Is John human?

[thecrazyscot]

I'm not saying they aren't important in general. The question I have is why is this continuity important for personal identity.

Ah. Because the specific pattern of synapses and neuron connections is what creates your personality and contains your memories.

 

[warpus]

So what? What makes those processes so danged important?

Well, if you cut them off somehow, for example by cutting off your head, then you die.

 

[El_Machinae]

The continuity is important to prevent the cloning question from scaring you away from trying the process.

 

[Perfection]

Ah. Because the specific pattern of synapses and neuron connections is what creates your personality and contains your memories.

Right, so in my mind what is important is that the pattern gets transferred. Details like continuity, shouldn't matter.

Well, if you cut them off somehow, for example by cutting off your head, then you die.

What medical science made it such that could shut down the brain and have people not die?

 

[Perfection]

The continuity is important to prevent the cloning question from scaring you away from trying the process.

I think that's the real problem. People are worried about the consequences of them no longer being unique in the universe so they invent reasons why certain processes in some important sense don't preserve identity.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Right, so in my mind what is important is that the pattern gets transferred. Details like continuity, shouldn't matter.

What medical science made it such that could shut down the brain and have people not die?

The act of transferral would make a copy - it would not continue the same unique consciousness. You wouldn't be transferred. You'd still be in the old brain. The new "you" would be a different person entirely, albeit starting from where you left off.

 

[warpus]

What medical science made it such that could shut down the brain and have people not die?

Is there any documentation of a case of somebody's brain being fully "off" and then coming back to life?

Even if so, that doesn't really mean that the consciousness of the person in question wasn't interrupted by what happened. Could have been very well interrupted, and a new personality rebuilt upon the new brain "coming online". Same brain, person seems the same, old person essentially dead, from the pov of the person, new person on the scene, thinking he's the old person.

 

[Narz]

That really doesn't matter though, does it? Continuity of self is overrated and you'll be dead either way if you don't upload. Trapped in a computer sounds better than trapped in an Universe. At least there is potential to reshape reality.

It won't be you trapped in the computer, just a simulation of you.

I suppose I'd let a Narz simulation run just for fun but I wouldn't let anyone kill me the moment it was created & pretend that robo-Narz was me, that'd be just creepy.

 

[Perfection]

The act of transferral would make a copy - it would not continue the same unique consciousness. You wouldn't be transferred. You'd still be in the old brain. The new "you" would be a different person entirely, albeit starting from where you left off.

I don't buy that mode of thinking. Let's say i go in to the duplicator and get duplicated while in some deep coma. Then my left hemisphere gets swapped with that of the duplicate. Who's the real me?

 

[warpus]

It won't be you trapped in the computer, just a simulation of you.

I suppose I'd let a Narz simulation run just for fun but I wouldn't let anyone kill me the moment it was created & pretend that robo-Narz was me, that'd be just creepy.

Yeah, it also wouldn't be you. It'd be a copy, like you said.

I wouldn't trust a digital copy of myself.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think that's the real problem. People are worried about the consequences of them no longer being unique in the universe so they invent reasons why certain processes in some important sense don't preserve identity.

I'm not worried so much about the uniqueness though, as the continuity. Well, no. It's both.

You cannot copy something fully, only partially, most of the time. You can copy most of the information without destroying the original, but not all. If some process exists such that multiple copies can be made, it's quite easy to say it's not the original item.

But if all of the information is copied, where the original is necessarily destroyed, then it's tough to deny that the copy is the original.

Consider the example where I want to teleport a book across the room. If I pick up the book and carry it there, we call it the same book. If I leaf through the book, uploading it into a scanner and then print out the book on the other side of the room ... then clearly it's not the same book. It's just a copy.

 

[Kozmos]

It won't be you trapped in the computer, just a simulation of you.

I suppose I'd let a Narz simulation run just for fun but I wouldn't let anyone kill me the moment it was created & pretend that robo-Narz was me, that'd be just creepy.

The simulation of you is you, just running on a different substrate. The You is wholly irrelevant as well. I'd edit out my self-consciousness given half the chance. It just slows me down.

