[extropy-chat] Nature of process (was Re: A view on cryonics)

[Slawomir Paliwoda]

Emlyn wrote:
> I have in the past thought that we were process, not program, as
> Slawomir evidently does. However, the more I think about it, the less
> I can identify this process. What is a process? Show me a process!


I admit that conveying a sense of the nature of process is extremely
difficult, and I find that inability to grasp that nature is often the
reason why
people's attention shifts to a familiar concept of "soul". It's basically
how religious thought is created, by satisfying mind's constant craving to
fill comprehension gaps with "whatever fits".

But first, let me say few things about the difference between process and
soul. The "process" is an attempt to contain subjective experience in terms
of
measurable "things" that really exist, namely, the flow of matter in
space-time. The difference between subjective experience and soul, as
I understand the concept, is that the former lasts only for the duration of
that flow, while the latter lasts forever, even if the mind substrate
no longer exists. This means that existence of soul must not depend on
matter, or its configuration, while subjective experience always does (not
just on matter itself, of course, but on the activity of that matter in
space-time). And, since I have no way of knowing or measuring what that
non-matter might be, I can't claim to know that souls exist.

Now, let me give a sense of what I mean by "process". Suppose the center of
the ball travels from space-time point P1 to P2. The movement is recorded in
small time intervals so that the center of the ball traveling from P1 to P2
produces the set of, say, 1000 coordinate points (from x1, y1, z1, t1 to
x1000, y1000, z1000, t1000) to better approximate the movement. Eventually,
I decide to record the same movement in infinitely small time intervals.
This will provide the only *true* approximation of the movement. By doing
that I've truly measured everything there is to know about the movement.
Does it mean, then, that the measurement captures the essence of what
movement is? No, because the measurement is not the movement itself. For a
movement to occur, it's not enough to show its measurement. The movement
must actually happen. The activity that *happens* in space and time can
never have a substitute other than what it is itself.

Measurement of the matter of mind can never be a substitute for the *action*
that happens to that matter in space and time. That action is what I call
the "process".


> Now that process looks like a dynamic thing, until you realize it can
> be frozen. The hardware can be stopped momentarily, for instance. In
> that moment, where is the dynamic nature of the process?


Let's say I throw a ball upwards. The "process", in this case, is the
movement of the ball, or, more precisely, the energy of the ball. On its way
up, the kinetic energy converts into potential energy that becomes maximum
at some instant when the ball freezes in the air. However, the "potential
for movement" is still there at that instant, even though the ball doesn't
move. And so it is with the mind process that is represented by kinetic
energy (mind's actual existence) in the analogy, while a mind pattern stores
potential energy of the mind (mind's potential to exist).

Remember, though, that the above is merely an analogy - there's no such
thing as the Law of Conservation of Mind.

Slawomir