[ExI] Cryonics for uploaders discussion: Video (John Clark)

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Re Rose <rocket at earthlight.com> wrote:

*> if it's not me then I'm dead and gone, which personally my goal is NOT
> to be.*


What does it mean to be me? It means if something tomorrow remembers being
me today then that thing is me. What else could it possibly mean?

*> I think we are agreeing here, except I care about being continuous with
> my previous self and you may not. *


I don't know what NOT “being continuous with my previous self " could even
mean. Consciousness is subjective and to me it is always continuous, if I
undergo anesthesia many hours or even days may pass but to me it will be
instantaneous, to me it would be the external world that suddenly jumped
ahead discontinuously not me.

*> I think of sleep as inducing an organized neural hub network
> disconnection as per Susan Greenfield's thesis of small vs large neural
> assemblies.*

And I think Susan Greenfield  is a anti technology nut, she believes there
is a link between autism and use of digital media. Here are a few more of
her words of wisdom:

*"people's sense of smell has been linked to powerful emotional responses.
This has caused many to worry that 'smellovision', which allows people to
experience any smell at any time, will turn us into emotionally stunted
robots".*
*"the human brain has evolved to recognise faces, so there is a very real
possibility that automated Rhytidectomy kits will cause our brains to get
confused, leaving us unable to recognise our own mothers" *

*> Neural "hubs" dynamically assemble and these assemblies vary in size
> related to the agent's level of consciouness -- the hubs assemble into
> lager assemblies as consciouness levels increase or dissociate into smaller
> assembles as the agent transitions into a sleep state.*

Any scientific theory that talks about consciousness but not intelligent
behavior is not a scientific theory, it is religious crap.

> *> A reboot in an exogenous body won't the same, in a very fundamental
> way. Since the agency of an individual is subjective we have to be very
> careful we're not creating new beings with our uploading technology and
> still dying as individuals*

Apparently you believe in philosophical zombies, you think if Feynman or
Turing had been frozen and brought back they might be as knowledgeable,
intelligent, witty and charming as ever but have no more consciousness than
a rock. But that could only be possible if Charles Darwin was dead wrong.
Evolution can’t directly detect consciousness in others any better than we
can so there is no way Evolution could have produced it unless
consciousness is a unavoidable byproduct of something that Evolution can
detect, something like intelligent behavior. Whatever causes consciousness
it can’t be something that was just tacked on that produces consciousness
and does nothing else because that would have no additional survival value
so to Natural Selection it would be irrelevant. And by the way, I don’t
think Charles Darwin was dead wrong.

> *> We might all agree it would be very, very great to have certain
> people's connectomes preserved and reanimated - I'd have dinner with a
> reanimated Feynman or Turing in one second flat while jumping with joy for
> the good their re-existence would do the whole damn world while I'm at it,
> but if the originals would still be dead and gone*

With due respect, I think the opinions of your dinner companions on whether
their originals were actually dead and gone would be more important than
your opinion on the matter. Would the reanimated Feynman or Turing have any
reason to feel they were still dead when they can still think as clearly as
they ever did, would they think they were not the original Feynman or
Turing even though they both remember being children and both remember
working on projects during the second world war? And what would they
consider was so original about the mighty "ORIGINAL" anyway ? Being men of
science they would know the the atoms in their bodies were not the same
atoms as the atoms that were in their bodies a year before they died, and
they were not the same atoms that were in their bodies a year before that.
And Turing and Feynman would also know that the atoms in your body right
now have exactly the same properties as the atoms in their bodies, the only
difference is in the way those atoms are arranged, a difference that can be
encapsulated as information. That information can be stored as frozen
biological tissue or as a pattern of ones and zeros in a computer memory.

 John K Clark
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