 

[Perfection]

Is there any documentation of a case of somebody's brain being fully "off" and then coming back to life?

Yes, [wiki]Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest[/wiki]

Even if so, that doesn't really mean that the consciousness of the person in question wasn't interrupted by what happened. Could have been very well interrupted, and a new personality rebuilt upon the new brain "coming online". Same brain, person seems the same, old person essentially dead, from the pov of the person, new person on the scene, thinking he's the old person.

So would you say that a person coming out of DHCA is not the same?

 

[Narz]

Yeah, it also wouldn't be you. It'd be a copy, like you said.

I wouldn't trust a digital copy of myself.

I'm sure he'd be fun to hang out with but I don't want to die on his behalf.

The simulation of you is you, just running on a different substrate. The You is wholly irrelevant as well.

I like being alive.

I suppose it'd be nice to have a Narz simulator running forever for posterity but I'd rather be alive.

 

[warpus]

Yes, [wiki]Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest[/wiki]

So would you say that a person coming out of DHCA is not the same?

After having a glance at the wikipedia article (I'm on my way out, don't have more time), I'm going with: Yes.

But that is assuming that nothing is truly going on in the brain during this procedure. Do we really know that?

If so, yeah, I would say that the person waking up is just a "copy". That is, from the point of view of the original, nothing ever happens. That person is a goner. The person waking up wakes up with all their memories and assumes their identity.

But I have a suspicion that stuff actually does happen in the brain during the procedure.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, a brain is never fully off, given that you cannot completely wet chemistry. But embryos get completely frozen and then thawed quite often. They didn't die in the process.

 

[Perfection]

I'm not worried so much about the uniqueness though, as the continuity. Well, no. It's both.

You cannot copy something fully, only partially, most of the time. You can copy most of the information without destroying the original, but not all. If some process exists such that multiple copies can be made, it's quite easy to say it's not the original item.

But if all of the information is copied, where the original is necessarily destroyed, then it's tough to deny that the copy is the original.

Consider the example where I want to teleport a book across the room. If I pick up the book and carry it there, we call it the same book. If I leaf through the book, uploading it into a scanner and then print out the book on the other side of the room ... then clearly it's not the same book. It's just a copy.

Well what's a book? If I say Bob and I are reading the same book does that imply we're reading the same physical object? Under most contexts that implication is not made. Most of the time when someone says they're reading the same book they're reading separate copies of the same book. There's all sorts of differences between the two books, Bob's book has a slightly different paper composition from mine and mine has a crease on page 109, but that information is not relevant. What is relevant is the words on the page being the same (that's a simplification of course but the principle stands). The other stuff doesn't matter. My copy could even be the Authors typewritten final draft. So long as the book conveys the same meaning it's the same book.

Even if we can't copy a human brain exactly down to the smallest detail, we probably can copy the meaning sufficiently well. The irrelevant parts only matter if we consider the humans objects rather than meaningful.

 

[El_Machinae]

Sufficiently well to create a copy, sure. Sufficiently well so that the copy feels like you, even. Sure.

But sufficiently well to transport the consciousness, instead of copying it? That's a different thing.

 

[Perfection]

Sufficiently well to create a copy, sure. Sufficiently well so that the copy feels like you, even. Sure.

But sufficiently well to transport the consciousness, instead of copying it? That's a different thing.

Is it?

Transport versus copy reeks of dualism as if there's a sort of inviolable soul tag we carry around with us.

I have a sense of "me" that differentiates "myself" from "others". That sense is more like "the entity that produced this statement". It's a egoistc mistake to impose that "me"-ness as some fact of the universe.

When I talk about "myself" in the future, it is acknowledging that the thoughts associated with "me" will by and large be associated with an entity in the future. If multiple entities fit that bill then I see no reason to deny any of them "me" status.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Well, a brain is never fully off, given that you cannot completely wet chemistry. But embryos get completely frozen and then thawed quite often. They didn't die in the process.

Whether or embryos have what we would think of as a brain at all though is something that seems like far from a given.