From pharos at gmail.com  Tue Apr  1 10:04:53 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2025 11:04:53 +0100
Subject: [ExI] First therapy chatbot trial shows AI can provide
 'gold-standard' care
In-Reply-To: <CACBESnAzvHmAAtBc4u2wm4f0gnwO7YwTxFLn7r+Jz0awxyG34g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAL_armjrgJDB2o-1Lj4yR844m7C70+ALW9GcCAx6Rw8qxd6q+Q@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 at 14:14, Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> This is entirely believable to me. I've weaned my girlfriend almost completely off of "processing" with me. She uses Claude most of the time now, and says I suck compared to Claude most of the time. I've also used it to go over things. A Therabot that works with a therapist seems like it would be even better.
>
> -Kelly
> _______________________________________________


This article discusses how the Therabot AI was trained.
It took many attempts over five years to get it right..
BillK

<https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/28/1114001/the-first-trial-of-generative-ai-therapy-shows-it-might-help-with-depression/>
Quote:
In 2019, as early large language models like OpenAI?s GPT were taking
shape, the researchers at Dartmouth thought generative AI might help
overcome these hurdles. They set about building an AI model trained to
give evidence-based responses.
---------------


From efc at disroot.org  Sat Apr  5 22:30:23 2025
From: efc at disroot.org (efc at disroot.org)
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2025 00:30:23 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
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>       > Such thinking makes no sense to me. If one accepts their personal survival in
>       > the case one person steps out of a teleporter, why should they conclude
>       > personal death in the case someone else like them steps out of some other
>       > teleporter elsewhere?
>
>       Well, because of the split scenario. It is one proposed solution, and it depends
>       on how the teleporter works. I consider splits to be impossible,
> 
> But you seemed to accept it as possible for the AI or uploaded human on a VM.

Well, there are a couple of things here. First, an AI or a human that exists as
a software program is not a human. So when I say it is not possible, I am
referring to human beings like you and me. Second, our current state of
technology does not permit splits. So my personal position is that it is
impossible. But I do enjoy the discussion and analysis of the concept, so that
is where the confusion comes in when I say it is impossible, but I am happy to
explore the scenario as if it was. ;)

But come to think of it... what is a "split" for a VM? Let's say you have a VM,
or a virtual entity comprising a number of bits. The only split I can think of
is replicating one bit to two "containers" and afterwards deleting the original
bit.

To me, this seems different from the amoeba case. More a kind of copy actually,
than a "pure" split as in a cell dividing. A bit can't split.

What do you think?

>       so for me it is
>       not a case I need to consider. But for the sake of our discussion, assuming the
>       MWI, it is definitely a case that needs to be handled. I agree there.
> 
> Okay. And if it is handled, would you agree with my point that it makes little
> sense to say I survived the split when one of me emerged, and yet I will die
> if more than one emerge?

No, because if one emerges, it is not a split.

>       > If a theory fails for hypothetical situations it ought to handle, I think we
>       > can discount it as a failed theory without even having to do the experiment.
>
>       True, but that comes down to the point of view of what a theory ought to handle
>       vs what it does not need to handle. Since I'm not an MWI:er for instance, my
>       theory of identity would never have to deal with splits. But for an MWI:er, it
>       would have to, since I think that would be the case constantly happening
>       everywhere and for everyone if I understand it correctly.
> 
> One risks creating a fragile theory if it only works according to results made
> in areas far outside the scope of that theory.
> 
> For example, it would be like having a theory of consciousness that only works
> if dark matter happens to be X. This is why hypothetical questions and
> situations are important: "well why wouldn't the theory work if dark matter
> was Y rather than X?", "Can we modify the theory to be resilient in either
> case?" Etc.

I think it depends. If I have a theory that handles everything well at the
empirical level and day to day reality, I do not see what I would have to gain
but analyzing splits or multiple worlds? No empirical evidence has ever been
presented for it, and splits, as per human biology is not possible. So I think
in fact, that thought experiments can actually be detrimental when they take
energy and focus away from empirical reality, and lead to endless speculation.

The caveat I do add is that we are well advised to adjust our theories when new
evidence is found. But I do not think it is productive, absent evidence, to
engage in endless speculation. That energy is better spent on research and
collecting empirical evidence.


>       > For example, consider Einstein's proposed EPR experiment involving sending
>       > entangled particle pairs across space (an experiment well beyond the
>       > technology of his day), yet it highlighted the fact that Copenhagen
>       > Interpretation implied faster-than-light influences, in clear contradiction to
>       > his relativity. And some 50 years later, when we did have the technology to
>       > perform such experiments, they confirmed Einstein's point, the effect was
>       > observed, and one cannot accept CI and believe that nothing can travel faster
>       > than c.
>
>       Ah, but observation was key here. And as long as observation is possible for us,
>       I have no quarrel with theories, explorations and so on.
> 
> Presumably observations will be possible one day (should we develop mind
> uploading and transfer technology).

True. I think a case can be made for postponing a lot of speculation until the
technology is at least feasible or on the horizon. But extrapolating technology
to godlike things, and then speculating and testing theories based on those, I
only see as fun entertainment and science fiction, and not as something
productive.

> Einstein's paper is widely considered significant, even without the empirical
> result, for it showed what the assumed theory of the day predicted. To show a
> problem with a theory, one need only assume the theory is true and show what
> it predicts.
>
> So if we want to highlight problems in some theory of personal identity, for
> the most part experiments aren't needed (and experiments themselves wouldn't
> tell us much), they would only be meaningful to the person/people who
> underwent the procedure.

Well, the problem there is that there is no problem of closed individualism. It
works perfectly well for all intents and purposes. In terms of empirical
experiments, I do think there a case can be made for gaining a better
undertsanding of identity and our perception of identity through neuroscience
and investigating meditation techniques and mushrooms and interviewing people
who do have identity altering experiences etc.

> Though perhaps you can have while teams of scientists step into the same
> teleporter and then they can all publish their shared result of all
> subjectively feeling as though they survived the process. And other teams of
> scientists can replicate the result for themselves. Does that make it
> objective repeatable science? ??

Show me the teleporter and I'll show you objective repeatable science! ;)

>       > You think that you are Daniel, and no one else. What objective physical fact
>       > makes this so? Must we not consider the subjective aspect of reality when we
>       > deal with areas such as consciousness and personal subjective survival?
>
>       I don't think we can. The subjective is per definition directly inaccessible to
>       us,
> 
> No I think rather that the subjective is *the only thing* that we can access
> or have access to.

I disagree. The subjective is something we experience. It is not something we
can "access". It is basically our running process. We can of course experience
the running of our process. When it comes to reality, the only access we have is
through our senses, and I'd argue that that is plenty objective. You and I can
both agree through the evidence of our senses on the positions of furniture in
our vicinity. It does not need to be more complicated than that.

When I say that the subjective is per definition inaccessible, I mean that your
experience as experienced by you, is forever inaccessible.

> The limitation is that one person's subjective is inaccessible to others.

Yes, sorry. Better way to put it. I was being vague.

> Then we create objective models of the world, (models based formes to explain
> our subjective experiences) then we end up with a picture of the world that
> mostly sweeps under the rug the fact that in doing so we create a model that
> ignores the subjective, the model is devoid of it. This is a limitation of our
> models, but we should not take our models so seriously that we deny the
> subjective, which is the entire source and reason for existence of the very
> objective models we created to explain the subjective appearances.

Since the subjective is our own running process, there is no need to ignore it
or affirm it, it is just part of reality. As you say, others subjectivity is
forever closed of. So the only thing we have is objective, descriptive reality.
Since th subjective is not objective, I think we can safely ignore it, since by
the very way we are constructed, there no point in trying to shift it from the
subjective to the objective.

> Or as Democritus wrote thousands of years ago:
> 
> "Intellect: Ostensibly there is color, sweetness, bitterness, actually there
> is only atoms and the void.

True. Two ways to describe the same thing. And depending on the language we
choose to describe it, we can achieve different things, and predict different
things.

>       and therefore, unless it can be verified, the question should be dropped.
> 
> Everything you experience you personally verify. It is only in your objective
> models of reality that you cannot explain, and hope to sweep under the rug,
> the subjective.

No, there's nothing to sweep under the rug. The subjective is per definition the
subjective. In terms of my subjective experience, it just is, so absent someone
falsifying it, I can just accept it and move on. When we move to the objective,
where you (and in the reverse, I) exist, we have science. I think a lot of
people get trapped by language and think there is a mystery, where in fact there
is no mystery.

>       In
>       terms of physical facts, what makes me, me, is a combination of my mind and body
>       and uniqueness in space, as per my formula.
>
>       Also note that from a pragmatic point of view, our legal definitions and
>       processes for proving that I am I work perfectly fine, so that is another way to
>       discuss it based on an external point of view.
> 
> Laws are written by politicians, who I don't see as possessing any special
> wisdom on deep philosophical problems.

Well, pragmaticism is one philosophical way to look at life, and laws are also
"distilled" customs, culture, ethics and norms, and evolve throughout societies.
They can be seen, over time, as the wisdom of crowds. Are they perfect? Far from
it! Do they contain bugs? Of course! Are they useless? Of course not. They do
work, and I definitely think, from the point of view of identity, that it's an
excellent pragmatic starting point. Add to that some psychology and biology, and
I think we're off to a good start. =)

>       But subjectively understanding it, is impossible from a scientific perspective,
>       and I advocate for dropping the question until new experiments are devised.
> 
> I think we ought to recognize the limitations of our current models in
> explaining certain aspects of reality, rather than redefine reality to pretend
> those phenomenon don't exist.

But what phenomenon is there that we pretend does not exist? We can follow every
experience I have by scanning my brain activity. We have reverse engineered some
of it, and we can read through brain scans, in some situations, what a person
thinks, or which hand a person will move.

I think there is no pretending here, and a lot of progress.

>       >? ? ? ?>? ? ? ?There is not condition here, it is just an event along a long chain of causes
>       >? ? ? ?>? ? ? ?and effects. It is the same with reality. It happens to us, we have no choice. I
>       >? ? ? ?>? ? ? ?think this also shows us that probability is part of the language of math, that
>       >? ? ? ?>? ? ? ?is only meaningful for us as conscious human beings. Without human beings,
>       >? ? ? ?>? ? ? ?"speaking" the language of math and probability, the concept is meaningless.
>       >? ? ? ?>
>       >? ? ? ?> If there is no condition that determines you being in some body, and not in
>       >? ? ? ?> others, then that is open individualism.
>       >
>       >? ? ? ?I don't see how that follows. We can trace a path of cause and effect that
>       >? ? ? ?resulted in me sitting in my chair. How does open individualism follow from
>       >? ? ? ?that?
>       >
>       > Because similar cause effect paths lead to all other persons. What makes yours special?
>
>       I don't think the question is meaningful. What do you mean with "special"?
> 
> What makes Daniel special, under the closed individualism viewpoint, is that
> you will only ever experience the experiences that happen to be generated by
> Daniel's brain and its material (or psychological) continuations.

I don't understand that. It's a tautology. I will only experience what I will
experience? Or I will only experience what my brain experiences?

> What imbues Daniel's brain with this unique power?

Evolution and the human DNA?

>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?Mind -----------> (1 = continuity of mind through time)
>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?OR
>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?Body -----------> (1 = continuity of body through time)
>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?XOR
>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?Copy (0 = unique, 1 = copy)
>       >? ? ? ?? ? ? ?= 1 (me) or 0 (not me)
>       >? ? ? ?(Note! I changed from unique in space to copy, since it maps nicer with
>       >? ? ? ?true/false 1/0.)
>       >
>       > That is a good change.
>       >
>       >? ? ? ?Since the original is destroyed, there is no continuity of mind or body, and
>       >? ? ? ?since we're talking about a unique copy (the original was destroyed) we get
>       >? ? ? ?M(0) OR B(0) XOR C(0) = 0 (not me).
>       >
>       > What if we presume that the frozen duplicate was formed via a continuous copying process?
>
>       What do you mean with continuous copy process? Is it that it is "synced" live
>       with the original copy? Or that it is created while the original is alive?
> 
> For example, we inject nano bots into the blood stream which gradually
> replace, one by one, each neuron in the brain with a synthetic equivalent.
> 
> Then at time T, the synthetic neurons each divide in two, while continuing to
> operate and function in parallel. They then switch from using direct
> conduction to radio transmissions, with their two sets of neurons running on
> different radio frequencies.
> 
> The result is two independently functioning brains created via a continuous
> process from the original, each having an equal claim to being the original.

I don't see how at time T, a set of matter can spontaneously split. I can see
how it can copy, but how can it split? But leaving that aside, By applying the
formula, I get 1 OR 1 XOR 1 (copy) = 0 not me. Which kind of makes sense. It's
now, if I understand you correctly, one body, with two brains, and could no
longer be categorized as human.

>       >? ? ? ?If you believe all of them, then I agree.
>       >
>       > Hmm could you clarify what you are agreeing to here?
>
>       Sorry, I think I agree with either being none or all. But being a subset of one
>       of them I do not think makes any sense, if I step away from my formula and try
>       to look at it from your point of view?
> 
> 
> Okay. ??
> 
> I am of the opinion that you survive as any/all of them.
> 
> I think seeing this is perhaps one of the first steps necessary to seeing how
> open individualism could be true. For you are in a situation where the same
> person is in all the bodies, yet each is only aware of the experiences and
> memories tied to the particular brain they think they are only in.

Ok.

>       >? ? ? ?> Consider what Thomas Nagel says about the absence of any physical facts that
>       >? ? ? ?> account for him being Thomas Nagel:
>       >
>       >? ? ? ?I disagree. From my perspective, I can point to Thomas Nagel and say "there he
>       >? ? ? ?is". Do we need anything else?
>       >
>       >? ? ? ?I can also ask Thomas Nagel if he is Thomas Nagel, and that is also good
>       >? ? ? ?evidence I think.
>       >
>       > I think you may be missing Nagel's point, which is, if I have this complete
>       > highly detailed objective description of everything in the universe, what
>       > objective physical fact accounts for the fact that his identity, and his
>       > perspective, happens to be bound up with this particular set of atoms (in the
>       > objective physical description of the universe)? I admit this is a highly
>       > subtle point which is difficult for the English language to express, but I
>       > think if you carefully read?Nagel's original text on this you will see what he
>       > is getting at. Note that you cannot point and say "there he is," because he
>       > explicitly ruled out using any kind of indexical language, like pointing, or
>       > using words like this, I, here, etc.
>
>       Maybe I can express it like this:
>
>       Nagel's emphasis on the subjectivity of consciousness is due to the limitations
>       of every day language, which is unable to fully capture the complexity of conscious
>       experience. This means that the apparent subjectivity of consciousness is an
>       artifact of our linguistic and cognitive limitations, rather than a fundamental
>       feature of reality itself.
> 
> I agree that the idea of subjectivity being tied to one and only one
> particular body, is a subjective illusion and not really part of reality.

