Downloading Consciousness .. Immortality?

[Speakpigeon]

Thought experiment: A copy of my "consciousness" is downloaded into a new "body". I am still alive. The new "body" is activated. Do "I" suddenly jump to the new body or do "I" remain where I am? I suspect that "I" stay exactly where I am - my current body. The new body wakes up and thinks it is me, but I know better.

Not really. Deep down, you're so insecure you start to suspect you are just the copy. And the copy gets to think the same way so that everybody loose out.
But, in a way, we already are a copy of what we were just a moment ago. Maybe not even a unique copy, if the multiverse thingy is correct.
Still, it doesn't matter. You are what you feel you are. If you doubt being the original, it's still you doubting you are the original. Thinking is being. Cogito ergo sum.
EB

 

[river]

gmilam said: ↑

Thought experiment: A copy of my "consciousness" is downloaded into a new "body". I am still alive. The new "body" is activated. Do "I" suddenly jump to the new body or do "I" remain where I am? I suspect that "I" stay exactly where I am - my current body. The new body wakes up and thinks it is me, but I know better.

Exactly

 

[river]

Life is a more advanced consciousness . Than electronic consciousness .

 

[river]

Electronic advancement is based on living beings .

Electronic beings can not exist without living beings existence .

 

[C C]

Life is a more advanced consciousness . Than electronic consciousness . [...] Electronic advancement is based on living beings . Electronic beings can not exist without living beings existence .

Yah, non-artificial organisms are antecedent to any engineered apparatus, and can be one of the original inspirational sources for a machine's design and purpose... But that time-based hierarchical status doesn't equate to being more advanced, at least in the long run of the future. (artilect ... simulated brain)

Cell based tissue versus electronic hardware... It's probably trivial what the substrate choice is. Both biological and technological "stuff" involve a systematic arrangement of interacting components. That is, the latter template is prior in rank to both in terms of supplying the potency to yield consciousness, intelligence, etc.

Since the the qualitative experiences of a brain can't be publicly seen or even detected (they're often not even counted as making a casual contribution to the body by science)... Consciousness could be considered a kind of category assigned to a style of outer behavior and responses: Macroscopic events that express a functional awareness of the environment, which in turn reduce down explanation-wise to a relational assemblage of countless microscopic actions. (Or alternatively, in the case of a giant clockwork robot, the interactions of its mechanical parts would be large enough to be observable -- and arguably its conscious behavior considerably slower as a result.)

But add those aforementioned personal experiences (manifestations of the senses and thought) to the definition of consciousness, and then dualism unwantedly enters the situation. One popular claim is that there's either a special algorithm or a set of complex neural processes that conjure the abrupt novelty of those manifestations. Which under further scrutiny is actually just a modified version of the classic idea of a "soul" acquiring concomitancy with a fetal brain once a certain stage of sophistication was reached in the womb. (In essence, the complexity of a special dynamic pattern of connections or oscillating configuration "summons" a radical new phenomenon).

That's what can be labeled "brute emergence", in contrast to the alternative of incremental development of experience from primitive precursors (pan-proto-experientialism) that always would have had affiliation with matter in general, long prior to the arrival of living organisms. (I suppose "matter" could be replaced by "information" should one be a realist about the latter and a neutral monist, deeming information to be prior to or more fundamental than atoms, particles, etc.)

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[river]

Yah, non-artificial organisms are antecedent to any engineered apparatus, and can be one of the original inspirational sources for a machine's design and purpose... But that time-based hierarchical status doesn't equate to being more advanced, at least in the long run of the future. (artilect ... simulated brain)

Cell based tissue versus electronic hardware... It's probably trivial what the substrate choice is. Both biological and technological "stuff" involve a systematic arrangement of interacting components. That is, the latter template is prior in rank to both in terms of supplying the potency to yield consciousness, intelligence, etc.

