Ray Kurzweil, Cyberprophet or Crack-Pot?

[TallDave]

This is getting a bit embarassing.. I'm really not playing thick. I'll sleep on that one and hopefully have something to make this argument move forward.

Think of it this way: are you the same person you were at four years of age? At birth? Or have you developed heuristics over that time that are very different from the ones you had then?

I think we would all object to a reboot from an earlier time. It would be a progressively worse form of murder the more of our accumulated identity was taken from us.

When you start thinking about this, you quickly realize there is no moment besides right now that you were entirely the you of now.

You can be a very similar copy, esp. if you're close in time, but never the same.

Once you accept that, you're forced to accept that a "not-quite-you" in a different place is no different than the "not-quite-you" in another time. You just have less in common.

People tend to find this disturbing and don't want to accept it because of how we're programmed. An organism that didn't have a strong compulsion to maintain its current physical form would not have survived long, evolutionarily speaking.

[JoeStrout]

I am the past me because I remember doing everything I did. No one else does, just as I don't remember doing anything anyone else has done.

Yes, this is called the "memory theory of personal identity," and it was first proposed by Locke in the 1600s. And it's a very sensible theory, though folks will be able to trip you up on the edge cases if you use only Boolean logic with it.

It's sounding like you mean that we don't exist anywhere else than in the present moment and, in accumulation, are as legion as there are instants multiplied by so many different people. If I'm not the me I was when I was doing something this last morning, then what's the point of life extension? It wouldn't be my life extension but someone else's.

That's true, but I'm not sure where you got the idea that I would say that. You are almost exactly the same person you were this morning.

I don't see a crutch at all.

That's because you're not using one. You're using the memory theory of identity, which I consider a little coarse (there is more to who we are than just what we remember — there are aptitudes and personality traits and so on too), but is basically sound.

The crutch I've referred to is the idea that you survive if your brain is gradually replaced, while maintaining some sort of continuity, but not if it is replaced all at once, or with a procedure that interrupts continuity.

But your theory doesn't say anything at all about continuity; you are the person who remembers doing everything you did. So, if we had the technology, we could take you completely apart, and reassemble you entirely anew at another place or time, and you'd be the same person — you would survive this procedure — because you'd still remember everything you've done.

Good for you — you're ready to upload, and well ahead most people, who haven't yet thought about personal identity deeply enough and still get by pretty much identifying people by their physical bodies.

Some replies to the points made in other posts:
Someone who's had his brain on ice for a while before being reanimated.. I think that would be like simply losing time. Like watching a videotape that had been paused for a bit when it was originaly recorded.

Agreed.

Twins don't consider themselves one another.

True, because (by my theory) they don't have the same mental structure, or (by your and Locke's theory) they don't have the same memories.

There needs to be more precise terminology. I see that the "T1 and T3" persons are indeed different, but their identity is the same.

Whoops — the terminology is precise, when it's used precisely. In the context of personal identity, to say "the same person" means that their identity is the same; to say "different people" means people with different identities.

[Re. transporter copies...] That's just a copy. If I immediately clone a room full of myself, all of those are merely acting just as I would, and no one else but me sitting at the computer typing right now, and looking at them, and them, would know that it's them that were cloned. In that sense we are the same; same memories, same physical constitution. But otherwise it's them who've branched from my timeline thanks to the cloning event.

Hmm, I was all with you above, but now you're not making much sense — or at least, not being consistent with what you said before. If we fill a room with exact duplicates of you, they all remember everything you did. Therefore, by your original reasoning, they are all you. I would agree with that, and I'm not sure why you're trying to back away from it now and say that only one of them is you.

I think this debate is not going to be resolved because what consciousness is, is as good as supernatural, as far as empiricaly poking and prodding is concerned. There's no debating that sort of thing.

You give up too easily. This doesn't really have much to do with consciousness, and philosophical debates can be resolved, when people apply themselves with rigor. Mathematics is supernatural too, yet mathematicians routinely resolve debates there. Philosophy is the same, just a little less rigorous.

A biological twin doesn't consider that they live on if he or she dies while the other lives on.. Those twins were the same at birth, and lived different lives from that point on. They're the same as a clone of me that's made today, except that the branch was made decades after birth, rather than at T=0.

Yes, they're the same as a clone, not a duplicate. Clones don't share any memories or other mental structure. This is clearly not the same as a duplicate, who shares all mental structure (including memories).

That still seems wrong to me. The pattern is still some specific matter or energy. The matter and energy that constitutes Me_1 isn't the same as that of Me_2. Symetry doesn't equate to being the same.
The book analogy seems like another pov issue. I couldn't tell which book is which, but if the book were conscious, they would.

Nuts. You were doing so well for a while there.

Cheers,
- Joe

[JoeStrout]

Joe, you keep coming back to the thought that, "My Identity goes forward."
To me, that seems to miss the point. I don't care if my identity goes forward, I want to go forward. There's a definite difference.

No, that's just a terminology issue — the term "identity" means nothing more or less than "who you are." So to say that you go forward means that, at some forward point, there is a person whose identity is yours.

Though you might win in the end. I started reading a book a while ago that dealt with mind uploading, and the gaps/identity stuff resulting from accidental death. Part of the premise was simply that the uploaded people outlived everyone who objected.
Actually, I think that was already mentioned.

