More of a digital copy scenario. The article says the process involves toxic chemicals that lock everything in place so the connectome can be examined. There's no known way to reverse the chemical process in the biological brain.
What server will I wake up on? Who is running the infrastructure? What will be asked of me to be allowed to continue to exist on that server? Given our current societal trends, I can't imagine I would enjoy any existence where a copy of me is spun back up.
And of course, my original thread of consciousness will still be ended, so this is some alternate copy of me. (Based on my view of the teletransportation paradox.)
I don't understand why people don't get this simple fact. We are all gonna die, make inner peace with that (it isn't that hard, depends mostly on your ego) and enjoy rest of that short time here. If you seek immortality, do it either via exceptional deeds or via well-raised children, that's the best we have.
No force in the world is going to move both your mortal neurons with all synapses and electric charge between them that together form your personality into anything else, digital or not. Its like asking to transfer this cup of tea I hold right now into digital form. No, it can be copied to certain precision and that's it.
Or another? The trust you set up ran out of money because all of the fees continued to increase and outpaced certain economic downturns. More and more people drew money off of your remaining static assets. You run out of money. Estate sale. Garbage truck.
Just remember, you’ll have all of time to end up there.
No thanks.
People have strokes or accidents and wake up missing memories and with changed bodies, but their families still call them by name.
You still being you is a matter of degree, not a binary, and different people are comfortable with different degrees of change.
In this case, the damage is total. The degrees end here, it reaches a binary state: from alive to dead. And then something else entirely says they are the dead person and they are alive.
The question is, does society accept a complete switcheroo? The individual died in the process, they cannot give an opinion on this. The copy is another entity. There are no degrees, it's all absolutes with this process.
If you define any change from a previous state that loses some state as damage, then that's a tautology, not an argument.
> The thing is, past a certain degree of damage people stop having opinions, so how would you know the individual is comfortable with it?
We don't. I didn't say everyone was ok with every change. Some people aren't ok with being mildly inebriated, hence my "different strokes for different folks" take. Some people are comfortable losing a decade of memories, and some people would mourn a day lost.
> In this case, the damage is total. The degrees end here, it reaches a binary state: from alive to dead. And then something else entirely says they are the dead person and they are alive.
You're equivocating death with the end of the self. The core conversation here is whether or not that is true, and my opinion is that it is a manner of degree. This goes back to the earlier mention of the teletransportation paradox. Different people how different opinions on what constitutes the self.
> The question is, does society accept a complete switchero?
Society has generally been pragmatic and taken the approach of "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck".
> The individual died in the process, they cannot give an opinion on this. The copy is another entity. There are no degrees, it's all absolutes with this process.
Again, you're assuming your opinion on what constitutes an individual is the one and only interpretation, which isn't the case.
No. That's the definition of damage. "Change" doesn't imply loss. Damage does. With change you can add and/or subtract characteristics. Damage subtracts, it is a more precise term for the examples you gave. Using such a broad term as "change" makes it a euphemism for damage. A bit dishonest really.
>I didn't say everyone was ok with every change.
Neither did I.
>"different strokes for different folks" take.
Dead folks included? That's absurd. Also, who is comfortable losing a decade of memories? Is "comfort" a euphemism for "acceptance due to not having a choice on the matter"?
>Different people how (have) different opinions on what constitutes the self.
Because no one asks the dead guy! (tongue in cheek)
>You're equivocating
How can you be so sure? I have has much right to have an opinion on what constitutes the self as much as you do. Equivocating would imply that my opinion on what constitutes the self is based on an error, a misunderstanding. But you don't even know my opinion on that, we haven't got to it yet.
>Society has generally been
If that were the case then there would be no argument. All opinions opposed to accepting whatever comes out of this process as the same person are hereby dismissed due to tradition. Society has generally been such and such. It's settled then.
>Again, you're assuming
No, it is you who's assuming you know my opinion on this.
Glad you asked, here's my opinion:
Continuity. The ship of Theseus (with all planks and everything replaced) will always be the same ship. The copy of the ship of Theseus built right next to the original won't become the original ship of Theseus just because the original is destroyed.
The process destroys the original. This does not promote the copy to original status. It breaks continuity. If the original wasn't destroyed, the copied person and the original are easily distinguished by the people who witnessed the process since both cannot occupy the same space at the same time, one of them is definitely more to the left than the other, at least.
Now for the original and the copy, both will think they are the original if there's no information that satisfies them both about who's who. I would consider that lying to either one of them about their status is a serious crime.
But in this process, there's definitely a corpse left behind. Probably not complete since the copying is destructive to the brain. But the existence of a corpse will definitely convince the copy is the copy. The copy might stubbornly refuse to accept it as such, but that's on them and they are responsible for the consequences that stance might bring.
This proposed technology is messy. They don't even advertise a copy. Just a scan that could one day maybe used to make a "copy"(within questionable standards of what constitutes a copy in the future). That makes things easy for me, really. If it was a teletransportation paradox (without the killing part) then I'd have to accept that the original and the copy are the same, atom for atom, and now there's simply two of them, like a string of bytes on a computer, neither is the original or the copy and they are just the same individual that start diverge due to the impossibility of both occupying the same space at the same time, yada yada yada. But this isn't that, it's the cheap, oh so cheap knock off that only a sad few will settle for. If ever.