Since the the qualitative experiences of a brain can't be publicly seen or even detected (they're often not even counted as making a casual contribution to the body by science)... Consciousness could be considered a kind of category assigned to a style of outer behavior and responses: Macroscopic events that express a functional awareness of the environment, which in turn reduce down explanation-wise to a relational assemblage of countless microscopic actions. (Or alternatively, in the case of a giant clockwork robot, the interactions of its mechanical parts would be large enough to be observable -- and arguably its conscious behavior considerably slower as a result.)

But add those aforementioned personal experiences (manifestations of the senses and thought) to the definition of consciousness, and then dualism unwantedly enters the situation. One popular claim is that there's either a special algorithm or a set of complex neural processes that conjure the abrupt novelty of those manifestations. Which under further scrutiny is actually just a modified version of the classic idea of a "soul" acquiring concomitancy with a fetal brain once a certain stage of sophistication was reached in the womb. (In essence, the complexity of a special dynamic pattern of connections or oscillating configuration "summons" a radical new phenomenon).

That's what can be labeled "brute emergence", in contrast to the alternative of incremental development of experience from primitive precursors (pan-proto-experientialism) that always would have had affiliation with matter in general, long prior to the arrival of living organisms. (I suppose "matter" could be replaced by "information" should one be a realist about the latter and a neutral monist, deeming information to be prior to or more fundamental than atoms, particles, etc.)

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So your conclusion , summation of your thinking here .

 

[kx000]

Robots can't feel, and only knows what you pre program into it.

 

[C C]

So your conclusion , summation of your thinking here .

Future-wise, there's no apparent reason for "biological stuff" to have a privileged position over technological "stuff" when it comes to generating consciousness. Both depend upon and arise from a yet more fundamental substrate of atomic and subatomic "parts" (neither floats on its own). The scheme of interacting organization seems to be the potent factor rather than the type of stuff -- though if it turned out that experience was specifically associated with the manipulation of electromagnetism, then a non-electronic machine constituted of gears and pulleys would likely be excluded from having the capacity to yield experience.

As for the origin of said experience or those manifestations of our consciousness... The issue is purely a matter of consistency in one's choice of beliefs -- and not with apprehending and validating what's actually the case once and for all (which isn't currently possible). People who desire to close the door to any prospect of dualism (equivalent to supernatural?) probably shouldn't be advocating a brute emergence of experience. People who desire experience to be a non-mysterious part of the natural world should probably be advocating that it incrementally develops in complexity from an already "in play" primitive predecessor.

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[C C]

Robots can't feel, and only knows what you pre program into it.

Applicable to robots of today, not necessarily those of the future. (And some can outwardly mimic emotions via malleable facial expressions and speech qualities so that the most gullible of humans might be fooled.) The advent of machine learning has already taken the fun out totally programming the abilities of some computer systems.

Life itself arguably couldn't feel in a private experience context until it finally developed into complex multicellular organisms with brains. Since biological "stuff" and technological "stuff" both depend upon and arise from a yet more fundamental substrate of atomic and subatomic "parts", it seems instead a matter of proper configuration of operations with regard to either "summoning" the phenomenal character of consciousness or manipulating an existing raw capacity for manifestation (i.e., already in play with matter interactions or relationships) into the rich and intricate representations which we're familiar with.

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[kx000]

Applicable to robots of today, not necessarily those of the future. (And some can outwardly mimic emotions via malleable facial expressions and speech qualities so that the most gullible of humans might be fooled.) The advent of machine learning has already taken the fun out totally programming the abilities of some computer systems.

Life itself arguably couldn't feel in a private experience context until it finally developed into complex multicellular organisms with brains. Since biological "stuff" and technological "stuff" both depend upon and arise from a yet more fundamental substrate of atomic and subatomic "parts", it seems instead a matter of proper configuration of operations with regard to either "summoning" the phenomenal character of consciousness or manipulating an existing raw capacity for manifestation (i.e., already in play with matter interactions or relationships) into the rich and intricate representations which we're familiar with.

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A robot doesn't have a nature or achetypes.

