The infinite human

[Cattleman]

Being an avid reader of science fiction (I was on the moon with Clarke, on Mars with Bradbury, and on Venus with Heinlein), I have read many stories involving the itnerface between the brain and a computer, so many I can't remember them all. Also stories where the mind is transferred into a computer (or someting analogous thereof) at death. If you are interested, for brain-computer interfacing, I recommend Elizabeth Moon's "Vatta's War" series (five books - staqrt with "Trading in Danger.") For the latter, read Poul Anderson's "The Stars Are Also Fire."

I have wondered about the effect of 'copying' a human mind to a computer at death. Would the 'original' personality die witht he body? A question we will all find the answer to all too soon.

[tat tvam asi]

We'd have to start out by first understanding what consciousness really is in the first place. I've been going through a lot of Peter Russell lately and find that I more or less agree with his views on consciousness and awareness. Here's a lecture where he lays out the case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d4ugppcRUE

[johnson1010]

the subject of the continuation of the original consciousness is what i'm trying to get to the bottom of here.

If there were a perfect replica of me generated through a teleportation device, THAT version of me would feel a perfect continuity.

The version of me which stepped into the teleporter, lets say it makes a copy without destroying the original, that original me would step back out and keep on living. When Me1 sees Me2, that will be some OTHER to Me1. Me1 will not experience what Me2 experiences. So, if Me1 is 50 when he enters the copy machine, and Me2 is effectively a newborn, as far as his telemeres know, then in a few decades when Me1 dies, the original consciousness dies.

There is still a version of me walking around and doing all the things i would have liked to do with an extended life, but it is not an extended life. Me1 still dies. Me1 still suffers the sting of death. Me1 still ceases to be. In this version, there is still no escape from having to face the void of death. Sure, there's another version of me which still has his whole life ahead of him, and to HIM it will seem like he's lived twice as long, having retained all the memories of Me1 up to the point of copying. And everyone else will see that as an extension of Me1's life as well, especially if they don't know a copy was made.

But Me1 will not escape having to die, and being erased. Me2 will one day also face that end. And when Me3 finally meets his end, he too will face the void of death.

That's what i was thinking about when i talk about how cells are being replaced in your body all the time: a way to think about the continuation of the original Me1 consciousness.

You are a pattern of activity being carried out by atoms in your head. Some atoms drop out of the pattern and new ones come in to take up where they left off. Your consciousness is already being transfered from storage media to storage media in a continuous flow of atoms as they enter and leave your system. This is experienced by your consciousness as a steady flow of experience, rather than as a series of deaths and reincarnations as some other version of yourself, even though none of the atoms in your body are the same atoms that you had when you were 11 years old.

The technical challenges are beyond us now, but i don't see there being anything fundamentally insurmountable with doing this same process transfering from ape-meat to machine tech.

If this gradual process of exchange could be duplicated when transfering the PATTERN of the atoms in your brain slowly onto an immortal device, then it seems like the flow of consciousness would be uninterupted and Me1 would never have to die.

This seems to me like the only way for a truly immortal human consciousness to emerge.

Using the copy machine would not be immortality, but instead like giving birth to yourself over and over again. You, the parent eventually die, though your "children" live on for a time.

The transition from meat to tech would not be a re-iteration of your consciousness, but the continuation of the same.

[Cattleman]

johnson1010, I think you just gave me a headache.

Actually, my thinking is along the same track as yours, up to a point. Seems if a gradual transfer of pattern occured, Me1 would gradually lose his/her personality. (Sort of like '2001, A Space Odessy' when Dave starts pulling the memory chips, and Hal says "My mind is going, I can feel it.") Or maybe I am following the wrong track. In any case, it is a fascinating subject.

[johnson1010]

Cattleman,

if the pattern was being transfered to a server in a shed, i think you are right, Me1 would lose what it was that made them people.

If the machinery was integrated into their heads, actually in their brains, then there would be no outward sign that anything was happening.

I'm not talking about turning people into the borg.



I'm talking about injecting some nano-bots which monitor brain cells, and as any old cell is replaced, they fill the void, perfectly mimicking the old organic cell and filling in the space that would otherwise be filled by an organic cell/molecule/atom.

Then in the end you have a brain composed of nanotech which is performing the same pattern of activity that the brain cells were performing before hand. This item can probably be transfered more readily than our sensitive meat-puddle brains. Perhaps into new bodies, clones created with empty skull cavities waiting to receive the nano-brain, or wholly mechanical synthetic replacement bodies which do not depend on ingesting organisms to provide energy.

If the tech worked, it could conceivably be used on any kind of cell. So as your skin shed, new nano-cells would replace them, which would never need to be recyled except through accidental damage. In the end you could be an idealized vision of yourself which runs on solar power for the majority of the day, and needs only to consume tiny amounts of other matter to power during off-hours.

There is no reason this transformed tech-human would have to look any different than a bio-human.

[VMLM]

Have you guys ever seen The Prestige?



