Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Would you?
So, a fascinating interview with Douglas Richard Hofstadter last year, now translated into English. In it, he makes the following comments concerning Ray Kurzweil's notion of achieving effective immortality by 'uploading' a personality into a machine hardware:
I think Ray Kurzweil is terrified by his own mortality and deeply longs to avoid death. I understand this obsession of his and am even somehow touched by its ferocious intensity, but I think it badly distorts his vision. As I see it, Kurzweil's desperate hopes seriously cloud his scientific objectivity.
I think Kurzweil sees technology as progressing so deterministically fast (Moore's Law, etc.) that inevitably, within a few decades, hardware will be so fast and nanotechnology so advanced that things unbelievable to us now will be easily doable. A key element in this whole vision is that no one will need to understand the mind or brain in order to copy a particular human's mind with perfect accuracy, because trillions of tiny “nanobots” will swarm through the bloodstream in the human brain and will report back all the “wiring details” of that particular brain, which at that point constitute a very complex table of data that can be fed into a universal computer program that executes neuron-firings, and presto — that individual's mind has been reinstantiated in an electronic medium.
So, here's the question: given the sort of technology outlined above, would you elect to have your mind reinstated in an electronic medium?
Jim Downey
(Extensive discussion of some of the rest of the interview on my blog.)
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David Brin
David Brin, the author of The Postman (a much better book than the movie) wrote a book about this called The Kiln People. (http://www.davidbrin.com/othersfbooks.html)
Cory Doctorow wrote about it as well in Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom, which you can download for free at http://craphound.com/down/ (he provides it in different languages and formats.)
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
John Varley
John Varley also explored this theme of being able to upload and download your 'you-ness' in several of his stories. The thing about this is you dont have control. Youre in the hands of someone who does the actual downloading (since youre dead) and this someone can tweak your software whichever way he or she or it (in the case of the Gaea trilogy for instance) likes.
Downloading
Philip Jose Farmer had something like that too in his World of Tiers series. The receptacles for human minds were these indestructible black "bells." You'd put a bell on your head and it would pierce your skull with needles and record your consciousness. The glitch was, the bells were so complex they eventually became intelligent on their own, and wanted to be humans, so they started stealing human bodies and imprisoning the person in the bell while they walked around wearing his flesh and experiencing humanness. While outside the bell, though, they could be killed, so they kept the bells close to them all the time, in case they needed a safe retreat.
No, thank you
So, here's the question: given the sort of technology outlined above, would you elect to have your mind reinstated in an electronic medium?
No. The whole thing about being a theist is that the immortality thing is supposed to transcend the physical and move on into some kind of existence that's, well, different.(Yes, yes, it's faith, belief, not rational, etc -- just thought I'd get that out of the way. ;-))
Anyway, my 'OS and software' being uploaded onto an electronic medium is I think just the same as my software being used to run this hardware made of meat. And Im sure youve noticed by now, that life on earth sucks and we do the best we can. So if it's a choice between dying and being kept alive forever through technology, I'd choose non-existence in a heartbeat.
Alive Forever
It's not forever. It's just until you decide not to continue with it. I'd far rather be able to make my own choice about the length of my life rather than trust the blind forces of nature.
But is it?
But is it?
I think this is interesting, and a big part of the reason I posited the question: where we come down on this depends on what our expectations are.
If you think that the 'nerd rapture' offers perfection and control, then it makes a lot of sense to opt in. If you worry about what it really means, then you might have more reluctance to do so.
Personally, I would not want to be part of the alpha or beta test group - there are decidedly worse things than being dead, as far as I am concerned, and I could easily see this reality encompassing some of those.
Once I knew what the technology actually meant, I *might* be tempted to opt in. Maybe. But I sure as hell wouldn't buy a pig-in-a-poke.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Opting In
Same with me, I guess, for the most part. Despite a decade of glowing reviews, I wouldn't consider getting my eyes lasered.