So no, I'm not equivocating death with the end of the self. This is just not a teletransportation paradox situation. The technology the article presents is not even close to make an atom for atom copy of a person. Furthermore, I figure if we ever reach that level of technology, we won't need to let the original die to make a copy, we could just cure whatever they are suffering from.
And finally, I would settle for a not so perfect copy of a brain scenario. Magic "Nanobots" replacing the neurons of a subject in vivo, gradually over the span of a few days/weeks/months. The new neurons can be non-biological, but must work identically to the original ones and obviously the connectome should be identical. The subject would be asked if they feel ok with this process regularly and the general part of the brain that is responsible for answering that question would be the last part to be replaced, otherwise it would be cheating wouldn't it? On completion, I would assume it's the same person and if it was me I would assume I'm the same person. This preserves continuity (of the self) to my personal satisfaction. Anything less than that is cryonics-level of bull**.
Again, you're missing the point. We can use the word damage and it doesn't change the argument here. A concussion is damage, but it doesn't mean you're someone else after you have one.
> Neither did I.
Not sure why you brought up people who don't have opinions then.
> Dead folks included?
If we are talking about reanimated consciousnesses of the dead, the yeah.
> Also, who is comfortable losing a decade of memories?
So you think people should be more accepting of losing ALL memories (dying) than losing 10 years of memories? I'm kinda losing the point you're trying to make here. Should we hold on as hard as possible, or accept obliteration. You seem to be saying both.
> How can you be so sure? I have has much right to have an opinion on what constitutes the self as much as you do.
By definition? You are stating your opinion as fact. Having an opinion is fine, but if your argument relies on your opinion being true then that's just circular reasoning.
> No, it is you who's assuming you know my opinion on this.
I'm not assuming it, I'm reading it. Maybe I misunderstood something, but I only have what you give me here.
> Continuity. The ship of Theseus (with all planks and everything replaced) will always be the...
If we use Theseus as the proxy for our convo:
I'm not saying the new ship "is the original ship" in some philosophical way. I'm saying, if it behaves the same and carries the same passengers, I don't see any reason to change the ship's name. If the original ship said "hey, I'm cool to be taken apart as long as you save my design and build me again later to the best of your ability," then I have no problem building the ship later and calling it "The ship of Theseus".
> So no, I'm not equivocating death with the end of the self.
So, what did you mean by "it" when you said "it reaches a binary state, from alive to dead"?
This feels like an odd cope, sure I might not be able to do anything about my mortality, but I still view the fact that I and other people are mortal as a damn tragedy (and often the gradual decline and non-dignified end of people's lives). If someone held a gun at my head and I knew that within a minute they're going to pull the trigger, I'd be rightfully quite disturbed. Now knowing that a metaphorical trigger will be pulled at a random time decades later doesn't make it any less disturbing. The only solace there is ignorance.
> do it either via exceptional deeds or via well-raised children
Both of those are worthy pursuits, but are also categorically different from you being here. So sure, you can and probably should say that living a good life is what people should do instead of losing sleep over their mortality - but that also moves the goal posts in a sense. You could have cut it short at the equivalent of "you'll never be immortal".
Did you even read my comment? In the last paragraph I discuss this and the teletransportation paradox, and how it will not actually be me but a copy, my thread of consciousness dies with me.
Please give me the courtesy of at least a full read before replying.
You should go to a cancer ward and tell that to all the cancer patients there. That will make them "get it" like you do.
Some people think identity and the continuity of consciousness are based on information or computation, and not on specific physical matter or soul-like constructs, so for them a transfer of all relevant information would constitute a transfer of consciousness and identity. From this perspective (leaving aside questions of practicality) "you yourself looking from the biological body at somebody else in the computer" is exactly as valid as "you yourself looking from inside the computer at somebody else in the biological body" (and in fact the whole idea that you have to choose one or the other as "the real you" becomes moot on this view).
Of course it's a difficult metaphysical conundrum but to say that your view of things is "a simple fact" when the basic scientific materialist worldview of today points at least as much in the opposite direction is a bit overconfident.
Not that it matters; we sleep and wake up, no one freaks out daily that they were unconscious for hours.
No reason to suspect waking up in 3030 after being unfrozen or in 6045 after being cybernetically reanimated would be any more disconcerting physiologically than an extended coma patients experience.
Your continuity is just as illusionous as your free will.
Speak for yourself! Every time I come to there's something to freak out about. Okay, not every time, but waking up is a lot.
It's an element of faith, not fact. If you simulate a human body from quarks up, the physics won't know if it's running on base reality or in a computer.
You have no special access to data or insight that anyone else does, nor new evidence and the argument itself is always pretty specious (those patterns over there are different because like, they're not here).
If a copy is indistinguishable enough from the original, you have to treat that copy as you would treat you.