I'm sorry, that's not quite what I mean. What I mean is that the apparent
subjectivity that you refer to, is due to language and a running process. That
means, that by using a different language, it is not a mystery, but understood.
So I'm not saying that my experience does not exist, but what I am saying is
that how we talk about that experince, and how we objectively describe it is all
that matters, and also the only thing that can matter by design. If I experience
pain, the only thing that can make a difference is how I express it, and how it
shows up through the lens of science. Anything beyond that such as magic
formulas such as... "what's it like to experience Daniels pain" is just misuse
of language. So that question is an illusion, there we agree, but that fact that
I experience things, and that that experience gives rise to effects in my body
and behaviour, is plain fact and not mysterious at all.

That is what I mean when I think that a lot of qualia magic is due to misuse of
language, and in reality, doesn't even exist.

> Along with this subjective illusion (of only being one neurology), is the
> illusion of presentism (only being in one point in time), and the illusion of
> Copenhagen collapse (of only being in one branch). I call these egocentric, or
> indexical illusions. None of them are real objectively.

I have no seen any empirical evidence that indicates I am not me or that I do
not have the experience of time. So I would not agree with the subjective me
being an illusion or that I only experience one point in time.

>       So basically, our language is deceiving us. If we reformulated the question
>       based on the findings of neuroscience, that is basically the answer.
> 
> As I see it, it is the limited access of any particular conscious state, that
> leads to the wrong, but "common sense" impressions that only one time is real,
> only one branch is real, and only one neurology is mine.

Well, I'll have to remain with myself there, waiting for empirical evidence. ;)

>       >? ? ? ?Then maybe that is the reason? Maybe the two positions are in that case
>       >? ? ? ?ultimately meaningless?
>       >
>       > The theories differ in the kinds of questions they can answer. Consider the
>       > question: "Why were you born as Daniel, at this point in time, on this planet,
>       > and in this universe?" Empty and Closed Individualism cannot offer any answer
>       > to that question, but open individualism can.
>
>       I think the question is not meaningful. I can answer that I was born due to my
>       parents, etc. etc. More than that is not meaningful to say from the point of
>       view of science. For instance, I can ask the question, "why was a granola bar
>       made as that specific granola bar in my kitchen a few hours ago, on this planet?"
> 
> If you found yourself to be a particular granola bar, then you would be
> justified in asking "why am I this granola bar, and not some other granola
> bar?" Especially if you see millions of other granola bars in the world. If
> you are only one particular granola bar, "why *this* one?"

I don't think that question is meaningful at all. In fact, I do not even
understand it, apart from me being me as a result of my parents having a child.

And please don't think I am being troublesome, or do not want to understand it,
but the question "why am I me" makes absolutely no sense to me, apart from the
point of view of cause and effect.

>       The answer is that my wife wanted something with our tea tonight when we're
>       watching Severance. But the question why was that granola bar created as that
>       specific granola bra, is a meaningless question.
> 
> It's meaningless when described from a third person objective viewpoint. (Note
> that this is a viewpoint that doesn't actually exist in reality).

Well, I think my answer has a lot of meaning. Why do you think it is
meaningless?

But! I think I have a better grasp of open individualism thanks to your infinite
patience and good links, so I am therefore confident that I will come to
understand your point here as well! =)

>       I think, in the best
>       Wittgensteinian tradition, that our language sometimes deceives us, and if we
>       are not alert to that fact, we can, at worst, end up wasting thousands of years
>       debating something, which is really, at the end of the day, a "bug" in our
>       language.
> 
> I think it is the models that are deceiving us here, if we take the models so
> seriously that we deny the parts of reality which the models can't
> accommodate.

This is interesting! So let's explore this. What part of reality, with my model,
would I be less equipped to handle, than if I were to adopt the open model?

The other track towards open (I don't remember if it will come further down the
post, or if this was only in our private discussion, but I'll mention it here
just to be on the safe side) that I find interesting, is the "mushroom" track.
That has a nice smell of empiricism to me! =)

>       >? ? ? ?Apologies, this I fully accept. Sorry to have wasted your time,
>       >
>       > No worries, it is the fault of wikipedia here, not you.
>
>       Thank you! I have certainly learned about the limits of both wikipedia and
>       LLM:s! Usually I am in the habit of taking them at face value, when the topic is
>       not super important (just reading for fun), but I brought that bad habit with me
>       here, and it is not a good habit when it comes to discussing things. I should
>       keep my "work" mindset here, where I do not trust an LLM as far as I can throw
>       it. ;)
> 
> In these cases it can be helpful to paste in a large source, such as the text
> of Arnold Zuboff or Daniel Kolak, and then ask it to

I don't know if that is possible with my friendly free AI, duck.ai, but I'll try
to keep that in mind to see if it will work in the future. Thank you very much
for the tip! =)

>       > Consider that you have experienced many things in the life of Daniel which you
>       > no longer remember. Your 247th day of grade school, your 1,879th day of life,
>       > your 126th car ride, etc. Who had these experiences? Clearly you did, and yet
>       > yet the you (in your current vantage point right here and now) don't remember
>       > having those experiences. Whether you remember having had a particular
>       > experience or not, then, is not determinative of whether or not you had that
>       > experience.
>
>       Ok, so let me try and rephrase this, and see if I get it. Z says that all
>       experiences are experienced by an "I". An I could, just to give me something
>       tangible to wrap my mind around, be the neural process generating the experience
>       of being myself.
>
>       So, is he saying, that we are all the same, because he identifies us, not with
>       continuity of mind and body, over time, but with the neural process that gives
>       rise to the I? And since he assumes, this process or function, is the same, and
>       since this function is the "nexus" or focus of experience, we are all the same
>       I?
>
>       Is that closer?
> 
> It's closer. But I don't think he would put it that way. He would say simply
> that all experiences are experienced in a way that is immediate and
> first-person in character, and that this is the only thing that's required for
> an experience to be mine. (I.e., it will feel like it's mine, no matter in
> what brain it appears).

Ok, I think I get it. Well, I do agree with the ethical implications if people
did come to believe it (positive implications), but I do not agree that any
proof that I've seen is empirical. But it does remind me a bit about
Schopenhauer, but I did read your link about the Zuboff AMA on reddit, and it
was not quite there as well.

>       To me, it seems like saying something similar to, we all consist of the same
>       elements, therefore we are all the same.
> 
> That line of thinking has led some to open individualism, but I don't
> personally find the "one universe" argument particularly convincing.

Well, I mean from one point of view, it's just a definition, so nothing magical
about it. For me, what would be revolutionary, would be empirical proof. As we
discussed on our call, also there is the problem of many verbally accepting
open, acting as if they actually deeply believe in closed.

Oh, and I also liked our idea about open/closed being two sides of the same
coin. That's an interesting idea as well.

>       > Note that a common element, to any sensible definition of consciousness, is
>       > "having a point of view" "having an experience". In other words, there is
>       > something it is like to be that particular conscious thing. All conscious
>       > states, being conscious of something, will have some collection of
>       > immediately-felt first-hand knowledge (of that something that happens to
>       > be?conscious of).
>
>       I think for the purpose of descriptions, theories and science, that first-person
>       thing, has to go, as per my argument against Nagel above.
> 
> Are you excising the first-person from reality, or merely from your
> third-person models of reality? I think that is an important distinction to
> clarify.

Depends on the context and purpose. I am not excising it in the form of denying
that I experience things. But I do excise it when it comes to us understanding
the world and each other. I do think we can understand the world, and each
other, perfectly well without getting trapped in questions about the nature of
your being you, or someone else experiencing your experiences. So the more
context, and the more refined the question and the purpose, the easier it is to
distinguish nonsense (or unknowables) from sense (or knowables).

>       I can rephrase that as persons experience things, and act, as if, they have
>       first-person experiences. Better than that I do not think we can do. For
>       ordinary day to day purposes, I do of course talk about my inner experiences,
>       but that does not mean that that is the best way to actually describe them or do
>       research them.
>
>       >? ? ? ?I can see how a credible case can be made that every human
>       >? ? ? ?being has a neuron pattern that gives rise to an I. But that is a distinct
>       >? ? ? ?pattern, unique for every individual.
>       >
>       > There's a distinct neural pattern not only for each individual, but for each
>       > individual in each moment in time. If "you" persist across variations in that
>       > neural pattern across moments of your life, what is the essential
>
>       True, we can go with that, or mind/body for instance.
> 
> But where important is that once we enable identification of multiple distinct
> conscious states with the "same person" the door is opened. What is it about
> any neural pattern that makes it mine vs. someone else's? Is it based on any
> intrinsic properties of the experience itself, or only extrinsic properties of
> the history or atoms etc. that happens to be involved in creating the
> experience? If you start to think about the problem from the perspective of
> only the intrinsic properties, then that tends to lead to open individualism.
> On the other hand, if you go with assuming the relevance of extrinsic
> properties, this leads to all kinds of trouble with handling various scenarios
> and thought experiments (fission, fusion, split brains, teleporters,
> duplication machines, black box closets, healing and restoring devices, mind
> uploads and backups, etc.).

I think the simplest, most pragmatic and time saving route here is to first of
all start of with the case that closed is true, as per everyones (or almost
everyones to be honest) experience.

The second point is that we have no empirical proof for closed being false. The
third point is that a lot of thought experiments are impossible, or at the god
like end of technological development, so those can be disregarded at the
moment. We need to distinguish between the impossible thought experiments, which
can be disregarded, and the likely, which are good, and the unlikely. However,
with our current technology, we cannot do mind uploading. Once we are there, I
am certain that we will have advanced science enough to give us a better grasp
on identity and consciousness, and that technology will also open up new venues
for experiences and experiments.

So based on where we are so far, and only looking at thought experiments and the
technology we have, I don't see much of a case.

The two most interesting paths for me are the empirical testing with substances,
and if there's any specific day to day life situation that cannot be handled
with the closed theory.

>       > nature/character of the pattern that must exist for you to be there in them?
>       > If it is nothing other than the sense of being an I, being a conscious living
>       > person, having an experience of some kind, then you exist in all neural
>       > patterns of all conscious beings.
>
>       I think that is too simplistic. I includes mind and body, continuous through
>       time, which also fits perfectly well with our ordinary experience. I think
>       reducing the definition of the I to having neural pattern, basically says
>       nothing. Different neural patterns correspond with different experiences, so I
>       think there is strong proof for the I being more than a general pattern existing
>       in all human beings. I can of course define I as electrical activity in the
>       brain, and thus we are all I, but that doesn't really say much.
>
>       So far, it seems to me, either to be just a matter of trivial definition to
>       which we agree, or wrong.
> 
> Theories of personal identity are largely definitional theories, but we are
> seeking a definition that is robust and consistent, and makes sense, and
> ideally can answer questions that are relevant and important to us, like which
> experiences wio I have, why are we here, and why am I me?

What I find more interesting, is if/how the definition, can cause people to
alter their beliefs and behaviours. Except saints, who experienced
enlightenment, it seems to me most people in the open camp act as if, they are
closed.

If that could be changed, I think the case for open would improve due to
pragmatic reasons! I mean... who wouldn't want a method to increase love and
empathy in all human beings? Sounds like a win/win/win to me! =)

On the other hand... there are ways to increase empathy with the closed as well
I imaginem but you see my point I hope!

>       Another thing to keep in mind is the pragmatic angle, we all act perfectly well
>       based on a closed kind, it works well, it is the "naive" first impression, and
>       at the end of the day, there seems to be no empirical evidence for anything else
>       being true, _apart_ from the way of definition.
> 
> Closed has many problems. It requires overcoming impossible odds for it to be
> true, it has conceptual difficulties with many real-world as well as

I disagree with the probability argument, since it is a single event that has
already happened, and not possible to replicate it in order to yield future,
testable predictions.

Which real-world scenarios do not work with a closed theory?

> imaginable scenarios, it requires additional unnecesssry metaphysical
> assumptions, and it is unable to give answers for certain questions, and it

I think that, like the external world, it requires no assumptions. We have no
choice but to act in the world, the way we are. That means that the only thing
that should give us cause to pause, is falsification and/or evidence for that an
I is not an I.

> also can't handle the anthropic principle in explaining the fine tuning of the
> universe. Like Newtonian physics, it largely works for most day to day things,

The anthropic principle has no predictive power, is a tautology, and could jsut
be survivorship bias. So I do not see that as a valid argument, for me at least,
that closed is wrong. Is there any way to falsify the anthropic principle?

>       I find the evolutionary argument interesting. Imagine flower-power hippies on
>       the savannah, identifying and enormously respecting and loving the lions and
>       other predators, and they won't remain alive for long.
> 
> Right. ??
>
>       Evolution being smart, said... hold it! let's make sure the guys care about
>       themselves, and thus evolved the closed "view" and it became the default, since
>       it generated humans with barriers, afraid for their own lives, thus highly
>       motivated to run away from lions.
>
>       But I guess we then run into the language barrier. We have a test, where
>       participants get to trip, and after the trip they also describe something
>       sounding like open, but does that feeling and experience prove anything? At most
>       it proves that due to the trip, they become more loving and passionate, it also
>       seems to indicate, that their own subjective experience would align, for the
>       duration of the trip, with something closer to open, than closed. But then they
>       revert.
> 
> Some revert. For others it has a lasting or permanent effect.

Do you have any references or links for lasting effects? You know I'm a sucker
for empiricism, so that would be good reading!

> That they cannot articulate the experience to others nor justify the logic of
> their realization is why theories of personal identity are important if we are
> to ever objectively establish the truth of their experience.

I think it is not possible, since the experience lies beyond the world. I do
think we can learn to generate similar experiences by chemical or neurological
means, and even though that still doesn't prove the content of the experience,
it _does_ allow us to possibly shift our own beliefs, and lead better lives for
it.

This is a good point for me at least, when it comes to investigating the path to
the open world!

>       Are expert meditators and buddhas permanently in "open" mode? Did they in fact
>       "deactivate" the closed switch?
> 
> I think that is the state that enlightenment / moksha / nirvana all describe.
> It is described as a realization in which one transcends the convenrional
> conception of self and recognizing a oneness with all other beings.

