[ExI] Destructive uploading.

[Ben Zaiboc]

Florent Berthet <florent.berthet at gmail.com> grokked:

> I used to think that continuity of consciousness was
> obviously important for
> uploading. My reasoning was "if I create a copy of myself,
> and if I die in
> the process, that is as if I had created a clone of myself
> that would be
> able to live in exchange for my life. But I don't want my
> clone to survive,
> I want ME to survive."
> 
> So for me, a Star Trek teleporter that disassemble atoms
> and reassemble them
> in an other place was out of the question, because it would
> kill the "real"
> me.
> 
> Then I thought "but when I go to bed, I wake up in the
> morning made of a
> slightly different pattern of atoms (dreams have formed new
> memories, for
> example). Nevertheless, I feel like I'm "the same" person.
> But what if I had
> been scanned during my sleep, destroyed and instantly
> recreated in my bed? I
> wouldn't even know it. This wouldn't make a difference. So,
> what I am afraid
> of? And if there is no difference, do we "die" each night,
> waking up as a
> whole new person? Should I be afraid of fallins asleep?
> 
> So I was like "well, my consciousness blacks out for
> several hours every
> night, but there's still this background activity that
> keeps the continuity
> on... so I'm the same person..." but things started to
> become not as sharp
> and obvious, something was bothering me.
> 
> I thought: is continuity of consciousness even relevant? I
> mean, imagine a
> guy in a coma who goes brain dead for a few moments. If we
> were to bring him
> back to life, nobody would say "ha! He died! So he's not
> the same person
> now!". So, damn, continuity of consciousness is not
> relevant...
> 
> The only things that could matter now are the actual atoms
> that compose the
> brain and body of the guy. So, imagine that during that
> brief time of brain
> inactivity, we could change one carbon atom of his brain
> and replace it with
> another carbon atom. That wouldn't change a thing, atoms
> are the same, we
> take one out and we put another back. Imagine that instead
> of one atom, we
> replace a bunch of atoms, well, same thing, nothing has
> changed. Hell,
> imagine we replace the whole brain by this process, it's
> still the same
> thing! Atoms are the same, the pattern is the same.
> Physically, nothing has
> changed.
> 
> Another example: if we could instantly move all your atoms
> 1 cm to le left,
> I'm sure you would say you would end up the same person.
> Now if it wasn't
> instantaneous but if you were out of this world for a
> millisecond during the
> process, there's no reason you would object, what would
> have changed? What
> about out for one second? One year?
> 
> That's when I realized that this whole "original" and
> "copy" thing was an
> illusion. There is no "real" me, there is just a pattern
> that creates the
> experience of me, a pattern that doesn't "belong" to me but
> just exists
> because atoms have arranged themselves in this particular
> way. This
> experience and consciousness is the same for every
> identical pattern,
> regardless of how these patterns evolved and where they
> come from. There is
> no "true" one, physics don't work that way. We must
> understand that there's
> nothing special about us.
> 
> As counter-intuitive as it is, there is nothing to be
> afraid of concerning
> destructive uploading, the pattern that makes your
> consciousness is the only
> thing that matters. Gradually transferring a mind is no
> different that
> destroying it a recreating it. Nobody else would make the
> difference and
> neither would you, because there isn't any.


Well done, Florent.

By Jove, I think you've got it!

I hope that doesn't sound condescending, it's sincerely not meant to be.

It seems that very few people genuinely grok this concept, you seem to have joined their ranks.  Congratulations on making the transition from Crypto-Dualist to true Materialist!

A bit scary, but exhilarating, no?

Ben Zaiboc