Imagine the following experiment, you are on a room seeing 5 (or 20, or 100) live streams of as many perfect copies. You are informed that a livestream of yourself is being presented to the rest.
You are given the same questions and you all answer in the same way. Now they tell that out of all of you, only one is the original and that you can vote to proceed with some pretty terrible physical punishment to the simulations. Which way are you voting?
What makes it obvious are illnesses like dementia and general decay of neural activity as we get older.
If we implant the same memories into something or someone that person/entity would become you, like waking up from a long nap. You might not feel the same, think the same, or act the same, but it would still feel like you. Going one step further and growing an exact clone can probably go even further than that.
This is roughly inline with a many-worlds theorem where tiny variations can create many versions of you, this would be that but within the same universe.
Well, proving it would require you to end your life because the basis for the theorem is that there will always be a version of you that will not die.
When I'm dying, I won't care at all about versions of me in parallel universes living on, because they're not me.
- Imperative Pink Eye
Interesting! Which atoms do you consider to be your identity? That demonstrate someone is the "same" person for a lifetime?
And more importantly, why?
If our identity involves any abstraction whatsoever, any independence from particular material constituents (whatever dependency could possibly mean in a universe where particles of a type are indistinguishable (i.e. can appear in different contexts but do not have identities), then we are not substrate bound. We just require isomorphism.
(Any assumptions that there can only be one future "self", that isomorphic copies are neither inheritors or branches of our identity, require some clear explanation. To separate solid reasoning from our intuitions which are often strongly biased by a lack of prior experience.)
Cherish it if the Great RNG In The Sky gave your simulation cycle a good seed.
So, if copying brains is possible, and you don't know which version of you you are, you might have odds of, say, 1 to 1 trillion to be living your first, biological live.
Which is to say, if copying brains is possible, you are likely to be running in a simulation already.
[0] there's multiple links and I can't find where I first read, but I found this one from 2024, https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7774 and uhh.. turns out the argument isn't from him personally (and he doesn't even believe on it), and is best presented here https://simulation-argument.com/ (though it's presented very differently so idk)
My compliance is complete.
Mine ends several times every night. I am probably generic92034#60000 and counting.
Does the thread of someone elses consciousness ends when they experience grand mal seizure and thrir electrical brain activity goes wrong all at once and then resets?
How's "waking up" in the virtual different from waking up from grand mal seizure? (assuming that all relevant biochemical data of neurons was read correcly and their behavior is simulated correctly)
I can't imagine anything of value that you could offer at that point, when artificial intelligence has become so powerful. Any knowledge you have would have been outdated and any intellectual ability would have been surpassed already.
"in effect" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
If they freeze the vesicles that deliver transmitters and make them analyzable, you've got all the information you need. In terms of a modern ANN, it's the connections (axons) and the weights (transmitters/receptors in tandem).
That said, this article doesn't get to the point in the free section. How are they collecting the information? Slicing is inherently destructive. Someone's got to manufacture an entirely novel imaging modality. Perhaps they could scan millimeters ahead of the slice at a resolution high enough to image receptors. Not possible currently.
This is exactly what I’m doubting, how can you be so sure?
How can we possibly know that the non-connectome details of the brain don't influence computation or conscious experience?
It seems we ignore these only because they don't fit neatly into our piles of linear algebra that we call ANNs.
Sure, to your point, we don't know. But the worm above (nematode) swims and seeks food when dropped into a physics engine.
My main point is that the scale of the human brain is well beyond the capabilities of modern imaging modalities, and it will likely remain so indefinitely. Fascicles we can image, individual axons we cannot. I guess, theoretically, we'll eventually be able to (but it's not relevant to us or any of our remote descendants).
Nematode worms have an oxytocin analogue called nematocin that is known to influence learning and social behaviors like mating. As far as I can find, the project doesn't account for this, or only minimally, but aims to in the future.
It's not surprising that immediate short-term behaviors like movement depend mostly on the faster signaling of the connectome. But since we know of other mechanisms that most definitely influence the connectome's behavior, and we know we don't account for those at the moment, it is not accurate to say that the connectome is "all the information you need".
I agree that mapping the connectome of the human brain is impractical to the point of impossibility. But even if we could, the resulting "circuit diagram" would not capture all the details needed to fully replicate human cognition. Aspects of it, sure. Maybe even enough to make it do useful tasks for EvilCorp LLC while being prodded with virtual sticks and carrots. But it would be incomplete.
There's research on the translation process where cells are basically flash-frozen (to avoid water crystals), then imaged with cryoelectronmicroscopy / AFM etc. where they image the translation process (RNA to protein) in order to get snapshots and get a better understanding of how the folding proceeds and is aided.
If we can image sub-cellular features, what makes you believe we can't trace all the axons, dendrites and the synapses?
It seems more like a question of how to do it cost effectively at scale, not so much a question of "can we or not?".
Most likely they're just preserving the tissue, but not the consciousness
So the consciousness is the "computing session", and if we can persist the state of the hardware before shutdown, then booting it back up will give us that consciousness.