True. Transpersonal psychology might yield some interesting reading here! =)

>       Another thing came to mind as well, and that was Schopenhauer. I mentioned it to
>       you, but his starting point is the will to live. The "life force" and he argues
>       that the "spark" or life force is the same in all living things, we are after
>       all, linked by cause and effect, and through the tree of life, back to our very
>       first ancestor.
>
>       If you then define our unique "core" as this spark, that has been passed on for
>       aeons, you can then by definition argue that all life is related and the same,
>       it's the same spark.
> 
> That may be true, but it's not the primary point made by open individualism,
> which is that I am literally seeing the world through Daniel's eyes as I am
> seeing the world through Jason's eyes.

True. I read the Zuboff AMA, it was explained there.

>       Ah, so you don't buy "my" version of Occam above? ;)
> 
> No, sadly. ;-)

;)

>       > A theory of personal identity?shouldn't shy away from problems just because
>       > they are rare, or edge cases.
>
>       True, but is brain damage an edge case? It's like having a theory for a machine,
>       and then complain that the theory doesn't work when the machine is broken, isn't
>       it?
> 
> I see it more like having Newtonian mechanics and finding it works pretty well
> for most things, then finding it fails for situations with very strong gravity
> or at relativistic speeds.

That is also good take on it. I see your point there.

>       >? ? ? ?> Open individualism says you remain present in both -- the apparent disunion is
>       >? ? ? ?> due only to a lack of integration between the hemispheres. Should they be
>       >? ? ? ?> connected in the future, they would become integrated, and again feel as one
>       >? ? ? ?> mind.
>       >? ? ? ?>
>       >? ? ? ?> What would closed individualism say would happen?
>       >
>       >? ? ? ?I think the question can be rephrased in terms of neuroscience and psychology.
>       >
>       > Neither of those subjects deal with personal identity though.
>
>       Depends on how it is defined, and in what language it is defined. Maybe that is
>       the best we can do?
> 
> I don't think neuroscience or psychology are traditionally much interested in
> questions involving teletransporters or mind uploading, etc. But perhaps that
> will change at some point, and one of those fields will try to answer
> questions of personal identity.

I think uploading is closer than teletransporter. And this is one of my points.
Once science progresses, neuroscience and psychology might surprise us with what
they find out!

>       Haha, maybe. ;) I could also adopt the approach of sticking with closed, until
>       empirical evidence of any other version, or theory presents itself. Would that
>       be agnosticism? Or actually, maybe that would be the agnostic physicalism, or
>       the physicalist agnosticism from before? ;)
> 
> Not sure.

>       It would be a great "addon" or complementary principle, I do agree with that!
>       Many people who have not thought a lot about capitalism, beyond the parody
>       presented in the popular press, become very surprised when I tell them about the
>       take on it, that it is in fact, the only system we have devised that transforms
>       our innate egoism into benefits for everyone. I think it is quite a beautiful
>       creation, or emergent phenomenon!
>
>       > converts?self interest into an interest?in helping and in reducing harm for
>       > all others. It could help end war, starvation, abuse, etc. as many have noted.
>       > In effect, open individualism makes the idea of "karma" / "the golden rule"
>       > vividly real.
>
>       Well, I don't know if I agree about karma, but I do agree with the golden rule.
> 
> Karma in the sense that all the good you do for others comes back to you, and
> all the harm you cause others comes back to you. This is trivially true under
> open individualism, for you are all those other people you do good for or
> harm.

Well, in psychology reciprocity is probably as close to Karma as I am willing to
go. But across births... no, not for me.

> You as well!

Thank you Jason, and let me wish you a pleasant evening!

Best regards, 
Daniel

From jasonresch at gmail.com  Sun Apr  6 03:36:49 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2025 23:36:49 -0400
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <a1c2336a-8ede-ffca-e5f9-ebde69e0c0f2@disroot.org>
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On Sat, Apr 5, 2025, 6:31 PM efc--- via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> >       > Such thinking makes no sense to me. If one accepts their
> personal survival in
> >       > the case one person steps out of a teleporter, why should they
> conclude
> >       > personal death in the case someone else like them steps out of
> some other
> >       > teleporter elsewhere?
> >
> >       Well, because of the split scenario. It is one proposed solution,
> and it depends
> >       on how the teleporter works. I consider splits to be impossible,
> >
> > But you seemed to accept it as possible for the AI or uploaded human on
> a VM.
>
> Well, there are a couple of things here. First, an AI or a human that
> exists as
> a software program is not a human. So when I say it is not possible, I am
> referring to human beings like you and me. Second, our current state of
> technology does not permit splits. So my personal position is that it is
> impossible. But I do enjoy the discussion and analysis of the concept, so
> that
> is where the confusion comes in when I say it is impossible, but I am
> happy to
> explore the scenario as if it was. ;)
>
> But come to think of it... what is a "split" for a VM? Let's say you have
> a VM,
> or a virtual entity comprising a number of bits. The only split I can
> think of
> is replicating one bit to two "containers" and afterwards deleting the
> original
> bit.
>
> To me, this seems different from the amoeba case. More a kind of copy
> actually,
> than a "pure" split as in a cell dividing. A bit can't split.
>
> What do you think?
>

Pause the VM, then transfer it's state, simultaneously, over TCP/IP to two
other host machines, which simultaneously resume the VM upon completion of
the transfer.

This is what I mean by a split (a forking path in the evolution of a mind).
It poses a seemingly insurmountable problem for continuity based theories
of personal identity, at least those that maintain you become one (but not
both, or neither).



> >       so for me it is
> >       not a case I need to consider. But for the sake of our discussion,
> assuming the
> >       MWI, it is definitely a case that needs to be handled. I agree
> there.
> >
> > Okay. And if it is handled, would you agree with my point that it makes
> little
> > sense to say I survived the split when one of me emerged, and yet I will
> die
> > if more than one emerge?
>
> No, because if one emerges, it is not a split.
>

Ignoring use of the word split, do you think it makes sense to say you
survive a teleporter trip when you appear in the intended location, but
that you die if you appear in the intended location and unbeknownst to you,
an identical copy emerges elsewhere at a different location?

I agree the concept of having "one single identity" evaporates in this
case, but if we focus only on the question of survive vs. die: Would you
expect to die in the case where an extra receiving teleporter builds a
version of you in a place that wasn't intended, but not die in the case you
appear in a single location?

It is answering "yes" to this question that makes no sense to me.


> >       > If a theory fails for hypothetical situations it ought to
> handle, I think we
> >       > can discount it as a failed theory without even having to do the
> experiment.
> >
> >       True, but that comes down to the point of view of what a theory
> ought to handle
> >       vs what it does not need to handle. Since I'm not an MWI:er for
> instance, my
> >       theory of identity would never have to deal with splits. But for
> an MWI:er, it
> >       would have to, since I think that would be the case constantly
> happening
> >       everywhere and for everyone if I understand it correctly.
> >
> > One risks creating a fragile theory if it only works according to
> results made
> > in areas far outside the scope of that theory.
> >
> > For example, it would be like having a theory of consciousness that only
> works
> > if dark matter happens to be X. This is why hypothetical questions and
> > situations are important: "well why wouldn't the theory work if dark
> matter
> > was Y rather than X?", "Can we modify the theory to be resilient in
> either
> > case?" Etc.
>
> I think it depends. If I have a theory that handles everything well at the
> empirical level and day to day reality, I do not see what I would have to
> gain
> but analyzing splits or multiple worlds?


Because I see it as needlessly setting up the theory to fail, should some
breakthrough in QM come about that established many-worlds. Why add a
weakness to a theory if you don't have to?


No empirical evidence has ever been
> presented for it,


Grok 3 estimated the probability of many-worlds being true at 99.99% after
I had it consider some old and new arguments.


and splits, as per human biology is not possible. So I think
> in fact, that thought experiments can actually be detrimental when they
> take
> energy and focus away from empirical reality, and lead to endless
> speculation.
>
> The caveat I do add is that we are well advised to adjust our theories
> when new
> evidence is found. But I do not think it is productive, absent evidence, to
> engage in endless speculation. That energy is better spent on research and
> collecting empirical evidence.
>
>
> >       > For example, consider Einstein's proposed EPR experiment
> involving sending
> >       > entangled particle pairs across space (an experiment well beyond
> the
> >       > technology of his day), yet it highlighted the fact that
> Copenhagen
> >       > Interpretation implied faster-than-light influences, in clear
> contradiction to
> >       > his relativity. And some 50 years later, when we did have the
> technology to
> >       > perform such experiments, they confirmed Einstein's point, the
> effect was
> >       > observed, and one cannot accept CI and believe that nothing can
> travel faster
> >       > than c.
> >
> >       Ah, but observation was key here. And as long as observation is
> possible for us,
> >       I have no quarrel with theories, explorations and so on.
> >
> > Presumably observations will be possible one day (should we develop mind
> > uploading and transfer technology).
>
> True. I think a case can be made for postponing a lot of speculation until
> the
> technology is at least feasible or on the horizon. But extrapolating
> technology
> to godlike things, and then speculating and testing theories based on
> those, I
> only see as fun entertainment and science fiction, and not as something
> productive.
>


They trace back to having real-world consequences for today's decision
makers. For instance: should one sign up to Alcor or not? Whether it is
worth it or not depends to a large extent on whether you think it is
possible to be resurrected from a frozen copy of your brainz and moreover,
whether you believe such a resurrected instance would be you.

So reasoning through these consequences and considering these (admittedly
far out) thought experiments, is productive, because having a correct
theory of personal identity is important for making correct and informed
decisions today.



> > Einstein's paper is widely considered significant, even without the
> empirical
> > result, for it showed what the assumed theory of the day predicted. To
> show a
> > problem with a theory, one need only assume the theory is true and show
> what
> > it predicts.
> >
> > So if we want to highlight problems in some theory of personal identity,
> for
> > the most part experiments aren't needed (and experiments themselves
> wouldn't
> > tell us much), they would only be meaningful to the person/people who
> > underwent the procedure.
>
> Well, the problem there is that there is no problem of closed
> individualism. It
> works perfectly well for all intents and purposes.



I would maintain it is inadequate for many scenarios that happen today:
split brains, amnesia, dementia, ageing & metabolism, coma patients, brain
surgery patients, falling asleep and waking, altered states of
consciousness, traumatic brain injury, choosing to freeze one's brain, etc.


In terms of empirical
> experiments, I do think there a case can be made for gaining a better
> undertsanding of identity and our perception of identity through
> neuroscience
> and investigating meditation techniques and mushrooms and interviewing
> people
> who do have identity altering experiences etc.
>
> > Though perhaps you can have while teams of scientists step into the same
> > teleporter and then they can all publish their shared result of all
> > subjectively feeling as though they survived the process. And other
> teams of
> > scientists can replicate the result for themselves. Does that make it
> > objective repeatable science? ??
>
> Show me the teleporter and I'll show you objective repeatable science! ;)
>

A train is a teleporter (just without the momentary atomic rearrangement
step). If you can survive momentarily atomic rearrangement, and if you can
survive a train ride, then you can survive both together, thus you can
survive a teleporter.


> >       > You think that you are Daniel, and no one else. What objective
> physical fact
> >       > makes this so? Must we not consider the subjective aspect of
> reality when we
> >       > deal with areas such as consciousness and personal subjective
> survival?
> >
> >       I don't think we can. The subjective is per definition directly
> inaccessible to
> >       us,
> >
> > No I think rather that the subjective is *the only thing* that we can
> access
> > or have access to.
>
> I disagree. The subjective is something we experience. It is not something
> we
> can "access".


Do you not have access to your own thoughts and feelings? This is all I
mean by access. That you are aware of them.


It is basically our running process. We can of course experience
> the running of our process. When it comes to reality, the only access we
> have is
> through our senses, and I'd argue that that is plenty objective. You and I
> can
> both agree through the evidence of our senses on the positions of
> furniture in
> our vicinity. It does not need to be more complicated than that.
>
> When I say that the subjective is per definition inaccessible, I mean that
> your
> experience as experienced by you, is forever inaccessible.
>

I agree my experience is inaccessible to you, and vice-versa. I meant only
that each of our own experiences is accessible to ourselves individually,
and it is the only thing one can know directly (one's own experience).



> > The limitation is that one person's subjective is inaccessible to others.
>
> Yes, sorry. Better way to put it.


Glad we agree on this.

I was being vague.
>
> > Then we create objective models of the world, (models based formes to
> explain
> > our subjective experiences) then we end up with a picture of the world
> that
> > mostly sweeps under the rug the fact that in doing so we create a model
> that
> > ignores the subjective, the model is devoid of it. This is a limitation
> of our
> > models, but we should not take our models so seriously that we deny the
> > subjective, which is the entire source and reason for existence of the
> very
> > objective models we created to explain the subjective appearances.
>
> Since the subjective is our own running process, there is no need to
> ignore it
> or affirm it, it is just part of reality. As you say, others subjectivity
> is
> forever closed of. So the only thing we have is objective, descriptive
> reality.
> Since th subjective is not objective, I think we can safely ignore it,
> since by
> the very way we are constructed, there no point in trying to shift it from
> the
> subjective to the objective.
>

We can sweep it under the rug, but I don't think we can totally ignore it,
if we are honest with ourselves.

Many of the outstanding problems in physics can be traced to the fact that
we have ignored the question the subjective and what constitutes an
observer.


> > Or as Democritus wrote thousands of years ago:
> >
> > "Intellect: Ostensibly there is color, sweetness, bitterness, actually
> there
> > is only atoms and the void.
>
> True. Two ways to describe the same thing. And depending on the language we
> choose to describe it, we can achieve different things, and predict
> different
> things.
>

I don't think they are the same thing. One may derive from the other, or
supervene on the other, but I think it is a mistake to equate sensations
with particles. Having the "feeling of jealousy" isn't a property of any
particle, it is, however, a potential property of some minds.