Yes, this is a debate that will become pretty much moot at some point — but it's fun in the meantime. And, if I can save any of you from dying of an illogical philosophy, then I'll have done a good thing.

Cheers,
- Joe

[TallDave]

Part of the premise was simply that the uploaded people outlived everyone who objected.

Or at least, very similar copies did so. Hehe.

Whch leads to a question: why would I want to perpetuate my memories and patterns of thought? I think that desire is probably just a misapplication of my core programming which instructs me to maintain my physical self. Evolution never presented the situation where personality might be perpetuated separately from body, so as far as my programming goes they're treated as the same thing. Thus, I feel compelled to do so if such a possibility should arise.

[ravingdave]

Part of the premise was simply that the uploaded people outlived everyone who objected.

Or at least, very similar copies did so. Hehe.

Whch leads to a question: why would I want to perpetuate my memories and patterns of thought? I think that desire is probably just a misapplication of my core programming which instructs me to maintain my physical self. Evolution never presented the situation where personality might be perpetuated separately from body, so as far as my programming goes they're treated as the same thing. Thus, I feel compelled to do so if such a possibility should arise.

I haven't really been interested in this topic much till now, but now I figure i'll add my two cents.


It is my opinion that the human thought is not just the function of the human brain. Endocrinology indicates that what you think and how you act is influenced heavily by various secretions that occur throughout the body. The idea that a computer or some such could contain the personality of an individual based solely on memories, etc. overlooks the fact that all the chemical influences in the body must be replicated or synthesized in order for the synthetic brain to process them as would a real individual.

To restate my point in simpler terms, without the peripherials, you won't have a normal functioning personality.


To make a human personality emulator using human memory etc, you're gonna have to make a body emulator and possibly an entire world emulator to go along with it, else you are going to have a crazy brain emulator on your hands.



David

[TallDave]

Endocrinology indicates that what you think and how you act is influenced heavily by various secretions that occur throughout the body.

Yes, I think that's a very good point. Anyone who's done some bodybuilding knows testosterone makes you think differently.

To make a human personality emulator using human memory etc, you're gonna have to make a body emulator

Yes. Now, generally the way this works (oversimplified) is that a receptor on a synapse is excited by a hormone that fits that receptor, and if its excited enough it fires. The cumulative action of many such neuirons give rise to things like the compulsion to get laid, eat something, etc. There's hunger hormones, sleep hormones, even a trust hormone.

It's going to be a very, very complicated simulation. It might need to be orders of magnitude greater than the brain's raw processing power to also simulate the endogenous inputs (the exogenous inputs would presumably be the same: sight, sound, etc). On the plus side, you can make your virtual gf horny with the flip of a logic gate.

[ckrucks]

Run this entire conversation to its conclusion and you will likely end up at?

Any kind of You, Physical or I cannot be confirmed.

Perhaps Thought can be confirmed but only internally and only to the extent that there is thought. I don?t believe you can get to an I/ME-Human-Computer-Other Thought is coming from.

P&CG

CKR
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Dr Platform

[JohnSmith]

Sorry, ckrucks, but I don't know what you just said. Could you elaborate?

[ckrucks]

Talking and thinking about this over months and years you'll likely have to answer these questions before you can make any progress.

How can I and/or anyone else know this thing called I this thing called Physical and this thing called You exist?

So what does exist anyway?
How can I or anyone else confirm it?

CKR
________
Yamaha Dx1 Specifications

[rj40]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpU8sX10_4

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Ha! Very nice.

[ZenDraken]

How can I and/or anyone else know this thing called I this thing called Physical and this thing called You exist?

So what does exist anyway?
How can I or anyone else confirm it?

CKR

The only thing "I" know absolutely for certain is this: I am aware.

That's the only thing I can confirm. Everything else is just conjecture. All this input is coming at me and I make theories about what it means.

You: My conjecture is that "you" are a real, conscious, living person. But at a fundamental level I can't ever know that for certain. Even if I met you in person and shook your hand, I might just be a brain in a jar, and you're just part of a massive simulation that's being fed to me. I might just be a disembodied point of view drifting in limbo and all this stuff is just some random hallucination. I don't know with absolute certainty what all this stuff is, but I do know I'm aware of it, whatever it is.

I'd say likewise, the only thing "you" know for certain is that you are aware. But I don't know for certain that "you" even exist.

So... sorry. Obviously, it's all about me!

[JohnSmith]

Brain in a jar...

You read the wikipedia article too!

[TallDave]

ckrucks,

You can't really know if anything is real. On the other hand, if you apply empiricism it turns out reality behaves in very predictable ways, such that we can gain wondrous use from detailed descriptions of how it behaves based on our awareness, especially when we extend that awareness through other physical tools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

Why did China stagnate for millennia while Western Civ arose from the Enlightenment to take over the world in mere centuries? In a word, empiricism.

[djolds1]

Why did China stagnate for millennia while Western Civ arose from the Enlightenment to take over the world in mere centuries? In a word, empiricism.

Actually the Age of Science grew out of the Renaissance, with the Enlightenment being the secondary ideological follow-on.

But I'm quibbling.

Duane

[TallDave]

Yes, Renaissance is probably more accurate.