If the neurons responsible for your sexual drives and feelings were ruled obsolete legacy neural circuits which cause war and greed, and were to be removed from all future versions of you, would you still choose to live?

It is my conjecture (and belief) that subjective dt is the ratio of dt to the total ‘t’ experienced by the organism up to the present time. (This means that, based on the subjective experience of time passing and current tables of life expectancy, a person’s life is half over at about 17.)

Let us begin with some priors.

Existence exists … which means only existence exists.
This is the metaphysical part we call reality.

We exist as part of existence and we are conscious.
We are conscious of our metaphysical environment.

Concepts are the link we define between metaphysical existence and our mental models of that existence.

Existence is identity. Consciousness is Identification.

No more no less.

The problem of evolving our selves to the present set of physical abilities is now complete. The system of self replication has been perfected sufficiently to enable us to now concentrate on the accumulation of sufficient knowledge to escape earth and it’s solar system and move on ot the rest of the universe we find ourselves in. This is an amazing discovery to me. comments?

There is a factor that no one seems to be considering, that is we are all very unique one of a kind collection of life experiences. Even language is difficult for us because of this. We each code and decode with different life databases, and so we have a lot of confusion when we attempt to communicate between our selves. This is a good thing. It is responsible for the richness and diversity that life offers us. Each one of us is a study in evolution of experience and the attempt to discuss those experiences. These discussions smooth out the differences if you will, and enable some precise exchanges which we can agree helps all of us live better lives. We call this knowledge, and the accumulation of the knowledge we call wisdom. This is sometimes passed on to the next generation, sometimes not: often they must search for it on their own.

Now if we become able to pass on this accumulated agreed upon version of humanity’s accumulated wisdom to the future we may very well loose that uniqueness which created our abilities in the first place.

I think having the ability to flip between the experiences of both offerings of our selves would be the way to begin this endeavor. Speaking for my self alone here I believe.

Comments are appreciated of course …. this is a great thresd.

A skill like that is just something else that, one day, could be downloaded directly to nanomachines in your brain….a skill that can be learned instantly. If you are unwilling to wait though….well, practice :p.

As for sleeping…I think you are also right on that – we’d still be capable of having sleep, but it would be more superficial since it’s now a choice over a necessity….we’d be so active, capable and connected, that we really WOULD become a 24/7 society — of course, this opens other issues like privacy and personal liberty and how they are settled in such a social world. I suppose they/we would have to figure them out, one way or another.

Also, as we currently sleep a third of our life away, I guess we truly will become a 24/7 society in future, once it becomes a redundant process.

Once you start looking at consciousness in a more expanded malleable way, these questions seem to fade away I think….and that’s the nice thing about all these exponentially growing technologies….they are decentralizing and expanding our consciousness more and more.

I think we’ll have less emotional attachment to our bodies when they’re re-printable husks. And I guess there will be some sort of automatic copyright for both your brain back-up and husk info.

Good grief, reading that back it sounds like crazy talk. I am quite sane, mostly. :-)

You got destructive scanning which boils down to this: Copy+Delete+Paste….your brain is scanned in a destructive process, and then pasted in a new substrate.

Or you’ve got noninvasive methods which are not harmful: Copy+Paste….of course, now you have the issue of having a double.

In both scenarios, I’m having difficulty understanding how you would complete the desired goal of porting your consciousness — the former is even riskier because, if the new software-based you isn’t really ‘you’, you can’t do anything more because you have just committed suicide, so we avoid the issue of their being two people….but if this software-person really isn’t the original you….

Their doesn’t seem to be a simple Drag and Drop transfer of moving consciousness to another substrate, which is what my original question hinged on, hence the zombie issue….because if you really could transfer consciousness without making any copies in this simple manner, this leaves the curious question of what will happen next to the original body, since it’s now just laying around like a corpse. You could almost call it an in-between of the two processes; it’s not quite destructive, but the results aren’t far off. Still, it’s the only clear-cut way of seeing how successful mind-uploading could be accomplished without the philosophical issues, at least that I can think up right now; having your mindless corpse laying around is preferable to creating a second you, especially if you are destructively killed in a suicide operation and it gets to lead the postbiological life you wanted for yourself.

Even if you were to gradually augment yourself, how much difference would that really make? Even if you were completely ‘natural’, you would have to have nanobots injected into you to upload yourself in order for your brain to be scanned…so essentially, you are augmenting yourself, even if it was only for a short while. You could say that it’s not the same, but it then comes down to what is defined as ‘augmentation’ in the first place, as some will say that having nanobots inside you, on principle, means you are augmenting yourself (and shoot – the very nature of mind-uploading is the ultimate augmentation).

Your post Allanx, is the only one however where I feel I get it….maybe it’s your choice of words, but I like you how say we were “substituting”….that the brain is actually getting replaced from the inside out, so the question of uploading is actually sort of just a matter of telepresence….we then move our consciousness to whereever we want now that we are substrate-independent (essentially, we have already uploaded ourselves by the time we have already begun our first augmentations), including the computational substrate we desired.

Perhaps I’m thinking too hard on substrate…after all, if you have nonbiological machines in your body, then you have computation substrate running through you….maybe then, it’s best not to get too nitpicky with the semantics.