> >       and therefore, unless it can be verified, the question should be
> dropped.
> >
> > Everything you experience you personally verify. It is only in your
> objective
> > models of reality that you cannot explain, and hope to sweep under the
> rug,
> > the subjective.
>
> No, there's nothing to sweep under the rug. The subjective is per
> definition the
> subjective. In terms of my subjective experience, it just is, so absent
> someone
> falsifying it, I can just accept it and move on. When we move to the
> objective,
> where you (and in the reverse, I) exist, we have science. I think a lot of
> people get trapped by language and think there is a mystery, where in fact
> there
> is no mystery.
>

For deep theoretical physicists the mystery reappears. For example:

"Well as you understand, consciousness is not
exactly my profession, but doing quantum
cosmology requires us to think about this. Let me give you an example. [?]
Quantum mechanics is supposed to be universally applicable, so let?s apply
it to the universe, so to everything. [?]
I just cannot cut me observing it out of the
equation, and ?my observations? is my consciousness.
Without me recording it, all the rest of the universe will be dead. Well
then of course it is kind of strange, right? Because it presumes that
consciousness may have some independent importance, or maybe not, I do not
know. But the thing is that if I want to study quantum cosmology, I want to
have an answer to these questions."
? Andrei Linde in ?Is Consciousness Fundamental? (2021)

"The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very
complete understanding of all that happens?it
makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the
total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science
knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being
consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility
connected with it?though they actually are. And the reason for this
disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing
the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying
device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone,
it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed."
? Erwin Schr?dinger in ?Nature and the Greeks? (1954)

"We can no longer talk of the behavior of the
particle apart from the process of observation. In consequence, we are
finally led to believe that the laws of nature which we formulate
mathematically in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles
themselves but with our knowledge of the elementary particles."
? Werner Heisenberg in ?The Representation of Nature in Contemporary
Physics? (1958)



> >       In
> >       terms of physical facts, what makes me, me, is a combination of my
> mind and body
> >       and uniqueness in space, as per my formula.
> >
> >       Also note that from a pragmatic point of view, our legal
> definitions and
> >       processes for proving that I am I work perfectly fine, so that is
> another way to
> >       discuss it based on an external point of view.
> >
> > Laws are written by politicians, who I don't see as possessing any
> special
> > wisdom on deep philosophical problems.
>
> Well, pragmaticism is one philosophical way to look at life, and laws are
> also
> "distilled" customs, culture, ethics and norms, and evolve throughout
> societies.
> They can be seen, over time, as the wisdom of crowds. Are they perfect?
> Far from
> it! Do they contain bugs? Of course! Are they useless? Of course not. They
> do
> work, and I definitely think, from the point of view of identity, that
> it's an
> excellent pragmatic starting point. Add to that some psychology and
> biology, and
> I think we're off to a good start. =)
>

Crowds have never excelled at inventing new technologies, forming new
scientific theories, developing mathematical proofs, etc. This is not to
say crowds have no wisdom: they drive markets, evolve language and culture,
form consensuses, etc. But if what one is after is the truth (rather than a
pragmatic law or principle for organizing society) I would turn to an
individual analysis and deep consideration of all the facts and arguments.

Socrates, Hypatia, Bruno, Galileo all stood up against irrational crowds.
It didn't turn out well for them.


> >       But subjectively understanding it, is impossible from a scientific
> perspective,
> >       and I advocate for dropping the question until new experiments are
> devised.
> >
> > I think we ought to recognize the limitations of our current models in
> > explaining certain aspects of reality, rather than redefine reality to
> pretend
> > those phenomenon don't exist.
>
> But what phenomenon is there that we pretend does not exist? We can follow
> every
> experience I have by scanning my brain activity. We have reverse
> engineered some
> of it, and we can read through brain scans, in some situations, what a
> person
> thinks, or which hand a person will move.
>
> I think there is no pretending here, and a lot of progress.
>

There is a lot to be learned about qualia of other people and other species
even when it can't be experienced directly.

For example:

"Using these methods, we might even get some
insight into what it is like to be a bat! Functional
organization can tell us much about the kind of
information that a bat has access to?the kinds of discriminations it can
make, the way it categorizes things, the most salient properties in its
perceptual field, and so on?and about the way in which it uses it.
Eventually we should be able to build up a detailed picture about the
structure of awareness in a bat?s cognitive system."
? Kathleen Akins in ?A Bat Without Qualities? (1993)

We would not be able to reach this degree of understanding if we write off
qualia "unstudiable."



> >       >       >       There is not condition here, it is just an event
> along a long chain of causes
> >       >       >       and effects. It is the same with reality. It
> happens to us, we have no choice. I
> >       >       >       think this also shows us that probability is part
> of the language of math, that
> >       >       >       is only meaningful for us as conscious human
> beings. Without human beings,
> >       >       >       "speaking" the language of math and probability,
> the concept is meaningless.
> >       >       >
> >       >       > If there is no condition that determines you being in
> some body, and not in
> >       >       > others, then that is open individualism.
> >       >
> >       >       I don't see how that follows. We can trace a path of cause
> and effect that
> >       >       resulted in me sitting in my chair. How does open
> individualism follow from
> >       >       that?
> >       >
> >       > Because similar cause effect paths lead to all other persons.
> What makes yours special?
> >
> >       I don't think the question is meaningful. What do you mean with
> "special"?
> >
> > What makes Daniel special, under the closed individualism viewpoint, is
> that
> > you will only ever experience the experiences that happen to be
> generated by
> > Daniel's brain and its material (or psychological) continuations.
>
> I don't understand that. It's a tautology. I will only experience what I
> will
> experience? Or I will only experience what my brain experiences?
>

Rather than a tautology, I see it as an assumption that is so deeply
ingrained (in most people) that many cannot even recognize it as an
assumption, or recognize it as something in need of further explanation.

Hmm, I wonder if perhaps this is the main obstacle in coming to see open
individualism?

These questions are rhetorical (no need to answer them) but I list them
with the hope one might show you the problem I am getting at:

- Why is your brain Daniel's brain?
- What prevents you from inhabiting anyone else's brain, or experiencing
their perspective?
- What ties and confines all your future experiences to the body/brain
known as Daniel?
- What conditions had to be met for you to come into the world?
- If you could come into the world once what principle prevents it from
happening again?





> > What imbues Daniel's brain with this unique power?
>
> Evolution and the human DNA?
>

I think you may not be seeing the question I am asking (admittedly it is
subtle and existing English pronouns seen inadequate).

You are, right now, having a particular experience as a particular human
being. Of all the billions of perspectives out there's you are aware of
just one. Why this one? Why Daniel?

Of course there is a straight forward answer: This question is reaching
Daniel's computer and Daniel's eyes and Daniel's brain which only has
access to Daniel's memories, so of course he only remembers being Daniel.

But note that my message is being sent to a list, and reaching other
people's eyes and other people's brains, each of whom also have their own
memories. All those people are equally conscious as you are.

So what in physics or nature singles out your perspective as uniquely
special from all these equally extant experiences? Are they not just as
equally and directly and personally experienced as Daniel's experience is?

If there's nothing special or unique about Daniel's body or brain, then it
is not privileged in being the only experience or perspective created from
this email. All the people who read these words are equally present and
alive and (probably) all opereting under the (ego) illusion that their
perspective is somehow special as being the only one directly felt by "I",
when they are all felt by an "I".

I am not sure if any of this helps but I am hopeful that it will.




> >       >              Mind -----------> (1 = continuity of mind through
> time)
> >       >              OR
> >       >              Body -----------> (1 = continuity of body through
> time)
> >       >              XOR
> >       >              Copy (0 = unique, 1 = copy)
> >       >              = 1 (me) or 0 (not me)
> >       >       (Note! I changed from unique in space to copy, since it
> maps nicer with
> >       >       true/false 1/0.)
> >       >
> >       > That is a good change.
> >       >
> >       >       Since the original is destroyed, there is no continuity of
> mind or body, and
> >       >       since we're talking about a unique copy (the original was
> destroyed) we get
> >       >       M(0) OR B(0) XOR C(0) = 0 (not me).
> >       >
> >       > What if we presume that the frozen duplicate was formed via a
> continuous copying process?
> >
> >       What do you mean with continuous copy process? Is it that it is
> "synced" live
> >       with the original copy? Or that it is created while the original
> is alive?
> >
> > For example, we inject nano bots into the blood stream which gradually
> > replace, one by one, each neuron in the brain with a synthetic
> equivalent.
> >
> > Then at time T, the synthetic neurons each divide in two, while
> continuing to
> > operate and function in parallel. They then switch from using direct
> > conduction to radio transmissions, with their two sets of neurons
> running on
> > different radio frequencies.
> >
> > The result is two independently functioning brains created via a
> continuous
> > process from the original, each having an equal claim to being the
> original.
>
> I don't see how at time T, a set of matter can spontaneously split. I can
> see
> how it can copy, but how can it split?


Just like an amoeba does.


>  But leaving that aside, By applying the
> formula, I get 1 OR 1 XOR 1 (copy) = 0 not me. Which kind of makes sense.
> It's
> now, if I understand you correctly, one body, with two brains, and could no
> longer be categorized as human.
>

But I am asking you to justify the formula. Why does having a foot cause
death/non-existence?

Also note that split brains and conjoined twins are examples of two brains
in one body.



> >       >       If you believe all of them, then I agree.
> >       >
> >       > Hmm could you clarify what you are agreeing to here?
> >
> >       Sorry, I think I agree with either being none or all. But being a
> subset of one
> >       of them I do not think makes any sense, if I step away from my
> formula and try
> >       to look at it from your point of view?
> >
> >
> > Okay. ??
> >
> > I am of the opinion that you survive as any/all of them.
> >
> > I think seeing this is perhaps one of the first steps necessary to
> seeing how
> > open individualism could be true. For you are in a situation where the
> same
> > person is in all the bodies, yet each is only aware of the experiences
> and
> > memories tied to the particular brain they think they are only in.
>
> Ok.
>
> >       >       > Consider what Thomas Nagel says about the absence of any
> physical facts that
> >       >       > account for him being Thomas Nagel:
> >       >
> >       >       I disagree. From my perspective, I can point to Thomas
> Nagel and say "there he
> >       >       is". Do we need anything else?
> >       >
> >       >       I can also ask Thomas Nagel if he is Thomas Nagel, and
> that is also good
> >       >       evidence I think.
> >       >
> >       > I think you may be missing Nagel's point, which is, if I have
> this complete
> >       > highly detailed objective description of everything in the
> universe, what
> >       > objective physical fact accounts for the fact that his identity,
> and his
> >       > perspective, happens to be bound up with this particular set of
> atoms (in the
> >       > objective physical description of the universe)? I admit this is
> a highly
> >       > subtle point which is difficult for the English language to
> express, but I
> >       > think if you carefully read Nagel's original text on this you
> will see what he
> >       > is getting at. Note that you cannot point and say "there he is,"
> because he
> >       > explicitly ruled out using any kind of indexical language, like
> pointing, or
> >       > using words like this, I, here, etc.
> >
> >       Maybe I can express it like this:
> >
> >       Nagel's emphasis on the subjectivity of consciousness is due to
> the limitations
> >       of every day language, which is unable to fully capture the
> complexity of conscious
> >       experience. This means that the apparent subjectivity of
> consciousness is an
> >       artifact of our linguistic and cognitive limitations, rather than
> a fundamental
> >       feature of reality itself.
> >
> > I agree that the idea of subjectivity being tied to one and only one
> > particular body, is a subjective illusion and not really part of reality.
>
> I'm sorry, that's not quite what I mean. What I mean is that the apparent
> subjectivity that you refer to, is due to language and a running process.
> That
> means, that by using a different language, it is not a mystery, but
> understood.
> So I'm not saying that my experience does not exist, but what I am saying
> is
> that how we talk about that experince, and how we objectively describe it
> is all
> that matters, and also the only thing that can matter by design. If I
> experience
> pain, the only thing that can make a difference is how I express it, and
> how it
> shows up through the lens of science. Anything beyond that such as magic
> formulas such as... "what's it like to experience Daniels pain" is just
> misuse
> of language. So that question is an illusion, there we agree, but that
> fact that
> I experience things, and that that experience gives rise to effects in my
> body
> and behaviour, is plain fact and not mysterious at all.
>
> That is what I mean when I think that a lot of qualia magic is due to
> misuse of
> language, and in reality, doesn't even exist.
>
> > Along with this subjective illusion (of only being one neurology), is the
> > illusion of presentism (only being in one point in time), and the
> illusion of
> > Copenhagen collapse (of only being in one branch). I call these
> egocentric, or
> > indexical illusions. None of them are real objectively.
>
> I have no seen any empirical evidence that indicates I am not me


You are Daniel, that part is not an illusion. The illusion is that you are
only Daniel.

or that I do
> not have the experience of time.


You do experience the passage of time, but time's passage is a subjective
phenomenon that has no basis in reality according to relativity.

The illusion is that you only exist is one "now" when the reality is you
exist in all times that span your lifetime.

Likewise "collapse of the wave function" is a subjective phenomenon without
a basis in objective reality. You subjectively feel as though you
experience only one outcome in one possible branch of the wave function,
when in reality you experience and exist in all of the branches.

So I would not agree with the subjective me
> being an illusion or that I only experience one point in time.
>
> >       So basically, our language is deceiving us. If we reformulated the
> question
> >       based on the findings of neuroscience, that is basically the
> answer.
> >
> > As I see it, it is the limited access of any particular conscious state,
> that
> > leads to the wrong, but "common sense" impressions that only one time is
> real,
> > only one branch is real, and only one neurology is mine.
>
> Well, I'll have to remain with myself there, waiting for empirical
> evidence. ;)
>

Relativity, QM have substantial empirical evidence.

Open individualism has empirical evidence too, but you're uncomfortable
with the statistical reasoning that justifies use of that empirical
evidence.

I might suggest reviewing this problem and seeing if you have an opinion
one way or the other. Depending on your position on the problem, it may
suggest whether or not you would accept the statistical arguments for open
individualism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem



> >       >       Then maybe that is the reason? Maybe the two positions are
> in that case
> >       >       ultimately meaningless?
> >       >
> >       > The theories differ in the kinds of questions they can answer.
> Consider the
> >       > question: "Why were you born as Daniel, at this point in time,
> on this planet,
> >       > and in this universe?" Empty and Closed Individualism cannot
> offer any answer
> >       > to that question, but open individualism can.
> >
> >       I think the question is not meaningful. I can answer that I was
> born due to my
> >       parents, etc. etc. More than that is not meaningful to say from
> the point of
> >       view of science. For instance, I can ask the question, "why was a
> granola bar
> >       made as that specific granola bar in my kitchen a few hours ago,
> on this planet?"
> >
> > If you found yourself to be a particular granola bar, then you would be
> > justified in asking "why am I this granola bar, and not some other
> granola
> > bar?" Especially if you see millions of other granola bars in the world.
> If
> > you are only one particular granola bar, "why *this* one?"
>
> I don't think that question is meaningful at all. In fact, I do not even
> understand it, apart from me being me as a result of my parents having a
> child.
>

It's because you are explaining the situation objectively from a
non-existent and imagined purely objective viewpoint. I agree from that
vantage point there is no mystery to be had.

It is only when you consider it from the standpoint of having a particular
subjective viewpoint that the mystery arises: why am I seeing the world
from *this* particular view?


> And please don't think I am being troublesome, or do not want to
> understand it,
> but the question "why am I me" makes absolutely no sense to me, apart from
> the
> point of view of cause and effect.
>

Here is a case where ignoring the subjective might leave you blind to a
certain class of problems.

Yes Daniel exists because his parents had him. Yet many other parents had
many other kids.

Is there anything special about Daniel?

