[ExI] Essential Upload Data

[William Flynn Wallace]

 But it's not correct to say that dynamic processes can't be represented by
static data

I never said that.  I agree with you.  Also, dynamic processes can be made
static.  Agree.  Mind is information and it is matter and the processes
that it runs can be unconscious, such as digestion, or conscious such as
playing the piano from a score.  Long term memory is not circuits running.
Short term memory is.  Think of it this way:  if the circuit runs long
enough the information gets stored in long term memory.  If it doesn't run
long enough the info is lost forever.  Many experiments prove this.  You
can do it yourself.  Choose a large number to remember, then count
backwards from 100 by 17s.  Thirty seconds later try to remember the
number.  Very few can - just gone.

bill w

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 11:39 AM Ben via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 24/05/2020 14:02, bill w wrote:
>
> Just to toss in my two cents, one with inflation,
>
>  What do you think a consciousness is, if not the information that is
> being duplicated? Your language implies that someone's consciousness, their
> mind, is a separate thing from the duplicated information.  ben
>
> Well, that's what I think.  I think that consciousness is a dynamic
> process, which can show up on an EEG,  whereas stored information is a
> static process (it used to be thought that a memory was a circuit
> continually running and if it stopped running the memory was lost).
> Consciousness is the part that accesses the static elements if desired
> (pulling long term memory into short term memory), along with processing
> sensory information.  I also would not call consciousness the mind, since
> most of the mind is unconscious (and static unless called on (?), like
> accessing the definition of a word).  bill w
>
>
> I see a contradiction here. You're completely right to say that most of a
> mind is unconscious (so we shouldn't really use the word 'consciousness'
> the way we are doing, fair enough), and that the dynamic processes are,
> well, dynamic. But it's not correct to say that dynamic processes can't be
> represented by static data. We do this all the time. Again, the example of
> music comes to mind. So does John Conway's Game of Life. The dynamic and
> self-interacting processes of the game can be represented by a simple set
> of formulae, and additional data about a starting state can exactly
> reproduce the dynamic progression of states displayed by the game, when
> implemented by a suitable computing system.
>
> I see no difference, in principle, between the Game of Life and a mind,
> except for a large difference in complexity. We'll need a lot more
> information to represent the patterns of dynamic interactions, and the
> substrate to run them on will also be (potentially, depending on exactly
> how things are implemented) more complex.
>
> Basically, any information process, no matter how complex, or dynamic or
> self-interactive, can be captured as static data then re-implemented later.
>
> Let's say that it is true that a memory is a circuit continually running,
> and if it stops running the memory is lost.
> Let's say that the information in the circuit consists of a specific set
> of spike trains in a loop. If you take the circuit in isolation, and break
> it or stop it, the spike trains are lost and there's no way to tell what
> they were, so restarting the circuit won't make the same pattern reappear.
>
> But how did the pattern get there in the first place? There must be some
> configuration of neuronal connections, synaptic weights, and ionic
> concentrations that produced it, looking at the wider brain connected to
> the circuit. So if you can reproduce those, then stopping and restarting
> the whole brain instead of just the circuit in isolation *will* make the
> same pattern reappear (in fact, our brains depend on this, otherwise Marcel
> Proust would be an obscure nonentity). The same is true of any dynamic
> process in the brain. Or anywhere, for that matter.
>
> You can quote the 'butterfly effect', and say that it won't necessarily be
> exactly the same pattern, but that doesn't matter, for two reasons. First,
> it will be close enough. A small variation of a pattern in a circuit won't
> constitute a totally different memory, as it's the result of exactly the
> same inputs, and second, the butterfly effect won't even be a factor in a
> brain, because it isn't something like a weather system with many
> independent variables, it's a tightly-integrated system with many
> attractors that similar patterns will settle into, just as the cells in a
> tissue do, so that you can provide some of the cues, and the cells
> themselves will provide the rest to settle into a 'mucle tissue' pattern or
> a 'fibrous connective tissue' pattern, etc.
>
> If this weren't true, then people under deep anaesthesia, or in any state
> where their mental processes are interrupted, wouldn't be able to resume
> them (or would display different personalities, be completely different
> people upon resuscitation). All the processes that are suspended, are
> stored in a static form which is then used to restart them.
>
> We don't kill people by anaethetising them, or cooling their brains to 4
> degrees centigrade, therefore dynamic processes can be stored as static
> data.
>
> On a separate note, if your mind is not information, and is not matter,
> then what else could it be? The only things we have to work with (unless
> you think magic is true) are space/time, matter/energy and information.
> Information changing with time is still information (information which
> changes, plus information about how it changes with time. Plus, if needed,
> information about how the changes change, and so on, ad infinitum), and we
> can easily demonstrate that suspending a process in time does not
> irretreivably destroy it.
>
> So, for cryonics to successfully preserve enough information to recreate a
> mind, it looks like we'll need the connectome, and the synaptic weights of
> all the crucial synapses for personality (what these are, we don't
> currently know. I doubt that all of them in the whole brain will be needed,
> but I may be wrong), plus possibly the concentrations of certain key ions
> in certain key places might be desirable too, although I suspect that
> omitting them would just cause a bit of vagueness, and an upload becoming
> conscious would experience some confusion about what has happened, much
> like waking from a dream. But if we have the technology to record the
> weights in billions of synapses, I don't think adding information about
> neuron hillock excitation states would be that hard, so waking up as an
> upload could be a pretty seamless experience. You die, then you wake up
> again, with your train of thought uninterrupted. Would that be important?
> Personally, I'd be happy to forgo it, I think.
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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