It’s not about a Drag and Drop, or creating a second you (literally)….but merely stretching and extending your consciousness, and I think this is where these philosophical issues come from, because we’re used to consciousness in a narrow-sense — one mind/one body….however, if a “second” you is created, maybe we’re not thinking about it in the right way…maybe the ‘second’ you isn’t an entirely new entitiy, but merely a new “you” that is no different then the “you” in VR….after all, if you have nanomachines in your brain that allow you to enter VR at any given moment, doesn’t that mean their is a second you? Not literally, but you get the idea….to put it more simply, their isn’t a second ‘you’ no more then their is an offline-you and an online-you that exist depending on when you like spending time on each one. It’s all the same “you”…..and if you were to upload yourself, and their was a second you, it’s not literally a second being, but yet another extension of yourself…..so all the philosophical issues, sort of get laid to rest.

At least, I think I do, and I think this is how mind-uploading works…weirdly, the whole process doesn’t seem like a big deal at all thinking like this – one could argue that we upload ourselves the first moment we augment ourselves, or even further….the first moment we log onto the Internet….alot of it stems to our understanding of consciousness and it’s something that is going to be vastly more pervasive, and these philosophical questions (like the issue of whether or not their will be two “yous”) sort of stem from that. I think if you think on what it exactly means to have one-mind/many-bodies, the issues concerning uploading (at least in a philosophical sense) sort of fade away.

Any critiques?

As for gradually placing nonbiological machines in you, that’s exactly what Kurzweil advocates and I can see why….my original question concerned a person who didn’t augment themselves whatsoever and desired to upload themselves…but if you were to slowly augment yourselves, it’s possible that, aside from being easier (since so much of yourself is already machine), porting yourself would altogether get rid of these philosophical issues because you’ve made a bridge for yourself, rather then trying to leapfrog to the end in a single jump. You wouldn’t have to worry about making a second-you, because uploading yourself to a computational substrate wouldn’t be vastly different then what you could already do with your mental nanomachines, like placing yourself in virtual reality.

I wonder if that’s what Kurzweil has the “bridges” mentality…that you actually HAVE to take things in this manner and can’t skip any steps, at least not without creating issues.

Yeah, that’s always been my assumption.

For your first scenario to happen, creating a second copy of the uploaded personality (ctrl c, ctrl v) would have to “zombify” the original upload, even if the machines both were running on were unconnected.

Personally, I don’t like the upload idea, and would rather upgrade the hardware I’ve already got.

With their reduced carbon footprint, and reduced overall need for energy, transportation and various consumer goods and utilities (substrate-independent minds need nothing more than electric power, shelter and spare parts to experience rich, virtual worlds teeming with information), not only could trillions of such beings populate the globe, but colonization of hostile worlds would be much, much easier. These beings wouldn’t need generation ships to cross the vastness of space. They wouldn’t even need conventional life support and its associated risks of explosive decompression. They would be hardened against the effects of cosmic radiation. They wouldn’t need rations, or air. In short, they would be the perfect space-faring beings.

Thing is, if your body doesn’t become a vegetable, then their is an issue, because it means their are now two you’s – whether or not you’re the one who is software now or not, which is obviously a problem. Of course, my original question one…if one successfully is noninvasively scanned, and crosses the human/machine divide in the upload, then what will become of the original body?

I wonder if in the future, we’ll only adopt destructive-methods to do away with these philosophical issues altogether, at least for awhile — dangerous for the initial scans, but at least will give scientists time to perfect noninvasive methods without running the risk of creating two “yous”….in a sense, I wonder what’s the point of a noninvasive scan; not like you have much attachment to your original body if you are willing to leave it behind.

Or maybe i’m not thinking about this right at all – maybe noninvasive methods will ALWAYS leave the original ‘you’ intact, whether or not you are the one made of software now or not (so it’s luck if ‘you’ are the one who crosses over?), and it’s not a matter of your body being left as a living corpse whatsoever.

…So one could either destructively scan their brain, or do noninvasively and run the risk of creating a double – the former still has issues because, if it doesn’t work out, you’re committing suicide. Sounds like I need to do more research on this topic, but as we move into the future, hopefully these ‘big’ philosophical issues are simply inflated as all the rest and not as complicated as one might think.

Either your original body would be destroyed during the process of uploading, in which case you wouldn’t be able to “move back into it” – or “it” (read “you”) would keep going as you were, right?

We’re already working on a crude version of the technology to cyberize nerves:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/darpa-looks-to-fuse-nerves-with-robot-limbs-make-prosthetics-feel-real/

With regards to mind-uploading, I once asked the question of what would be done with your original biological body once you have ported your consciousness to a computational substrate….the curious thing, rather then simply leaving it as a zombie to be buried or whatever, wouldn’t it be possible to send your consciousness to it and take back control of it like an avatar?

From what I understand, you could already do that by projecting countless bodies, whether virtual in VR or perhaps nanomade in AR…with your original biological body, I imagine you could do the same and take back control of it, so It’s not just laying around after the procedure.

What do you think of this thought experiment?