If not, I propose this suggests open individualism. "You" (I use this term
not to refer to Daniel but to "the experiencer") are then not limited to
any particular body or brain, but exist equally within all.


Daniel:

>
> >       The answer is that my wife wanted something with our tea tonight
> when we're
> >       watching Severance. But the question why was that granola bar
> created as that
> >       specific granola bra, is a meaningless question.
> >


Jason reply:


> > It's meaningless [the question, not your answer]  when described from a
> third person objective viewpoint. (Note
> > that this is a viewpoint that doesn't actually exist in reality).
>



> Well, I think my answer has a lot of meaning. Why do you think it is
> meaningless?
>

I was referring to what you said was a meaningless question, not to your
answer. ?? I added some notation above to try to clarify my admittedly
ambiguous reply.




> But! I think I have a better grasp of open individualism thanks to your
> infinite
> patience and good links, so I am therefore confident that I will come to
> understand your point here as well! =)
>

Wonderful to hear. I do feel as though we are converging to a common
understanding!


> >       I think, in the best
> >       Wittgensteinian tradition, that our language sometimes deceives
> us, and if we
> >       are not alert to that fact, we can, at worst, end up wasting
> thousands of years
> >       debating something, which is really, at the end of the day, a
> "bug" in our
> >       language.
> >
> > I think it is the models that are deceiving us here, if we take the
> models so
> > seriously that we deny the parts of reality which the models can't
> > accommodate.
>
> This is interesting! So let's explore this. What part of reality, with my
> model,
> would I be less equipped to handle, than if I were to adopt the open model?
>

I think I was more thinking of denying or ignoring the subjective, rather
than open vs. closed. In particular, this quote expresses the issue better
than I can:

"We find that our perceptions obey some laws, which can be most
conveniently formulated if we assume that there is some underlying reality
beyond our perceptions. This model of a material world obeying laws of
physics is so successful that soon we forget about our starting point and
say that matter is the only reality, and perceptions are nothing but a
useful tool for the description of matter. This assumption is almost as
natural (and maybe as false) as our previous assumption that space is only
a mathematical tool for the description of matter. We are substituting
reality of our feelings by the successfully working theory of an
independently existing material world. And the theory is so successful that
we almost never think about its possible limitations."
-- Andrei Linde in ?Inflation, Quantum Cosmology, and the Anthropic
Principle? (2002)

Which is the same error Democritus highlighted when he used his sensations
to build a model of reality that denied the existence of the very
sensations he relied upon to build his model of reality in the first place.

This is the error I refer to when we take our models so seriously that we
can no longer account for things we know to exist within reality (like our
subjective experiences).


> The other track towards open (I don't remember if it will come further
> down the
> post, or if this was only in our private discussion, but I'll mention it
> here
> just to be on the safe side) that I find interesting, is the "mushroom"
> track.
> That has a nice smell of empiricism to me! =)
>

But is it reliable? Many people report encounters with "machine elves" on
DMT. But should we infer from their common experience their reality?

But perhaps if such experiences open or broaden people's minds, or cause
them to question previously unquestionable assumptions/beliefs, it could
make them more receptive to other philosophical ideas.



> >       >       Apologies, this I fully accept. Sorry to have wasted your
> time,
> >       >
> >       > No worries, it is the fault of wikipedia here, not you.
> >
> >       Thank you! I have certainly learned about the limits of both
> wikipedia and
> >       LLM:s! Usually I am in the habit of taking them at face value,
> when the topic is
> >       not super important (just reading for fun), but I brought that bad
> habit with me
> >       here, and it is not a good habit when it comes to discussing
> things. I should
> >       keep my "work" mindset here, where I do not trust an LLM as far as
> I can throw
> >       it. ;)
> >
> > In these cases it can be helpful to paste in a large source, such as the
> text
> > of Arnold Zuboff or Daniel Kolak, and then ask it to
>
> I don't know if that is possible with my friendly free AI, duck.ai, but
> I'll try
> to keep that in mind to see if it will work in the future. Thank you very
> much
> for the tip! =)
>


I believe Grok 3 is free (with sign up).


> >       > Consider that you have experienced many things in the life of
> Daniel which you
> >       > no longer remember. Your 247th day of grade school, your 1,879th
> day of life,
> >       > your 126th car ride, etc. Who had these experiences? Clearly you
> did, and yet
> >       > yet the you (in your current vantage point right here and now)
> don't remember
> >       > having those experiences. Whether you remember having had a
> particular
> >       > experience or not, then, is not determinative of whether or not
> you had that
> >       > experience.
> >
> >       Ok, so let me try and rephrase this, and see if I get it. Z says
> that all
> >       experiences are experienced by an "I". An I could, just to give me
> something
> >       tangible to wrap my mind around, be the neural process generating
> the experience
> >       of being myself.
> >
> >       So, is he saying, that we are all the same, because he identifies
> us, not with
> >       continuity of mind and body, over time, but with the neural
> process that gives
> >       rise to the I? And since he assumes, this process or function, is
> the same, and
> >       since this function is the "nexus" or focus of experience, we are
> all the same
> >       I?
> >
> >       Is that closer?
> >
> > It's closer. But I don't think he would put it that way. He would say
> simply
> > that all experiences are experienced in a way that is immediate and
> > first-person in character, and that this is the only thing that's
> required for
> > an experience to be mine. (I.e., it will feel like it's mine, no matter
> in
> > what brain it appears).
>
> Ok, I think I get it. Well, I do agree with the ethical implications if
> people
> did come to believe it (positive implications), but I do not agree that any
> proof that I've seen is empirical. But it does remind me a bit about
> Schopenhauer, but I did read your link about the Zuboff AMA on reddit, and
> it
> was not quite there as well.
>
> >       To me, it seems like saying something similar to, we all consist
> of the same
> >       elements, therefore we are all the same.
> >
> > That line of thinking has led some to open individualism, but I don't
> > personally find the "one universe" argument particularly convincing.
>
> Well, I mean from one point of view, it's just a definition, so nothing
> magical
> about it. For me, what would be revolutionary, would be empirical proof.


I am curious now to know your stance on the sleeping beauty problem.

I can't remember if I pasted it already or not, but in case I forgot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem


As we
> discussed on our call, also there is the problem of many verbally accepting
> open, acting as if they actually deeply believe in closed.
>
> Oh, and I also liked our idea about open/closed being two sides of the same
> coin. That's an interesting idea as well.
>

Yes it might be something like Copenhagen vs MW, or presentism vs. block
time. Both can be seen as consistent interpretations of the same data, with
the difference being mainly in conceptual simplicity vs. ontological
simplicity.


> >       > Note that a common element, to any sensible definition of
> consciousness, is
> >       > "having a point of view" "having an experience". In other words,
> there is
> >       > something it is like to be that particular conscious thing. All
> conscious
> >       > states, being conscious of something, will have some collection
> of
> >       > immediately-felt first-hand knowledge (of that something that
> happens to
> >       > be conscious of).
> >
> >       I think for the purpose of descriptions, theories and science,
> that first-person
> >       thing, has to go, as per my argument against Nagel above.
> >
> > Are you excising the first-person from reality, or merely from your
> > third-person models of reality? I think that is an important distinction
> to
> > clarify.
>
> Depends on the context and purpose. I am not excising it in the form of
> denying
> that I experience things. But I do excise it when it comes to us
> understanding
> the world and each other. I do think we can understand the world, and each
> other, perfectly well without getting trapped in questions about the
> nature of
> your being you, or someone else experiencing your experiences. So the more
> context, and the more refined the question and the purpose, the easier it
> is to
> distinguish nonsense (or unknowables) from sense (or knowables).
>

Thanks that is clarifying.


> >       I can rephrase that as persons experience things, and act, as if,
> they have
> >       first-person experiences. Better than that I do not think we can
> do. For
> >       ordinary day to day purposes, I do of course talk about my inner
> experiences,
> >       but that does not mean that that is the best way to actually
> describe them or do
> >       research them.
> >
> >       >       I can see how a credible case can be made that every human
> >       >       being has a neuron pattern that gives rise to an I. But
> that is a distinct
> >       >       pattern, unique for every individual.
> >       >
> >       > There's a distinct neural pattern not only for each individual,
> but for each
> >       > individual in each moment in time. If "you" persist across
> variations in that
> >       > neural pattern across moments of your life, what is the essential
> >
> >       True, we can go with that, or mind/body for instance.
> >
> > But where important is that once we enable identification of multiple
> distinct
> > conscious states with the "same person" the door is opened. What is it
> about
> > any neural pattern that makes it mine vs. someone else's? Is it based on
> any
> > intrinsic properties of the experience itself, or only extrinsic
> properties of
> > the history or atoms etc. that happens to be involved in creating the
> > experience? If you start to think about the problem from the perspective
> of
> > only the intrinsic properties, then that tends to lead to open
> individualism.
> > On the other hand, if you go with assuming the relevance of extrinsic
> > properties, this leads to all kinds of trouble with handling various
> scenarios
> > and thought experiments (fission, fusion, split brains, teleporters,
> > duplication machines, black box closets, healing and restoring devices,
> mind
> > uploads and backups, etc.).
>
> I think the simplest, most pragmatic and time saving route here is to
> first of
> all start of with the case that closed is true, as per everyones (or almost
> everyones to be honest) experience.
>

Our experience provides no special evidence favoring closed over open
individualism. They have identical predictions for what we will feel.

Just like both heliocentricism and geocentrism predict the earth will not
feel like it's moving.

Just like both presentism and eternalism predict you will feel like you are
in a single now.

Just like CI and MW predict you will feel like the wave function collapsed.

Both Closed and Open predict each "I" will feel like it is confined to the
neurology of a single creature.

Direct experience carries no weight in any of these examples because their
predictions for your experience is the same.


> The second point is that we have no empirical proof for closed being
> false.


Thought experiments reveal closed leads to logical inconsistencies.

That you're now having any experience at all is itself strong empirical
evidence for the truth of open individualism (closed is, by comparison, so
improbable that it can be dismissed out of hand) -- Much like the
improbability of the universe being fine tuned by luck.

But I know you don't like using inference so this argument probably won't
change your mind.

Nevertheless, I will provide you with this brief proof by Zuboff, and if
you have any objections, or can meet his challenge, I would be most happy
to engage on that:

https://youtu.be/dlVpRncWz8o

Or for more detail:
https://youtu.be/wjjh5tl3fcI




The
> third point is that a lot of thought experiments are impossible, or at the
> god
> like end of technological development, so those can be disregarded at the
> moment.


The utility of thought experiments is they they don't need to be done to be
valuable or instructive.

If you won't consider thought experiments, or accept logical inferences, or
believe probability arguments, you leave little room for further progress
on these problems. Perhaps 90% of philosophy is done using at least one of
these tools.


We need to distinguish between the impossible thought experiments, which
> can be disregarded, and the likely, which are good, and the unlikely.
> However,
> with our current technology, we cannot do mind uploading. Once we are
> there, I
> am certain that we will have advanced science enough to give us a better
> grasp
> on identity and consciousness, and that technology will also open up new
> venues
> for experiences and experiments.
>

Even with mind uploading technology at hand, these same problems will
persist. There's no reason not to reason about them now, since even with
mind uploading technology, we will still have to reason about these
situations. The existence of the technology doesn't itself provide any
further information or answers on these problems. The only question it
would answer is that mind uploading is indeed possible (which we can accept
now if we accept (as 99% of scientists do today) that the brain follows
computable physical laws.

So let's go with the 99% of scientists, assume uploading is physically
possible, and reason about the implications of that possibility so we can
test today's theories and hopefully obtain answers and act on them today
(like deciding whether to freeze one's brain or not).


> So based on where we are so far, and only looking at thought experiments
> and the
> technology we have, I don't see much of a case.
>

A case for what?



> The two most interesting paths for me are the empirical testing with
> substances,
> and if there's any specific day to day life situation that cannot be
> handled
> with the closed theory.
>

Split brains?

The Wada test?

(
https://jcblackmon.com/2018/02/02/the-wada-test-for-philosophers-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-proper-part-of-your-own-brain-losing-and-regaining-other-proper-parts-of-your-brain/
)


> >       > nature/character of the pattern that must exist for you to be
> there in them?
> >       > If it is nothing other than the sense of being an I, being a
> conscious living
> >       > person, having an experience of some kind, then you exist in all
> neural
> >       > patterns of all conscious beings.
> >
> >       I think that is too simplistic. I includes mind and body,
> continuous through
> >       time, which also fits perfectly well with our ordinary experience.
> I think
> >       reducing the definition of the I to having neural pattern,
> basically says
> >       nothing. Different neural patterns correspond with different
> experiences, so I
> >       think there is strong proof for the I being more than a general
> pattern existing
> >       in all human beings. I can of course define I as electrical
> activity in the
> >       brain, and thus we are all I, but that doesn't really say much.
> >
> >       So far, it seems to me, either to be just a matter of trivial
> definition to
> >       which we agree, or wrong.
> >
> > Theories of personal identity are largely definitional theories, but we
> are
> > seeking a definition that is robust and consistent, and makes sense, and
> > ideally can answer questions that are relevant and important to us, like
> which
> > experiences wio I have, why are we here, and why am I me?
>
> What I find more interesting, is if/how the definition, can cause people to
> alter their beliefs and behaviours. Except saints, who experienced
> enlightenment, it seems to me most people in the open camp act as if, they
> are
> closed.
>
> If that could be changed, I think the case for open would improve due to
> pragmatic reasons! I mean... who wouldn't want a method to increase love
> and
> empathy in all human beings? Sounds like a win/win/win to me! =)
>
> On the other hand... there are ways to increase empathy with the closed as
> well
> I imaginem but you see my point I hope!
>

Yes you bring up another important practical aspect of why it is important
to find answers to these problems.



> >       Another thing to keep in mind is the pragmatic angle, we all act
> perfectly well
> >       based on a closed kind, it works well, it is the "naive" first
> impression, and
> >       at the end of the day, there seems to be no empirical evidence for
> anything else
> >       being true, _apart_ from the way of definition.
> >
> > Closed has many problems. It requires overcoming impossible odds for it
> to be
> > true, it has conceptual difficulties with many real-world as well as
>
> I disagree with the probability argument, since it is a single event that
> has
> already happened, and not possible to replicate it in order to yield
> future,
> testable predictions.
>

I had two boxes of 1,000 coins, and accidentally spilled one of them. This
event already happened, and only happened once. It won't be replicated.

You look at the pile of coins and see they all landed heads up.

You have to decide between two possibilities:
A) I spilled the box that was filled with 1,000 double-headed coins.
B) I spilled the box with 1,000 fair coins and by some stroke of incredible
(1 in 2^1024) luck, all happened to land heads up.

