the
personality that we choose. We will have a  better liberty that way.

The experience industry will be large and  flourishing. We will
probably lost ourselves in it. We will control alot  more than today
all identities, personalities changing and memory  management.

I'm not expert but I love to  speculate.

--Jon

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Message  #32893
From: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 10:45:25 -0400  (EDT)
Subject: Reply to Brook

In #32889 Brook Norton suggests a  "cache" giving rise to an  illusion of 
time span. However, I claim  that there is (probably) a literal,  physical 
span 
of time (and also  of space) for any condition or event, the reason  being 
that  (probably) nothing can exist at a moment of time (in a zero  
interval)  
or at a point in space (in a zero volume). For whatever it is worth,   
current 
quantum physics includes a spread of being.

It is certainly  true, as Brook says, that we have been shaped by evolution 
 
and  accident to tend to treasure unfounded beliefs. Brook says that   
logically it shouldn't matter to you whether you live or die, but I  don't  
think 
his argument holds.

R.E.

In a message  dated 10/1/2010 5:00:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,   
[email protected] writes:

CryoNet  - Fri 1 Oct  2010

#32889: "Survival" possibilities [Brook  Norton]
#32890:  Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever   [Ettinger]

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Message  #32889
From: Brook Norton  <[email protected]>
Subject: "Survival"  possibilities
Date:  Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:00:43 -0700

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Norton:  We  can "continue" (in large part, never 100% unchanged) but  not
"survive".  And we can "continue" as a corpse, as an upload, as a  
duplicate,
whatever -  all equal options as continuers - but there are  no survivors. 
And
so  concern over which is the true way to  survive is misguided   concern.



Ettinger: Equal  options? Surely not. In my view, a  survivor is a  
continuer.
Continuers (in particular  your qualia)  overlap each  other in space and
time, which allows partial identification  of later  and earlier versions, 
and
we must settle for  that.   The  fact that duplicates or whatever would seem
"as good as" to   outside  observers is irrelevant.



Norton (this post): I'm  calling a  survivor one who advances through time,
bringing along some  special  identity-critical quality that makes the later
person the  "same person" as  the earlier person. I'm calling a continuer 
one
who  advances through time,  changing in accordance with the laws of  
nature,
such that the later person  is changed (at least in small  part) from the
earlier person and has no  claim to be the "same  person" because there is 
no
identity-critical quality  that goes along  with the person through time.



If there is some   identity-critical quality, name it.



Ettinger posits that  that  quality is the qualia because the qualia of the
earlier and  later (a  fraction of a second later) person overlap in time.  
The
same qualia  existing at different times. Ah ha, the  special-quality that 
the
person  takes with him through time. It  is tempting to see the qualia as
spanning  time because the qualia  integrates our past states in the last
fraction of  a second with our  current state at time = now, resulting in an
awareness of  who we are  and what we are doing at present. But there is no
need to invoke  new  time-spanning physics to explain how the qualia
integrates internal  and  external sensory inputs over time. I image the 
brain
has a  "cache" where it  stores the sensory inputs from last few moments,  
then
either forgetting the  data or moving them to the next brain  section for
integration into longer  term memory. The qualia  integrates the current
sensory inputs with the  near-past "cache" and  results in awareness. 
Caching
takes the place of  time-spanning. So we  are again left with no special
identity-critical  quality that moves  with the person through time.



Ettinger  objects that  continuing as a corpse is certainly not equal (in
preference)  to  continuing as a healthy person. Well, if one comes to 
accept
the  above  argument that a future person is not "the same person" as  an
earlier  person, then, logically, one is left with the conclusion  that it
does not  matter what becomes of future continuers. I can't  see any grand
design or  grand purpose to the universe, and so the  universe does not care
what  happens to me. Gravity will just as  happily redirect my motion in  a
beneficial or a harmful way. I think  that approach extends to the  personal
level as well - there is no  better or worse future for a  continuer. All 
that
REALLY matters  is how I feel NOW. Sorry if that's a  disappointing view of
the  meaning of life, but I didn't design the whole   thing.



What? I don't care if I live or die in the next   minute??  This is where 
I'll
invoke the evolutionary-mirage.  As  described in a prior post, evolution
makes us feel good when we  envision a  healthy future, and feel bad when we
envision a future  that threatens our  continuation. My fear in the face of
imminent  death is an evolutionarily  ingrained emotional reaction  without
logical consistency. Like being  frightened of flying when you  are in a 
good
airplane. Were I able to fully  accept, at a visceral  level, that my
continuer is not the same person, then  I would not  care if I died or lived
in the next  minute.



Brook  Norton





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