Heh. I've been a fan of cryonics for years, but I've toyed with the possible horrible end results more than once: What if you woke up in the future, and discovered they'd thrown away everything but your brain, because they'd found a way to use revivified brains to run garbage compactors or deep sea manganese nodule collectors or something?
A very sensible worry
When you think about it. The problem of achieving AI may prove so intractable that the way we get there is by downloading human intelligence to computers. Some things are too complex to be designed-they have to have evolved! OTOH, it may not be so worrisome. After all, just because our body is dead doesn't mean we shouldn't still earn our keep working!
TAM 6 Call for papers: James
TAM 6 Call for papers: James Randi - little blaspheming atheist fraud and his army of robot zombie followers:
visit:
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=94
to see how we stopped Randi's MD paranormal challenge....
and FINALLY:
guess what is inside angel's ENVELOPE:
___________________
|
| RANDI'S HEAD
|
___________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YXHGGfeVzI
you are a fucking fraud, Mabus
If you have any actual evidence at all put it before us for review, otherwise, go the fuck somewhere else you superstitious buffoon.
Just a duplicate, not a transfer
The problem I see is that the process described wouldn't make me immortal--it would just create an immortal duplicate of my mind/personality.
Now, I like my personality, but I don't know that I like it so much that I think I owe it to the world to leave an immortal duplicate personality behind when I die. And it's not like *I* get anything out of the process. So it seems kind of pointless to me.
Solution
The two sides of our brains can actually be separated and continue to function, but when linked together form one personality. It should be possible (eventually) to wire our brains to cyberspace, so that a portion of our unitary personality is running on the computer. Then when your biological brain died, your personality would experience continuity by shifting totally into cyberspace-actual immortality. Another plus would be that once science can deliver what religion can only promise-eternal life-there isn't much reason left to continue worshiping skydaddy.
Hmm.
Just a few thoughts:
It's fiction, of course, but in the Star Trek universe, when the transporter tears you up into your component energy and duplicates (reconstitutes?) you elsewhere, they seem to assume the transported duplicate is the same person.
If the "you" in the computer had all your memories and personality, that "you" would believe there was a continuity of self.
I think of myself as continuous, but some years back I listened to some tape recordings I made when I was in my 20s, and I didn't even like the little bozo.
In some ways, selfness is a sort of moment-to-moment illusion. In some form or another, I'd like to be around for a long, long time.
...
"... I don't ... think I owe it to the world to leave an immortal duplicate ..."
Yeah, but that's you. Some of us are so cool we SHOULD be immortalized. :)
would I?
Does "in a fucking heartbeat" get the point across?
Y E S. agreed. no matter
Y E S. agreed.
no matter where you go, there you are
Heh.
Couldn't have said it better.
Yes, and a robotic body if possible
Although there could be unintended consequences. For instance, people who lose the sense of smell often become severely depressed; what sensory array could an android body acquire? Perhaps ones superior to the biological ones on which my consciousness grew?
Cloning
Screw android. If my personality could be downloaded into a computer, then it should be possible to download it into my clone.
Why, so I can live with this set of genes again?
Same bad knees, same tendency toward depression, same hypersensitivity to pain, same maladjusted eyesight, same poor blood sugar control? No thanks. I wants me some titanium and some super-senses and some upgradability. Not to mention some addressable memory; when I see someone I want to remember their name right away, not after I've awkwardly skirted around the gap for three minutes of conversation.
And constant Internet access would be pretty cool too.
Well ...
Yeah, you'd have all those same genetic weaknesses. But on the other hand ... flying cars! Rocket belts! Sexy robotic mistresses!
Absolutely
It would either work, and my consciousness would go on indefinitely, or it wouldn't work and I'd be no worse off. The only thing I would want is the right to chose to end that consciousness at any time of my choosing.
Oh, and I'd want access to porn.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
We'd need to revamp . . .
...this classic to say "Eternity is for porn".
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
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