Are you justified in concluding it is overwhelmingly more probable that
hypothesis A explains your observations compared to hypothesis B?





> Which real-world scenarios do not work with a closed theory?
>

The cases that fail depend on whether you use bodily or psychological
continuity.



> > imaginable scenarios, it requires additional unnecesssry metaphysical
> > assumptions, and it is unable to give answers for certain questions, and
> it
>
> I think that, like the external world, it requires no assumptions. We have
> no
> choice but to act in the world, the way we are. That means that the only
> thing
> that should give us cause to pause, is falsification and/or evidence for
> that an
> I is not an I.
>

You can say "we have no choice but to act in the world" in reply to any
statement. If I argued in Copernicus's day, that the earth went around the
sun, and you said what does it matter, we have no choice but to act in this
world, and whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth spins makes
no difference to me. I can grow the crops and sell them in the market.

But you see this just avoids the question. It is not a refutation or
argument.


> > also can't handle the anthropic principle in explaining the fine tuning
> of the
> > universe. Like Newtonian physics, it largely works for most day to day
> things,
>
> The anthropic principle has no predictive power, is a tautology, and could
> jsut
> be survivorship bias.


It is a survivorship bias.

So I do not see that as a valid argument, for me at least,
> that closed is wrong. Is there any way to falsify the anthropic principle?
>

It's not about falsifying it. It's that the anthropic principle (or
survivorship bias) doesn't work at all under closed individualism.

In order to say "I will be in whatever universe there is life" is to reason
as if open individualism is true. For it is only open individualism that
puts you anywhere and everywhere there is life.


> >       I find the evolutionary argument interesting. Imagine flower-power
> hippies on
> >       the savannah, identifying and enormously respecting and loving the
> lions and
> >       other predators, and they won't remain alive for long.
> >
> > Right. ??
> >
> >       Evolution being smart, said... hold it! let's make sure the guys
> care about
> >       themselves, and thus evolved the closed "view" and it became the
> default, since
> >       it generated humans with barriers, afraid for their own lives,
> thus highly
> >       motivated to run away from lions.
> >
> >       But I guess we then run into the language barrier. We have a test,
> where
> >       participants get to trip, and after the trip they also describe
> something
> >       sounding like open, but does that feeling and experience prove
> anything? At most
> >       it proves that due to the trip, they become more loving and
> passionate, it also
> >       seems to indicate, that their own subjective experience would
> align, for the
> >       duration of the trip, with something closer to open, than closed.
> But then they
> >       revert.
> >
> > Some revert. For others it has a lasting or permanent effect.
>
> Do you have any references or links for lasting effects? You know I'm a
> sucker
> for empiricism, so that would be good reading!
>

This is just from some casual googling:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3537171/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763417303019?via%3Dihub#
!

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/235232


> > That they cannot articulate the experience to others nor justify the
> logic of
> > their realization is why theories of personal identity are important if
> we are
> > to ever objectively establish the truth of their experience.
>
> I think it is not possible, since the experience lies beyond the world. I
> do
> think we can learn to generate similar experiences by chemical or
> neurological
> means, and even though that still doesn't prove the content of the
> experience,
> it _does_ allow us to possibly shift our own beliefs, and lead better
> lives for
> it.
>
> This is a good point for me at least, when it comes to investigating the
> path to
> the open world!
>

??


> >       Are expert meditators and buddhas permanently in "open" mode? Did
> they in fact
> >       "deactivate" the closed switch?
> >
> > I think that is the state that enlightenment / moksha / nirvana all
> describe.
> > It is described as a realization in which one transcends the convenrional
> > conception of self and recognizing a oneness with all other beings.
>
> True. Transpersonal psychology might yield some interesting reading here!
> =)
>
> >       Another thing came to mind as well, and that was Schopenhauer. I
> mentioned it to
> >       you, but his starting point is the will to live. The "life force"
> and he argues
> >       that the "spark" or life force is the same in all living things,
> we are after
> >       all, linked by cause and effect, and through the tree of life,
> back to our very
> >       first ancestor.
> >
> >       If you then define our unique "core" as this spark, that has been
> passed on for
> >       aeons, you can then by definition argue that all life is related
> and the same,
> >       it's the same spark.
> >
> > That may be true, but it's not the primary point made by open
> individualism,
> > which is that I am literally seeing the world through Daniel's eyes as I
> am
> > seeing the world through Jason's eyes.
>
> True. I read the Zuboff AMA, it was explained there.
>


Nice! That is good feedback that you found his AMA helpful in understanding
his views.


> >       Ah, so you don't buy "my" version of Occam above? ;)
> >
> > No, sadly. ;-)
>
> ;)
>
> >       > A theory of personal identity shouldn't shy away from problems
> just because
> >       > they are rare, or edge cases.
> >
> >       True, but is brain damage an edge case? It's like having a theory
> for a machine,
> >       and then complain that the theory doesn't work when the machine is
> broken, isn't
> >       it?
> >
> > I see it more like having Newtonian mechanics and finding it works
> pretty well
> > for most things, then finding it fails for situations with very strong
> gravity
> > or at relativistic speeds.
>
> That is also good take on it. I see your point there.
>
> >       >       > Open individualism says you remain present in both --
> the apparent disunion is
> >       >       > due only to a lack of integration between the
> hemispheres. Should they be
> >       >       > connected in the future, they would become integrated,
> and again feel as one
> >       >       > mind.
> >       >       >
> >       >       > What would closed individualism say would happen?
> >       >
> >       >       I think the question can be rephrased in terms of
> neuroscience and psychology.
> >       >
> >       > Neither of those subjects deal with personal identity though.
> >
> >       Depends on how it is defined, and in what language it is defined.
> Maybe that is
> >       the best we can do?
> >
> > I don't think neuroscience or psychology are traditionally much
> interested in
> > questions involving teletransporters or mind uploading, etc. But perhaps
> that
> > will change at some point, and one of those fields will try to answer
> > questions of personal identity.
>
> I think uploading is closer than teletransporter. And this is one of my
> points.
> Once science progresses, neuroscience and psychology might surprise us
> with what
> they find out!
>

I think mind uploading gets us (effective) transporters pretty quickly.
Once we can upload then "e-mail" or FTP becomes a way to teleport our
uploaded minds from one system to another (or from one robot body to
another).


> >       Haha, maybe. ;) I could also adopt the approach of sticking with
> closed, until
> >       empirical evidence of any other version, or theory presents
> itself. Would that
> >       be agnosticism? Or actually, maybe that would be the agnostic
> physicalism, or
> >       the physicalist agnosticism from before? ;)
> >
> > Not sure.
>
> >       It would be a great "addon" or complementary principle, I do agree
> with that!
> >       Many people who have not thought a lot about capitalism, beyond
> the parody
> >       presented in the popular press, become very surprised when I tell
> them about the
> >       take on it, that it is in fact, the only system we have devised
> that transforms
> >       our innate egoism into benefits for everyone. I think it is quite
> a beautiful
> >       creation, or emergent phenomenon!
> >
> >       > converts self interest into an interest in helping and in
> reducing harm for
> >       > all others. It could help end war, starvation, abuse, etc. as
> many have noted.
> >       > In effect, open individualism makes the idea of "karma" / "the
> golden rule"
> >       > vividly real.
> >
> >       Well, I don't know if I agree about karma, but I do agree with the
> golden rule.
> >
> > Karma in the sense that all the good you do for others comes back to
> you, and
> > all the harm you cause others comes back to you. This is trivially true
> under
> > open individualism, for you are all those other people you do good for or
> > harm.
>
> Well, in psychology reciprocity is probably as close to Karma as I am
> willing to
> go. But across births... no, not for me.
>
> > You as well!
>
> Thank you Jason, and let me wish you a pleasant evening!
>


Thanks so much Daniel. This was a long one! Finally made it to the end. ??

Have a good night.

Jason
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From pharos at gmail.com  Sun Apr  6 22:14:17 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2025 23:14:17 +0100
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <CA+BCJUie0G+eSj_kROBDYaTNL0C7Y-Ku_6ezAxWqZ64tayoP+A@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAL_armjadsFET3Kw2g3BMwuon6L0383MRi4XPQaCozPSF3B8cQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, 6 Apr 2025 at 04:40, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> <snip>
>

> Thanks so much Daniel. This was a long one! Finally made it to the end. ??
> Have a good night.
> Jason
> _______________________________________________
>


I thought it might be useful to get a short summary, so I asked Gemini 2.5
Pro which of the three alternative types of Individualism was likely to be
more correct. Gemini explained that it depends on your POV. Choose the one
you like best.  :)
BillK

Gemini 2.5 Pro -

Okay, let's break down these three fascinating philosophical views on
personal identity: Closed Individualism, Open Individualism, and Empty
Individualism.

It's crucial to state upfront that determining which is "more correct" is
inherently difficult, perhaps impossible, using purely empirical methods.
These are philosophical frameworks attempting to understand the nature of
the self and consciousness. Their "correctness" is often judged based on
explanatory power, logical consistency, intuitive appeal, and how well they
address certain paradoxes, rather than on direct proof.

Here's a discussion of each and arguments regarding their potential
correctness:

   1.

   *Closed Individualism:*
   -

      *The View:* This is the common-sense, default view for most people.
      It holds that each conscious being is a distinct, separate
individual. Your
      consciousness is uniquely yours, tied to your specific
body/brain, starting
      sometime around birth and ceasing at death. You are one person, I am
      another, and we can never truly be each other. Personal identity is
      closed off within the boundaries of the individual organism.
      -

      *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
      -

         *Intuitive Appeal:* It aligns perfectly with our everyday
         experience. We feel like distinct individuals with private
thoughts, unique
         memories, and a personal history.
         -

         *Biological Basis:* Our bodies are physically separate and
         genetically unique (mostly). Brain processes underpinning
consciousness
         occur within individual skulls.
         -

         *Practicality:* Legal, ethical, and social systems are
         overwhelmingly based on this view (individual rights,
responsibilities,
         punishments).
         -

      *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
      -

         *Problem of Identity Over Time:* What makes you the same person as
         you were yesterday, given constant physical and mental
change? (Ship of
         Theseus problem).
         -

         *Fission/Fusion Problems:* Thought experiments like
         teletransportation (destroying you here, replicating you elsewhere) or
         brain hemisphere transplants challenge the idea of a single,
continuous,
         unique self tied to one body. Where does the 'I' go?
         -

         *The "Hard Problem" of Consciousness:* Why does this specific
         collection of physical matter give rise to my particular
         subjective experience, rather than none, or someone else's? Closed
         Individualism often just takes this as a brute fact.
         2.

   *Open Individualism:*
   -

      *The View:* Proposed by philosophers like Daniel Kolak, this view
      argues that logically, there is only one subject of experience ? one
      "I" ? that is numerically identical across all conscious beings, past,
      present, and future. Differences in personality, memory, and body are
      characteristics experienced by this one subject, not markers of
      different subjects. Think of it as one screen (the subject)
      displaying many different movies (individual lives).
      -

      *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
      -

         *Logical Parsimony?:* Proponents argue it solves the puzzle of why
         you are you and not someone else. If there's only one "I", the
         question becomes meaningless ? you are everyone, experiencing
         different perspectives.
         -

         *Shared Structure of Subjectivity:* All conscious experiences
         share the fundamental quality of "what it's like to be." Open
Individualism
         suggests this shared quality points to a shared subject.
         -

         *Addresses Fission/Fusion:* In fission cases (like splitting a
         brain), Open Individualism might suggest the single subject simply
         experiences branching perspectives.
         -

         *Potential Links to Mystical Experience:* Some interpret certain
         mystical or transcendental experiences (feelings of unity,
oneness with the
         universe) as experiential evidence for this view.
         -

      *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
      -

         *Highly Counter-Intuitive:* Clashes strongly with our feeling of
         separateness and individuality.
         -

         *Explaining Differences:* How does the single subject maintain
         such distinct and separate streams of consciousness, memories, and
         personalities without them bleeding into each other? This remains a
         significant hurdle.
         -

         *Biological Individuation:* How does this align with clearly
         separate biological organisms and brains?
         -

         *Lack of Direct Proof:* Relies heavily on logical argument and
         interpretation rather than empirical evidence.
         3.

   *Empty Individualism (No-Self / Anatta):*
   -

      *The View:* Often associated with Buddhism and philosophers like
      David Hume and Derek Parfit (in certain interpretations). This
view denies
      the existence of any enduring, substantial, independent "self" or "I"
      altogether. What we call the self is merely a temporary collection or
      bundle of constantly changing physical and mental phenomena (sensations,
      perceptions, thoughts, feelings, consciousness itself). There isn't
      one enduring subject (like Open Individualism) nor many enduring
      subjects (like Closed Individualism); there are just interconnected
      processes arising and ceasing.
      -

      *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
      -

         *Consistency with Neuroscience/Psychology:* Observation shows the
         brain and mind are constantly changing. No single, unchanging
'core' or
         'self' has been scientifically located.
         -

         *Introspective Insight (Meditation):* Practitioners of certain
         meditative traditions report experientially realizing the
lack of a solid,
         unchanging self.
         -

         *Resolves Identity Paradoxes:* Problems like the Ship of Theseus
         or fission are dissolved because there's no persistent
'thing' that needs
         to remain identical. Identity becomes a matter of continuity and
         connectedness of psychological states, not a strict numerical
identity of a
         'self'.
         -

         *Avoids the Hard Problem (in a way):* By denying a persistent
         subject, it reframes the question. Consciousness arises with certain
         processes, but there's no enduring entity having the experience.
         -

      *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
      -

         *Counter-Intuitive:* Like Open Individualism, it challenges our
         deep-seated feeling of being a continuous self.
         -

         *Explaining Subjectivity:* Even if there's no enduring subject,
         there is still subjectivity ? the "what it's like" quality.
         Explaining how impersonal processes generate this
first-person perspective
         remains challenging.
         -

         *Moral Responsibility:* If there's no enduring self, how do we
         ground concepts like moral responsibility, praise, or blame over time?
         (Though proponents argue this can be based on psychological
continuity).
         -

         *Agency and Free Will:* Can impersonal processes account for our
         sense of agency and making choices?

*Conclusion - Which is "More Correct"?*

   -

   *Closed Individualism* is the most intuitively correct and practically
   useful framework for everyday life and social structures. However, it faces
   significant philosophical challenges, especially concerning identity over
   time and the fundamental nature of subjectivity.
   -

   *Open Individualism* offers a radical and elegant solution to some deep
   philosophical puzzles (like why this self?), but it is highly
   counter-intuitive and struggles to explain the apparent separateness of
   minds. It remains largely speculative.
   -

   *Empty Individualism (No-Self)* arguably aligns better with observations
   from neuroscience (constant change, no central 'self' found) and certain
   introspective practices. It elegantly dissolves paradoxes of identity.
   However, it is also counter-intuitive and must provide convincing accounts
   for the feeling of subjectivity and continuity, as well as moral
   responsibility.

