[ExI] Bodies

Wed Mar 10 15:39:05 UTC 2010

James, Are you combining my response to Keith with Keith's own post?  For
example, I said that the discussion was not cutting edge (meaning Keith's
contribution (however pioneering Keith has been and insightful, etc., but
the information he provided was in and of itself not cutting edge); and I
said that there is something missing ...

I wrote on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 2:16 PM

"What could transhumanists be missing or ignoring right now?"

Natasha

Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of
jameschoate at austin.rr.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 8:45 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Bodies

Your argument isn't very cutting edge either, further when one actually
looks at the concept of 'personality transfer' it isn't as clear cut as
you'd make it.

Consider that the first examples likely to see light will be destructive. It
will require the stabilizing of the brain will require a fixing process like
freezing or some sort of transfusion of a chemical through the structure.
This requires two points to be recognized: it will require the destruction
of the original and at best it would be suicide and in most cases would be
considered a form of murder. There is little chance this will be popular.
There are some other aspects that will not be copied using this technology
as it does not capture the dynamics of the brain. So the copy will be
'fuzzy' at best and very generic most likely. It's applicability will be in
understanding the basic structure of human physical architecture and a high
level look at the architecture.

The next stage is to capture not only the dynamic pattern of activity at
some point in time, followed by the destruction of the physical brain to
determine structural dependencies (each brain is morphologically unique).
That pattern of activity can be copied and used either directly in some
emulated virtual brain machine or embedded in a more mobile device.

The problem with both of these is the destruction of the original.  That
makes this approach, while necessary for follow on approaches to be
developed, of little practical applicability. I'll call this generic
approach 'Destructive Copying'. The fundamental problem is that what
survives is a (questionable) copy of the original. That is not long term
survival by anybodies definition. The claim the copy is the same as the
original is just wrong.

What does that leave us with? A little introspection makes it clear that
what we want is some form of 'Mental Migration' where we can move the mental
process, both dynamic and morphological into another framework (and it can
be real or virtual). The first is to copy that to a cache and it becomes
available to use in multiple locations. However the original is still open
to termination, so we're back to the question of is the copy the same as the
original and the answer is again clearly no.  The alternate is a  'Direct
Migration' where the dynamic and morphological of the original is transfered
in real time to another location while at the same removing it from the
original body. This again is at best suicide of the original body and many
might consider it murder. While this at first blush appears to meet the
'don't destroy the original' upon reflection we see it is a near miss.

What are we missing? Re-integration.

We take the Mental Migration approach and add a single additional concept,
re-integration of the mental models from different instances. When this
technology will take off is when I can take a snapshot of my mind and copy
it into other instances. Then at a latter time re-integrate the experiences
and thoughts of those instances in any combination of original and copy that
I choose. This puts us almost at the point of using brain transfer for life
extension rather than 'Copy Persistence', which are not the same thing at
all.

What might that missing element be? Real-time interaction.

When besides making those copies we can re-integrate them in real time such
that the original mind becomes a component of a hive of minds that are
acting in concert at the same time all the time. This also opens up the
potential to re-integrate groups of individuals (ala Borg) into a single
hive mind.

---- Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote: 
> The recent discussion doesn't seem cutting edge.
> 
> I suspect that virtually all humans will abandon physical reality
entirely.
> 
> You can see this starting with Second Life and WoW.

--
 -- -- -- --
Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus

jameschoate at austin.rr.com
james.choate at g.austincc.edu
james.choate at twcable.com
h: 512-657-1279
w: 512-845-8989
www.ssz.com
http://www.twine.com/twine/1128gqhxn-dwr/solar-soyuz-zaibatsu
http://www.twine.com/twine/1178v3j0v-76w/confusion-research-center

Adapt, Adopt, Improvise
 -- -- -- --
_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat