[ExI] An expert explains ‘mind uploading’

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Jan 4, 2024, 3:42 AM Samantha via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> We have been beating this particular horse for at least three decades that
> I know of.
>
> What is a "computer"?  Seriously, is it reasonable to label as "computer"
> with its connotations today whatever substrate can contain a human mind or
> perhaps several?    Is that label a device to cast shade on the possibility
> from the beginning?
>
> What if you have machine phase nanotech and rod-logic hyper tiny computers
> through your brain that simply take over more and more of the functioning
> of your brain over time.  Is that still you?
>
> Are you still you when you are knocked out for surgery and then find
> yourself apparently back in reality and in apparently your same body?  What
> if you were instead in a coma for years?     Or if part of your brain was
> damaged and replaced with future tech?
>
> What is this "you" in the first place?  Have you inquired into it much?
>

There's a whole subdiscipline of philosophy devoted to this question. It's
a deep and important topic: the philosophy of personal identity.

I summarize the field as attempting to answer the question of which
experiences belong to which persons.

My conclusion after much study is that there are no personal borders, nor
any preconditions for being you. You remain you always, regardless of how
you change materially, bodily, or psychologically, and regardless of the
content of your experience.

This implies that there is only one mind, it is you, you are it, and it is
everyone. This is a view that has been called universalism by Arnold
Zuboff, and open individualism by Daniel Kolak. It's been espoused by many
thinkers, including Erwin Shrodigner, Freeman Dyson, Fred Hoyle, Kurt
Godel, and Aldous Huxley. It's a core belief of vedantic Hinduism, and
provides a foundation for the Golden Rule (or it's many derivatives).

Jason

>
> All of these arguments and more we have discussed many times and
> entertained ourselves with their slipperiness to come to firm conclusions
> by head tripping about it.
>
> What can we simply build and what can we change in ourselves to perhaps
> get us closer to being able to try it?
>
> - samantha
>
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