[ExI] YES! Hard-core transhumanist splinter

Giulio Prisco giulio at gmail.com
Wed Jun 23 07:31:38 UTC 2010


Hi Robert,

"If our bodies are part of who we are, as seems obvious to me, then
you can't really be the same person you would've otherwise been
without painstakingly keeping even the most inconvenient constraints
of your anatomy. "

Our bodies are certainly part of who we are. This seems obvious to me
as well, for example if I have a headache I am in a very bad mood and
all my cognitive abilities are strongly degraded.

But I would be happy to give up headaches, and I am sure I would still
feel like me. And I am guessing if I were uploaded, provided I am
given other sense inputs to replace those I have lost, I would still
feel like me after some adaptation, in some very valid sense..

G-



2010/6/23 Robert Picone <rpicone at gmail.com>:
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Sabrina Ballard
> <sabrina.ballard at allromanceebooks.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Perhaps the machinery you copy during upload specifically contains a
>> > highly-evolved self-delusion mechanism?  If you leave it out and all
>> > the uploads suddenly become completely rational and realistic, have
>> > you "successfully" uploaded the original 'person' or have you created
>> > something else?
>>
>> I think that you could very easily say that you have created something
>> new because self-delusion in an important ans healthy part of many
>> people's lives. This person would be funtimentially very different
>> from the human we know today as to be 'alien' and 'cold'. I don't feel
>> that people would relate very will to the idea.
>>
>
> The thought experiment raises some interesting questions.  Someone with some
> major irrationality circuit removed, if such a thing existed, would
> certainly be a different person, but where is the line drawn?
> I suspect most uploads would be willing to choose to never get hungry and
> thirsty or have to regulate body temperature, but can someone really be
> considered the same person if their hypothalamus is essentially disabled?
>  The brain would operate in a fundamentally different way, and when put in
> certain (simulated) identical environments they would act very significantly
> differently from the original over the course of a negligible timespan, so
> my criteria for being a different person are met, but they would on the
> other hand most likely be recognized as the original if the two were somehow
> otherwise the same.
> But, as far as that goes, there are plenty of conditions where someone's
> personality is unrecognizable from other states based upon factors of
> metabolism for example.  Must you necessarily emulate someone's blood
> glucose levels based upon their pre-upload diet?  How do you manage caffeine
> intake?  Recreational drugs?  Libido?  Do you give the individual
> dials/switches for this kind of stuff?  Wouldn't that too significantly
> modify behavior?
>
> As a monist it seems to me that 1:1 uploads are extremely unlikely.  If our
> bodies are part of who we are, as seems obvious to me, then you can't really
> be the same person you would've otherwise been without painstakingly keeping
> even the most inconvenient constraints of your anatomy.  This seems to me
> like too great of a drawback for anyone uploading to choose if they are
> given other options.
> Maybe we have too much of a focus on the impossible task of maintaining some
> imagined fidelity in who someone is.  Maybe it is good enough to be an
> intellectual offspring who is remarkably like the original.  I certainly am
> not the same person I was 5 years ago.
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