 

[Michael 345]

Problem I have with the thread title is the idea expressed, of downloading consciousness (awareness), it appears to treat consciousness as

• a static component of the mind
• and not as a property

A new born baby does not have consciousness

Yes it is conscious as in awake but consciousness is more than that, it is being aware that you are awake and aware your surroundings (all the stuff out there) is not part of you

Not sure such a process can be duplicated

You would be looking at a computer system with free range processing with not a single fixed response

 

[Write4U]

A robot doesn't have a nature or achetypes.

Wait until robots start designing robots. They'll be the parents. A few more basic commands and we may have a family unit.

 

[DaveC426913]

Wait until robots start designing robots. They'll be the parents. A few more basic commands and we may have a family unit.

No. Designing other things doesn't make one a parent of those things.
When robots build copies of themselves, from their own blueprints, they'll be parents. They'll be von Neumannian.

 

[Vmedvil]

Basically here are my views on this, basically if you make a Digital Immortal self it is like making a Quantum Duplicate or a Mental Clone, it is wrong to say one or the other is "You" they are both "You" both the machine version and the Biological version, both have your memories at the point of the duplication without any connection between the Biological and Technological version there would be no exchange of information between the two, it is literally a Mental Clone of you at that instance over time the two would begin to differ slightly as different experiences were had and become less and less alike over the time of the Immortality of the Technological version depending on experience it could be nothing like the original eventually. It goes back to the teleporter, neither is not you, they are both exactly you. It is like a clone if you expose the clone to gamma radiation the clone will start to become genetically very different than the host even though they were both created from the same blueprints.

 

[TheFrogger]

Only YOU are you. When you say, "I", the machine is unable to do so while describing YOU.

 

[Vmedvil]

Only YOU are you. When you say, "I", the machine is unable to do so while describing YOU.

Why do you say that it would be unable to say "I" other than describing "You" it would have its own personal experiences past the point of Quantum Duplication, thus could describe its "own" as the technological version's experiences as "I" while saying other things about "You" its past biological self.

 

[Write4U]

Hmm.

Are you still you? After all, you have almost none of the material you had in your body from ten years ago. It's all been excreted and replaced - so you are closer to the replica of the Picasso than the original.

Well, your cells have not so much been "replaced" by other cells as they have been "duplicated" from the original cells.

 

[Bowser]

Say we get to the point where we download our consciousness onto a computer.

Will never happen because you can't take hold of the formless. Try pouring emptiness from one jar into another.

 

[Write4U]

Will never happen because you can't take hold of the formless. Try pouring emptiness from one jar into another.

A quantum computer consists of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindricalnanostructure. These cylindrical carbonmolecules have unusual properties, which are valuable for nanotechnology, electronics, optics, and other fields of materials science and technology. Owing to the material's exceptional strength and stiffness, nanotubes have been constructed with a length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1,[1]significantly larger than that for any other material.

Now compare this to the presence of billions of biological micro-tubules in our brains.

Microtubules are
polymers of tubulin that form part of the cytoskeleton and provide structure and shape to the cytoplasm of
eukaryotic cells, some bacteria and some archaea (like Asgard).

A microtubule can grow as long as 50 micrometres and are highly dynamic. The outer diameter of a microtubule is about 24 nm while the inner diameter is about 12 nm.[1]They are formed by the polymerization of a dimer of two globular proteins, alpha and beta tubulin into protofilaments that can then associate laterally to form a hollow tube, the microtubule.[2] The most common form of a microtubule consists of 13 protofilaments in the tubular arrangement.

The entire human neural network consists of micro-tubules, which allow the networking and formation of the neural network in all eukaryotic life.

And consciousness is not a formless nothing. You need to do some serious reading on the latest studies on consciousness. It is a vibrant state of energetic communication among micro-tubules.

 

[wegs]

Didn't read through the entire thread, but I'm wondering - would I basically just be a conscious machine, at that point or would I still be considered human?