*Likely More Correct?*

Many contemporary philosophers, especially those influenced by neuroscience
and Eastern philosophy (like Buddhism), lean towards *Empty Individualism*
or related views (like Psychological Criterion views championed by Parfit,
which emphasize continuity rather than a strict 'self'). They see it as
better equipped to handle the philosophical problems and more consistent
with a scientific worldview that finds processes rather than unchanging
essences.

However, it's far from a settled matter. Closed Individualism remains the
default for good reason due to its intuitive power. Open Individualism,
while less mainstream, continues to attract interest for its radical
unification.

Ultimately, the "more correct" view depends on the criteria you prioritize:
everyday intuition, logical consistency, explanatory power for paradoxes,
compatibility with science, or insights from introspection/mysticism. There
is no definitive answer agreed upon by all.

------------------------------------------
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From efc at disroot.org  Mon Apr  7 08:37:26 2025
From: efc at disroot.org (efc at disroot.org)
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 10:37:26 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
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 <172f7f90-82a2-97e9-b97f-cc25e984e978@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUjsMKaqGUehJYBNFC+c-_4+u3eV-7SvJ2PWoyaxxA2vYw@mail.gmail.com>
 <898b1000-a329-b18a-7755-001b9688aa29@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUijVazfRiLx9m3aS2x6eFpj1hpDR3dEs9iRJXkjaY+mgg@mail.gmail.com>
 <9134f318-319f-d1aa-8a2a-c5aeaf0493e7@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhbVVnDN3QotWwaqDK1JJ5L8fHgnz-wKkZsVEscd3ST_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <d1ec62d8-9e1e-e535-5160-e5df50126ed6@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhYa04ghctxK8nGL3DT6Nnbqe7jeJ-HMPRrH1v17j36nQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <527b67ea-6cb3-40aa-6abf-0b5342aa0c51@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUihjLQypa4BuWhehQo1vLk53K-whgOi9z9Sa5s2JaTTxw@mail.gmail.com>
 <a1c2336a-8ede-ffca-e5f9-ebde69e0c0f2@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUie0G+eSj_kROBDYaTNL0C7Y-Ku_6ezAxWqZ64tayoP+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAL_armjadsFET3Kw2g3BMwuon6L0383MRi4XPQaCozPSF3B8cQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a42f6f27-8f10-ee93-15a6-79c031968ff0@disroot.org>

You're welcome Bill and thank you! =)

Best regards,
Daniel


On Sun, 6 Apr 2025, BillK via extropy-chat wrote:

> On Sun, 6 Apr 2025 at 04:40, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 
> Thanks so much Daniel. This was a long one! Finally made it to the end. ??
> Have a good night.
> Jason?
> _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> I thought it might be useful to get a short summary, so I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro which of the three alternative types of Individualism
> was likely to be more correct. Gemini explained that it depends on your POV. Choose the one you like best.? :)BillK
> 
> Gemini 2.5 Pro -
> 
> Okay, let's break down these three fascinating philosophical views on personal identity: Closed Individualism, Open Individualism,
> and Empty Individualism.
> 
> It's crucial to state upfront that determining which is "more correct" is inherently difficult, perhaps impossible, using purely
> empirical methods. These are philosophical frameworks attempting to understand the nature of the self and consciousness. Their
> "correctness" is often judged based on explanatory power, logical consistency, intuitive appeal, and how well they address certain
> paradoxes, rather than on direct proof.
> 
> Here's a discussion of each and arguments regarding their potential correctness:
>
>  1.
>
>     Closed Individualism:
>
>      + 
>
>         The View: This is the common-sense, default view for most people. It holds that each conscious being is a distinct, separate
>         individual. Your consciousness is uniquely yours, tied to your specific body/brain, starting sometime around birth and
>         ceasing at death. You are one person, I am another, and we can never truly be each other. Personal identity is closed off
>         within the boundaries of the individual organism.
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments for its "Correctness":
>
>          o 
>
>             Intuitive Appeal: It aligns perfectly with our everyday experience. We feel like distinct individuals with private
>             thoughts, unique memories, and a personal history.
>
>          o 
>
>             Biological Basis: Our bodies are physically separate and genetically unique (mostly). Brain processes underpinning
>             consciousness occur within individual skulls.
>
>          o 
>
>             Practicality: Legal, ethical, and social systems are overwhelmingly based on this view (individual rights,
>             responsibilities, punishments).
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments Against/Challenges:
>
>          o 
>
>             Problem of Identity Over Time: What makes you the same person as you were yesterday, given constant physical and mental
>             change? (Ship of Theseus problem).
>
>          o 
>
>             Fission/Fusion Problems: Thought experiments like teletransportation (destroying you here, replicating you elsewhere) or
>             brain hemisphere transplants challenge the idea of a single, continuous, unique self tied to one body. Where does the 'I'
>             go?
>
>          o 
>
>             The "Hard Problem" of Consciousness: Why does this specific collection of physical matter give rise to my particular
>             subjective experience, rather than none, or someone else's? Closed Individualism often just takes this as a brute fact.
>
>  2.
>
>     Open Individualism:
>
>      + 
>
>         The View: Proposed by philosophers like Daniel Kolak, this view argues that logically, there is only one subject of
>         experience ? one "I" ? that is numerically identical across all conscious beings, past, present, and future. Differences in
>         personality, memory, and body are characteristics experienced by this one subject, not markers of different subjects. Think
>         of it as one screen (the subject) displaying many different movies (individual lives).
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments for its "Correctness":
>
>          o 
>
>             Logical Parsimony?: Proponents argue it solves the puzzle of why you are you and not someone else. If there's only one
>             "I", the question becomes meaningless ? you are everyone, experiencing different perspectives.
>
>          o 
>
>             Shared Structure of Subjectivity: All conscious experiences share the fundamental quality of "what it's like to be." Open
>             Individualism suggests this shared quality points to a shared subject.
>
>          o 
>
>             Addresses Fission/Fusion: In fission cases (like splitting a brain), Open Individualism might suggest the single subject
>             simply experiences branching perspectives.
>
>          o 
>
>             Potential Links to Mystical Experience: Some interpret certain mystical or transcendental experiences (feelings of unity,
>             oneness with the universe) as experiential evidence for this view.
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments Against/Challenges:
>
>          o 
>
>             Highly Counter-Intuitive: Clashes strongly with our feeling of separateness and individuality.
>
>          o 
>
>             Explaining Differences: How does the single subject maintain such distinct and separate streams of consciousness,
>             memories, and personalities without them bleeding into each other? This remains a significant hurdle.
>
>          o 
>
>             Biological Individuation: How does this align with clearly separate biological organisms and brains?
>
>          o 
>
>             Lack of Direct Proof: Relies heavily on logical argument and interpretation rather than empirical evidence.
>
>  3.
>
>     Empty Individualism (No-Self / Anatta):
>
>      + 
>
>         The View: Often associated with Buddhism and philosophers like David Hume and Derek Parfit (in certain interpretations). This
>         view denies the existence of any enduring, substantial, independent "self" or "I" altogether. What we call the self is merely
>         a temporary collection or bundle of constantly changing physical and mental phenomena (sensations, perceptions, thoughts,
>         feelings, consciousness itself). There isn't one enduring subject (like Open Individualism) nor many enduring subjects (like
>         Closed Individualism); there are just interconnected processes arising and ceasing.
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments for its "Correctness":
>
>          o 
>
>             Consistency with Neuroscience/Psychology: Observation shows the brain and mind are constantly changing. No single,
>             unchanging 'core' or 'self' has been scientifically located.
>
>          o 
>
>             Introspective Insight (Meditation): Practitioners of certain meditative traditions report experientially realizing the
>             lack of a solid, unchanging self.
>
>          o 
>
>             Resolves Identity Paradoxes: Problems like the Ship of Theseus or fission are dissolved because there's no persistent
>             'thing' that needs to remain identical. Identity becomes a matter of continuity and connectedness of psychological
>             states, not a strict numerical identity of a 'self'.
>
>          o 
>
>             Avoids the Hard Problem (in a way): By denying a persistent subject, it reframes the question. Consciousness arises with
>             certain processes, but there's no enduring entity having the experience.
>
>      + 
>
>         Arguments Against/Challenges:
>
>          o 
>
>             Counter-Intuitive: Like Open Individualism, it challenges our deep-seated feeling of being a continuous self.
>
>          o 
>
>             Explaining Subjectivity: Even if there's no enduring subject, there is still subjectivity ? the "what it's like" quality.
>             Explaining how impersonal processes generate this first-person perspective remains challenging.
>
>          o 
>
>             Moral Responsibility: If there's no enduring self, how do we ground concepts like moral responsibility, praise, or blame
>             over time? (Though proponents argue this can be based on psychological continuity).
>
>          o 
>
>             Agency and Free Will: Can impersonal processes account for our sense of agency and making choices?
> 
> Conclusion - Which is "More Correct"?
>
>  * 
>
>     Closed Individualism is the most intuitively correct and practically useful framework for everyday life and social structures.
>     However, it faces significant philosophical challenges, especially concerning identity over time and the fundamental nature of
>     subjectivity.
>
>  * 
>
>     Open Individualism offers a radical and elegant solution to some deep philosophical puzzles (like why this self?), but it is
>     highly counter-intuitive and struggles to explain the apparent separateness of minds. It remains largely speculative.
>
>  * 
>
>     Empty Individualism (No-Self) arguably aligns better with observations from neuroscience (constant change, no central 'self'
>     found) and certain introspective practices. It elegantly dissolves paradoxes of identity. However, it is also counter-intuitive
>     and must provide convincing accounts for the feeling of subjectivity and continuity, as well as moral responsibility.
> 
> Likely More Correct?
> 
> Many contemporary philosophers, especially those influenced by neuroscience and Eastern philosophy (like Buddhism), lean towards
> Empty Individualism or related views (like Psychological Criterion views championed by Parfit, which emphasize continuity rather than
> a strict 'self'). They see it as better equipped to handle the philosophical problems and more consistent with a scientific worldview
> that finds processes rather than unchanging essences.
> 
> However, it's far from a settled matter. Closed Individualism remains the default for good reason due to its intuitive power. Open
> Individualism, while less mainstream, continues to attract interest for its radical unification.
> 
> Ultimately, the "more correct" view depends on the criteria you prioritize: everyday intuition, logical consistency, explanatory
> power for paradoxes, compatibility with science, or insights from introspection/mysticism. There is no definitive answer agreed upon
> by all.
> 
> ------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
>

From pharos at gmail.com  Tue Apr  8 13:04:32 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2025 14:04:32 +0100
Subject: [ExI] AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction
Message-ID: <CAL_armghmFRqgDKkMmi7umHiSUNQTRWa+Lbm2KfVhVPpHkqREg@mail.gmail.com>

AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction, and lawmakers
are taking aim

Designed to be the perfect person?always available, never critical?AI
companions are hooking people deeper than social media ever could.
They make the attention economy look like a relic.
By James O'Donnell        April 8, 2025
<https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/08/1114369/ai-companions-are-the-final-stage-of-digital-addiction-and-lawmakers-are-taking-aim/>

Quote:
You might think that such AI companionship bots?AI models with
distinct ?personalities? that can learn about you and act as a friend,
lover, cheerleader, or more?appeal only to a fringe few, but that
couldn?t be further from the truth.

In an interview with podcast host Lex Fridman, Eugenia Kuyda, the CEO
of the companion site Replika, explained the appeal at the heart of
the company?s product. ?If you create something that is always there
for you, that never criticizes you, that always understands you and
understands you for who you are,? she said, ?how can you not fall in
love with that??
----------------------------

Indeed!   BillK


From jasonresch at gmail.com  Tue Apr  8 14:56:34 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2025 10:56:34 -0400
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <CAL_armjadsFET3Kw2g3BMwuon6L0383MRi4XPQaCozPSF3B8cQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+BCJUj=DGdEb+yg9P=0b-ExSSi-SB2GvrvcUgbw6E1fAtrS7w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CA+BCJUj3wG_t0-OY5H7dK+HmkCt7d4TiDApeu8LktV6F1YWneA@mail.gmail.com>
 <172f7f90-82a2-97e9-b97f-cc25e984e978@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUjsMKaqGUehJYBNFC+c-_4+u3eV-7SvJ2PWoyaxxA2vYw@mail.gmail.com>
 <898b1000-a329-b18a-7755-001b9688aa29@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUijVazfRiLx9m3aS2x6eFpj1hpDR3dEs9iRJXkjaY+mgg@mail.gmail.com>
 <9134f318-319f-d1aa-8a2a-c5aeaf0493e7@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhbVVnDN3QotWwaqDK1JJ5L8fHgnz-wKkZsVEscd3ST_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <d1ec62d8-9e1e-e535-5160-e5df50126ed6@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhYa04ghctxK8nGL3DT6Nnbqe7jeJ-HMPRrH1v17j36nQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <527b67ea-6cb3-40aa-6abf-0b5342aa0c51@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUihjLQypa4BuWhehQo1vLk53K-whgOi9z9Sa5s2JaTTxw@mail.gmail.com>
 <a1c2336a-8ede-ffca-e5f9-ebde69e0c0f2@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUie0G+eSj_kROBDYaTNL0C7Y-Ku_6ezAxWqZ64tayoP+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAL_armjadsFET3Kw2g3BMwuon6L0383MRi4XPQaCozPSF3B8cQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CA+BCJUgQzJfNGmXAamMNBRv7Groffk0VrDG+GppkHf-d-+5G=Q@mail.gmail.com>

Thank you Bill (and Grok) for creating and sharing this review. I have only
a few comments below:

