[ExI] Destructive uploading.

[Stefano Vaj]

On 10 September 2011 16:42, The Avantguardian
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Unless you have proof that the mind is a classical physical system then it is an assumption that the mind can be represented by classical information...

I have no "proof" that a diesel engine is a "classical physical
system", whatever this may be, but if it works it is not an assumption
that its reproduction is good enough.

BTW, should we ever improbably discover that biological brains make
any especial use of quantum effects, and this is an unwarranted
assumption given that they are even poorer at typical quantum
computation tasks than a PC, this would simply mean that quantum
processors are not only feasible, but trivial, and that in order to
emulate biological brains with acceptable performances it is best to
include a quantum coprocessor in your architecture. What's the big
deal?

> You are not just information; you are information in context, in runtime, constantly interacting with everything around you.

The context is still only information. Let us assume, eg, that
emulating a brain would not be enough to give place to a convincingly
anthropomorphical ethology. Now, since much of our complexity resides
in our nervous system, to emulate an entire body along with its
sensorial channels would not add really much to our chore...

> I am suggesting that if the mind is simply classical information, it would have likely been adequately explained by now by the likes of Euler, Boltzman, Turing, or Shannon.

I think that Wolfram shows well enough that while the Principle of
Computational Equivalence shows us that all systems are basically
equivalent, the idea that "classical information" is easy to deal with
exclusively depends on a selection bias. Most of reality, biological
or not, is in fact quite intractable...

> No it would only still be Niagra Falls if people didn't start calling it "Reagan Falls" or something equally arbitrary. Same would probably go for your upload. If someone hacked into your upload and did a search and replace on your memories and substituted Fred for every occurance of John, would you still be John Clark or would you then be Fred Clark?

A Rose by Another Name. What an upload is and whether an upload is an
upload is represents ultimately a sociological, not a scientific or
philosophical issue.

-- 
Stefano Vaj