CryoNet #33419 - #33422

CryoNet - Sat 5 Mar 2011

    #33419: uploading [Jeff Davis]
    #33420: uploading -- additional comments [Jeff Davis]
    #33421: Terasem [Ettinger]
    #33422: Re: CryoNet #33410 - #33415 [Gerald Monroe]

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Message #33419
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 16:56:16 -0700
Subject: uploading
From: Jeff Davis <[email protected]>

Sometime back, Robert Ettinger provided a list of reasons why
uploading was never going to happen.  I disagreed then, as I do now.
After considering his points, I concluded that the first two, the most
important, were not valid, so I breezed over the rest, finished with
it, and put the matter aside.  I simply did not want to dispute the
point with Dr. Ettinger.  I put it aside out of respect for the man
whom I consider the founder of cryonics.  But maybe it wasn't respect,
just cowardice, ...or laziness.  It seems now that it might be more
respectful to challenge his view, if I think he's got it wrong.  Well,
the upload issue is back again, and with it Dr. E's opposing view.  So
here's my bit.

Gerald Monroe put forth a very concise and orderly statement of how
and why uploading should work, with which I agree entirely.  I take
Dr. Ettinger's main point in rebuttal (point number one (?) in his
previous list of ten(?)), paraphrased, as: a simulation is a
description, and a description of a thing is not the thing.

First, I object to the use of the term "simulation", as it immediately
conveys -- to me, at least --a presumption of limited fidelity, in the
sense of an "approximation", vis a vis original to simulation.  Having
used "simulation" to beg the question of upload fidelity, he then
amplifies the presumed defective fidelity by using the term
"description".  A description is a thought-generated abstraction: a
notion, generally static, conveyed by the use of symbols:
alpha-numeric, graphical, or audible.  Clearly a description of a
thing is not the thing.  This statement is clearly true, but the logic
that leading to it -- leading to identifying an upload with a
"description -- is presumptive and tautological.  It has no validity
for me, I can only reject it and start over.

The human persona is a dynamic information structure.  For comparison
purposes, "Huck Finn" is a static information structure.   The human
persona is mediated by the arrangement of matter we refer to as a
human body.  "Huck Finn" is mediated by the arrangement of matter we
refer to as a book.  The "state" of the human persona is always in
flux, always changing -- thus the term "dynamic" -- updating its state
every thirtieth (approx) of a second in response to the dynamic
interplay of internal and external events.  "Huck Finn" is static,
stays the same, never changes.  "Huck Finn" has untold copies in
various mediums -- paper, parchment, sheepskin, power point, slides,
audio book, synaptic memory, etc -- each of them indisputably "Huck
Finn" because each contains an adequately accurate "copy" of the
"authentic" information structure.

The dynamic information structure which is the human persona has only
one instance.  Yet that is merely a statement of the circumstances of
the moment.  Up till now the opportunity to create a "copy" of a human
persona has not presented itself.  The understanding of the details of
the persona, and its "biological substrate", is currently inadequate,
as is the technology needed to create an engineered substrate to
support the persona and its dynamic activity.  How can I or anyone
then speak authoritatively to the question, "Is that which is
currently infeasible, permanently so, or merely temporarily so?"  They
can't.  Not authoritatively.  And it will do no good for someone to
say "It's never been done."  (Which, by the way, is the argument so
often deployed as a challenge to the feasibility of cryonics.)
Anything that becomes feasible, has to have a starting point, a first
time. Before then -- and so what!?-- it's "never been done".

Which takes us to the meat (pun intended) of the matter.  I conclude
that uploading is feasible, for the simple reason that anything done
with ordinary --as in "non-magical" -- matter, can be done with
different matter, if that different matter can be configured to equal
or exceed the performance of the original substrate.  Every indication
from the computing revolution -- which ten or fifty or two hundred
years from now will likely be "indistinguishable from magic" -- is
that the information processing capability of neural tissue will be
equaled and then surpassed by the information processing performance
of engineered materials.

Nothing I said here is the least bit original.  So why are we in the
cryonics community still discussing it?

I suspect that the religion meme, the "soul" meme is the cause.
Whenever you follow the logic of materialism you arrive at the
conclusion that you are just a pile of stuff.  That you are NOT
special.  Just a chemically active pile of clay.  A animate lump of
undigested meat.  All of human experience, history, philosophy, and
culture revolts at this notion.  "I'm alive!!  I'm alive!!
Vigorously, abundantly, gloriously so."  Screams the persona.  "Just
an illusion, fella." Asserts materialism."  "Just a meat-borne
biochemical accident one minute, and a pile of irrelevant garbage, the
next.   No god, no soul, no divine spark, no "paragon of animals", no
"meaning" anywhere in the universe.  Get over it."

You know the movie "The Night of the Living Dead", where the dead rise
from their graves as zombies and rampage around the countryside, all
soul-less in gray, raggedy, spastic, and menacing?  Well, here's
materialism's truth:  You **ARE** the walking undead.  You **ARE** the
zombies.

The notion of soul saves you from this horror, which is why so many go
there when challenged by materialism's inevitable implication.  That's
the bad news.  The good news is that once you make peace with the
meaninglessness of existence, you have liberated yourself to embrace
the future, and not be frightened by it.

Best, Jeff Davis

 "Death is really just an engineering problem."
                   Regina Pancake

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Message #33420
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 17:54:57 -0700
Subject: uploading -- additional comments
From: Jeff Davis <[email protected]>

I wasn't satisfied that I got my point across, so let me add this:

If you upload someone's dynamic information structure into a android
body, thus eliminating all the "simulated" aspect of an existence
inside a computer, and that robot starts functioning in the world,
with behavior indistinguishable from a biological person, and claiming
to be a person, many people will say it's not a person, it's a
machine.  The difference is that "soul" thing.  Without that "soul"
thing, one would be forced to conclude by an inescapable comparison
that (either the robo-upload is a "real" person or) you, too, are a
machine, a soul-less. zombie.  That's how uploading and its basis in
materialism leads to the unacceptable horror.

Best, Jeff Davis

 "My guess is that people don't yet realize how
    "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be."
                      J Corbally

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Message #33421
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 00:11:48 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Terasem

It is interesting, exasperating, and frustrating to read about Terasem and  
try to gauge its effects, its usefulness or counterproductivity. 
 
Aside from the fact that all of its leaders appear to be women, members of  
Terasem seem in many respects to resemble cryonicists, and indeed support 
for  cryonics is one of its specific endeavors. But Terasem also seems to 
support a  whole gamut of futuristic programs including various kinds of 
transhumanism and  especially "mind uploading" (into a digital computer).
 
The evidence seems very clear to me that (1) "mind uploading" into a  
digital computer will never happen, and (2) support for the concept among  
cryonicists has a strong tendency to turn off potential supporters of cryonics. 
 
Some numbers would be useful, but I don't have them. How many belong to  
Terasem? How many of these agree with the uploading notion? How many give how  
much money/effort to promotion of Terasem, and how much to cryonics?
 
Any help would be appreciated. I have had no luck trying to communicate  
with Martine Rothblatt.
 
Robert Ettinger

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Message #33422
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 00:33:11 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33410 - #33415

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  Apologies to Mark Plus : Mark, I'm sorry I misread your post.   I publicly
accused you of sharing the twisted agenda of those folks on the cult forums,
when you very clearly stated in your post that you were quoting someone
else.

                                                     Gerald Monroe

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