Consider the implications of teleportation as you've described it.
The technology itself actually implies two (and possibly three) different mechanisms: one that disintegrates and reconstitutes a body, one which can copy the information that would allow the creation of new bodies and, assuming the new body would need to be "awoken", a mechanism which would bring the copied body to life.
Possibly some of these will depend on each other (i.e. maybe you can't actually copy a body without disintegrating it first). But assuming that these are all separate, you could USE them separately.
You could store people backups. Imagine waking an Olympic athlete in the prime of his life, or a genius mathematician. In danger of assassination? Remember to make frequent back ups and store them separately in discrete locations! Embarking on a risky voyage, or simply worried something might happen to your loved ones? Well then, you know what to do!
Could you possibly copy parts of a person? Could you remake perfect organs for transplants?
What about space travel? Travelling through the endless reaches of space would be a lot simple if you could be beamed to a new planet and reconstituted. Or stored as information and reconstituted on arrival to your destination.
You could make multiple copies of a single person, A.k.a. instant perfect cloning. Why fight a war when you can let your clone do it for you? Why not make an endless labor force of clones? Would they count as slaves? Would they have any rights? Could we build a "Utopian" society on the use of clones for menial labor? And let's say you're stupid enough to create a copy of yourself that is meant to live like you, parallel to you. Would he have rights to your property? your family? your name? Would the disintegration of one or the other be considered mandatory? Could all copies be allowed to live?
And if you really want to get controversial think about disposable humans. For medical testing, as perfect crash dummies, to be tortured endlessly, perfectly intelligent guidance systems, etc.
Disintegration itself would be powerful technology... as a weapon.

Now let's get really far-fetched.
Suppose we could mix and match (copy-paste) parts of your body. You might implant your current "mind" (neural structure, brain, whatever) into a younger body, and live on forever.... except you actually die.
You could create perfect bodies, the ultimate in plastic surgery... except you have to die for it. And there's this about pefect bodies. How long could we remain ourselves once our bodies change? Would we really be us if the way we see and feel and taste the world change? If we're stronger, if we have better eyesight, would we remain as we are now?
Could you emulate intelligence? Have a computer "run" two different minds and let them "converse" or "negotiate" or "learn" at 100x speed? Could you then implant that changed mind into a body? Maybe then you could learn kung-fu in the blink of an eye. Maybe you could have tanks and planes run by emulated intelligences. A little bit like remote guidance, except without the possibility of high-jacking and with the added bonus that you could endlessly copy your best crews.

How would future generations who actually use the technology view the idea of death and reconstitution of the self in a different body? Would it be something controversial but arguably allowed in some or many instances, like abortion? or euthanasia? Would it be considered normal?

And we've been talking about teleportation as if the technology were flawless, as if it worked every time perfectly. And we haven't even discussed cost. Suppose it works a bit like photocopying... is there a possibility of a failed copy? What of bad transmissions? Non-received bits of information, scrambled information, etc. What if the "awakening" isn't a 100% guaranteed, or it might affect the body in some way in a certain % of cases. What if disintegration can't be perfectly contained, and there's a possibility that the "stuff" around the disintegrated body might be affected? Suppose you disintegrate the entire facility, the entire planet?
What if copying a person is prohibitively costly? What if it's dirt cheap?

I'm betting there's a sci-fi novel in all of this xD.

[johnson1010]

I have been thinking about doing a scifi novel on a functional teleporter.

There's a lot to it. If the thing works... if you can scan something, or disintegrate something and get all the data, then re-constitute it on the other side on an atomic level, then goodbye economy.

Need gold? Scan a brick of gold, then turn a huge pile of dirt on the other end into gold. Not enough food? scan a cheeseburger. It's endless.

This single change, a functional teleportation device that works along these lines, changes everything about earth.

[Cattleman]

Actually, much of which you have written about has been used in science fiction novels, movies or television. Making multiple copies of 'the perfect soldier' was the theme of the Star Wars derived "Clone Wars." I recall a short story in which a man is constantly remade, as he is on a mission to contact an alien being; the story involves him being 'killed' several times before his mission is successful. After each 'death,' a new body is ready to be 'activiated.' (Sorry, I read this so long ago I have forgotten the name of the story and the author.) Finally in an original Twilight Zone episode, people can be made to look exactly like someone else. I think the star was Raquel Welch in her younger days. A person enters the 'clinic' where bodymods are done, and RW is the receptionist. Later she is a nurse; when asked "Wasn't that the receptionist?" the Doctor responds, "That's Model No. 32; she's one of our most popular."

[tat tvam asi]

Have you guys ever seen The Prestige?

No, so I watched the full movie just now. Very cool film. I like how they brought Tesla into it.

[johnson1010]

Yep, the prestige has elements of what i'm talking about. Also check out "The 6th day", which was an arnold schwarzenegger movie, but pretty decent despite that. the 6th day is more relevant for the continuation of consciousness angle.

As an example,

From :42 to 4:15.



This is a great highlight that examines the wierd scenarios that could play out where some device for cloning or re-producing a human with full memory from some backup.

If we accept the legitimacy of these clonings as continuations of the original consciousness, then killing somebody becomes no more profound than losing a life in mario brothers.

This guy really does think of Robert Duval's character as his friend. He wants him to be happy, and this conversation is very inconvenient for his own future, so, he kills Robert Duval's character with the intention to just reset his mind to a previous date where he hadn't had these counter-productive thoughts, and make sure everyone is happy again.

This kind of thing would definitely happen.

He's wrong though, and later he sees he's wrong when he's been shot and starts the cloning process for himself. His new clone emerges before he's died, and the new clone completely disregards his "old body", still inhabited by the consciousness who is driving it, he needs clothes, so he just starts taking them off his "old body" like he's a manniquin and you can see how dehumanizing it feels to him.