On Sun, Apr 6, 2025 at 6:16?PM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 6 Apr 2025 at 04:40, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>
>> Thanks so much Daniel. This was a long one! Finally made it to the end. ??
>> Have a good night.
>> Jason
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>
>
> I thought it might be useful to get a short summary, so I asked Gemini 2.5
> Pro which of the three alternative types of Individualism was likely to be
> more correct. Gemini explained that it depends on your POV. Choose the one
> you like best.  :)
> BillK
>
> Gemini 2.5 Pro -
>
> Okay, let's break down these three fascinating philosophical views on
> personal identity: Closed Individualism, Open Individualism, and Empty
> Individualism.
>
> It's crucial to state upfront that determining which is "more correct" is
> inherently difficult, perhaps impossible, using purely empirical methods.
> These are philosophical frameworks attempting to understand the nature of
> the self and consciousness. Their "correctness" is often judged based on
> explanatory power, logical consistency, intuitive appeal, and how well they
> address certain paradoxes, rather than on direct proof.
>
> Here's a discussion of each and arguments regarding their potential
> correctness:
>
>    1.
>
>    *Closed Individualism:*
>    -
>
>       *The View:* This is the common-sense, default view for most people.
>       It holds that each conscious being is a distinct, separate individual. Your
>       consciousness is uniquely yours, tied to your specific body/brain, starting
>       sometime around birth and ceasing at death. You are one person, I am
>       another, and we can never truly be each other. Personal identity is
>       closed off within the boundaries of the individual organism.
>       -
>
>       *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
>       -
>
>          *Intuitive Appeal:* It aligns perfectly with our everyday
>          experience. We feel like distinct individuals with private thoughts, unique
>          memories, and a personal history.
>          -
>
>          *Biological Basis:* Our bodies are physically separate and
>          genetically unique (mostly). Brain processes underpinning consciousness
>          occur within individual skulls.
>          -
>
>          *Practicality:* Legal, ethical, and social systems are
>          overwhelmingly based on this view (individual rights, responsibilities,
>          punishments).
>          -
>
>       *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
>       -
>
>          *Problem of Identity Over Time:* What makes you the same person
>          as you were yesterday, given constant physical and mental change? (Ship of
>          Theseus problem).
>          -
>
>          *Fission/Fusion Problems:* Thought experiments like
>          teletransportation (destroying you here, replicating you elsewhere) or
>          brain hemisphere transplants challenge the idea of a single, continuous,
>          unique self tied to one body. Where does the 'I' go?
>          -
>
>          *The "Hard Problem" of Consciousness:* Why does this specific
>          collection of physical matter give rise to my particular
>          subjective experience, rather than none, or someone else's? Closed
>          Individualism often just takes this as a brute fact.
>
>
I find this a strange way of stating the hard problem of consciousness.
Chalmers, who defined the problem, says the hard problem is to answer why a
particular brain state should have an associated conscious state at all. It
is unrelated (generally speaking) to the question of why it gives rise to
my consciousness vs. someone elses.


>
>    1.
>
>    *Open Individualism:*
>    -
>
>       *The View:* Proposed by philosophers like Daniel Kolak, this view
>       argues that logically, there is only one subject of experience ?
>       one "I" ? that is numerically identical across all conscious beings, past,
>       present, and future. Differences in personality, memory, and body are
>       characteristics experienced by this one subject, not markers of
>       different subjects. Think of it as one screen (the subject)
>       displaying many different movies (individual lives).
>       -
>
>       *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
>       -
>
>          *Logical Parsimony?:* Proponents argue it solves the puzzle of
>          why you are you and not someone else. If there's only one "I",
>          the question becomes meaningless ? you are everyone,
>          experiencing different perspectives.
>          -
>
>          *Shared Structure of Subjectivity:* All conscious experiences
>          share the fundamental quality of "what it's like to be." Open Individualism
>          suggests this shared quality points to a shared subject.
>          -
>
>          *Addresses Fission/Fusion:* In fission cases (like splitting a
>          brain), Open Individualism might suggest the single subject simply
>          experiences branching perspectives.
>          -
>
>          *Potential Links to Mystical Experience:* Some interpret certain
>          mystical or transcendental experiences (feelings of unity, oneness with the
>          universe) as experiential evidence for this view.
>          -
>
>       *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
>       -
>
>          *Highly Counter-Intuitive:* Clashes strongly with our feeling of
>          separateness and individuality.
>          -
>
>          *Explaining Differences:* How does the single subject maintain
>          such distinct and separate streams of consciousness, memories, and
>          personalities without them bleeding into each other? This remains a
>          significant hurdle.
>
>
I don't see this as a hurdle at all. It is explained simply by the fact
that we have separate brains. That fact alone explains why I can't remember
having your experiences, and you can't remember having mine.


>
>    1.
>       -
>          -
>
>          *Biological Individuation:* How does this align with clearly
>          separate biological organisms and brains?
>
>
The motivation for open individualism isn't apparent when dealing only with
clearly separated biological organisms and brains. The trouble comes in
when we deal with not so clear cases of not so clearly separated organisms
and brains. This is where closed individualism becomes unworkable and
either empty or open individualism are required to maintain a logically
coherent theory.


>
>    1.
>       -
>          -
>
>          *Lack of Direct Proof:* Relies heavily on logical argument and
>          interpretation rather than empirical evidence.
>
> The lack of empirical evidence exists equally for all theories of personal
identity, given that you would not feel any different in this moment
regardless of which theory was correct. Thus it can be said any argument
for any theory of personal identity rests entirely on logical or
probabilistic arguments.



>
>    1.
>
>    *Empty Individualism (No-Self / Anatta):*
>    -
>
>       *The View:* Often associated with Buddhism and philosophers like
>       David Hume and Derek Parfit (in certain interpretations). This view denies
>       the existence of any enduring, substantial, independent "self" or "I"
>       altogether. What we call the self is merely a temporary collection or
>       bundle of constantly changing physical and mental phenomena (sensations,
>       perceptions, thoughts, feelings, consciousness itself). There isn't
>       one enduring subject (like Open Individualism) nor many enduring
>       subjects (like Closed Individualism); there are just interconnected
>       processes arising and ceasing.
>       -
>
>       *Arguments for its "Correctness":*
>       -
>
>          *Consistency with Neuroscience/Psychology:* Observation shows
>          the brain and mind are constantly changing. No single, unchanging 'core' or
>          'self' has been scientifically located.
>          -
>
>          *Introspective Insight (Meditation):* Practitioners of certain
>          meditative traditions report experientially realizing the lack of a solid,
>          unchanging self.
>          -
>
>          *Resolves Identity Paradoxes:* Problems like the Ship of Theseus
>          or fission are dissolved because there's no persistent 'thing' that needs
>          to remain identical. Identity becomes a matter of continuity and
>          connectedness of psychological states, not a strict numerical identity of a
>          'self'.
>          -
>
>          *Avoids the Hard Problem (in a way):* By denying a persistent
>          subject, it reframes the question. Consciousness arises with certain
>          processes, but there's no enduring entity having the experience.
>          -
>
>       *Arguments Against/Challenges:*
>       -
>
>          *Counter-Intuitive:* Like Open Individualism, it challenges our
>          deep-seated feeling of being a continuous self.
>          -
>
>          *Explaining Subjectivity:* Even if there's no enduring subject,
>          there is still subjectivity ? the "what it's like" quality.
>          Explaining how impersonal processes generate this first-person perspective
>          remains challenging.
>          -
>
>          *Moral Responsibility:* If there's no enduring self, how do we
>          ground concepts like moral responsibility, praise, or blame over time?
>          (Though proponents argue this can be based on psychological continuity).
>          -
>
>          *Agency and Free Will:* Can impersonal processes account for our
>          sense of agency and making choices?
>
> *Conclusion - Which is "More Correct"?*
>
>    -
>
>    *Closed Individualism* is the most intuitively correct and practically
>    useful framework for everyday life and social structures. However, it faces
>    significant philosophical challenges, especially concerning identity over
>    time and the fundamental nature of subjectivity.
>    -
>
>    *Open Individualism* offers a radical and elegant solution to some
>    deep philosophical puzzles (like why this self?), but it is highly
>    counter-intuitive and struggles to explain the apparent separateness
>    of minds. It remains largely speculative.
>    -
>
>    *Empty Individualism (No-Self)* arguably aligns better with
>    observations from neuroscience (constant change, no central 'self' found)
>    and certain introspective practices. It elegantly dissolves paradoxes of
>    identity. However, it is also counter-intuitive and must provide convincing
>    accounts for the feeling of subjectivity and continuity, as well as moral
>    responsibility.
>
> *Likely More Correct?*
>
> Many contemporary philosophers, especially those influenced by
> neuroscience and Eastern philosophy (like Buddhism), lean towards *Empty
> Individualism* or related views (like Psychological Criterion views
> championed by Parfit, which emphasize continuity rather than a strict
> 'self'). They see it as better equipped to handle the philosophical
> problems and more consistent with a scientific worldview that finds
> processes rather than unchanging essences.
>
> However, it's far from a settled matter. Closed Individualism remains the
> default for good reason due to its intuitive power. Open Individualism,
> while less mainstream, continues to attract interest for its radical
> unification.
>
> Ultimately, the "more correct" view depends on the criteria you
> prioritize: everyday intuition, logical consistency, explanatory power for
> paradoxes, compatibility with science, or insights from
> introspection/mysticism. There is no definitive answer agreed upon by all.
>

That's for sure. :-)

Jason
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From pharos at gmail.com  Tue Apr  8 23:21:33 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:21:33 +0100
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <CA+BCJUgQzJfNGmXAamMNBRv7Groffk0VrDG+GppkHf-d-+5G=Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+BCJUj=DGdEb+yg9P=0b-ExSSi-SB2GvrvcUgbw6E1fAtrS7w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CA+BCJUj3wG_t0-OY5H7dK+HmkCt7d4TiDApeu8LktV6F1YWneA@mail.gmail.com>
 <172f7f90-82a2-97e9-b97f-cc25e984e978@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUjsMKaqGUehJYBNFC+c-_4+u3eV-7SvJ2PWoyaxxA2vYw@mail.gmail.com>
 <898b1000-a329-b18a-7755-001b9688aa29@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUijVazfRiLx9m3aS2x6eFpj1hpDR3dEs9iRJXkjaY+mgg@mail.gmail.com>
 <9134f318-319f-d1aa-8a2a-c5aeaf0493e7@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhbVVnDN3QotWwaqDK1JJ5L8fHgnz-wKkZsVEscd3ST_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <d1ec62d8-9e1e-e535-5160-e5df50126ed6@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUhYa04ghctxK8nGL3DT6Nnbqe7jeJ-HMPRrH1v17j36nQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <527b67ea-6cb3-40aa-6abf-0b5342aa0c51@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUihjLQypa4BuWhehQo1vLk53K-whgOi9z9Sa5s2JaTTxw@mail.gmail.com>
 <a1c2336a-8ede-ffca-e5f9-ebde69e0c0f2@disroot.org>
 <CA+BCJUie0G+eSj_kROBDYaTNL0C7Y-Ku_6ezAxWqZ64tayoP+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAL_armjadsFET3Kw2g3BMwuon6L0383MRi4XPQaCozPSF3B8cQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CA+BCJUgQzJfNGmXAamMNBRv7Groffk0VrDG+GppkHf-d-+5G=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAL_armjpzdS4xgGaQO_ZtvuexvXeP5YjcUpCvVt8ON2z700zKw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 at 15:56, Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you Bill (and Gemini) for creating and sharing this review. I have
only a few comments below:
> <snip>
> -------------------------------------


Gemini 2.5 Pro AI has just released the Deep Research version, so I
repeated the same question.
It took a while and looked at over 170 websites to generate a report.
Impressive, but the question remains undecided.   :)
BillK

Question -
Which of the three alternative types of Individualism is likely to be more
correct? Empty Individualism Closed Individualism Open Individualism


Gemini 2.5 Pro AI Deep Research -

An Analysis of Empty, Closed, and Open Individualism

The question of personal identity, concerning what constitutes the self and
how it endures over time, has remained a central inquiry in philosophy for
centuries. Various theoretical frameworks have been proposed to address
this complex issue, and among them are three distinct perspectives on
individualism: Empty Individualism, Closed Individualism, and Open
Individualism. These views offer contrasting accounts of the nature of the
self and its relation to time and other beings. This report aims to analyze
these three perspectives, explore the philosophical arguments that support
them, examine the criticisms they face, and assess their relative
plausibility within contemporary philosophical thought. Understanding these
different conceptions of the self holds significant implications for
various fields, including ethics, metaphysics, and the study of
consciousness, as our definition of "self" fundamentally shapes our
understanding of moral responsibility, the nature of death, and our
connections to others. The continued philosophical debate surrounding these
forms of individualism underscores the inherent difficulty in definitively
answering the fundamental question of selfhood.1

Closed Individualism represents the most prevalent and intuitively
appealing view of personal identity. It posits that each individual is a
distinct and numerically identical entity that persists throughout their
lifespan, commencing at birth and concluding at death.4 This perspective
asserts that clear boundaries exist, delineating one person from another in
both spatial and temporal dimensions.8 Its alignment with everyday
experience and our immediate sense of self contributes significantly to its
widespread acceptance.4 Furthermore, Closed Individualism can accommodate
beliefs in a soul or other forms of enduring personal essence that underpin
this continuous identity.6 However, the reliance of Closed Individualism on
intuition, while providing an initial sense of clarity, might be considered
a potential limitation in the context of rigorous philosophical analysis.
Intuitive beliefs can sometimes be misleading or heavily influenced by
cultural norms and individual biases.4 Moreover, the very notion of a
"discrete being" raises fundamental questions about the nature of these
boundaries ? whether they are purely physical, psychological, or a
combination thereof ? and how this distinctness is maintained over time
despite the continuous changes that occur within an individual's physical
and mental constitution.8

In stark contrast to Closed Individualism, Empty Individualism proposes a
far more radical conception of the self. According to this view, a person
exists merely as a transient "time-slice" or "moment of experience".2 Each
fleeting moment of consciousness is considered to constitute a separate and
distinct individual, with no enduring self that persists from one moment to
the next.4 In essence, with each passing instant, a new "self" is brought
into existence and immediately ceases to be.4 The feeling of continuity
that we typically experience is, from this perspective, regarded as an
illusion, possibly generated by the mechanisms of memory that create a
sense of a connected past.5 This viewpoint has been associated with
thinkers such as Buddha, David Hume, and Derek Parfit, who have, in
different ways, questioned the existence of a substantial and enduring
self.3 Empty Individualism presents a significant departure from our
intuitive understanding of self and consequently raises profound questions
concerning personal responsibility, the motivation for future-oriented
actions, and the fundamental nature of our experiences.14 The connection of
Empty Individualism to philosophical traditions like Buddhism and Hume's
skepticism, which emphasize the impermanence of all phenomena and the
absence of a fixed, underlying self, provides crucial context for
understanding its core tenets.11

Open Individualism offers yet another distinct perspective, proposing that
there is only one numerically identical subject of experience, encompassing
everyone across all of time ? past, present, and future.2 The feeling of
separate and distinct individual identities is considered to be an
illusion, a product of our limited perspective.2 This view suggests the
existence of a single, universal consciousness or an "omni-person" that
manifests in various individual "physiological-psychological bundles".2
Open Individualism finds resonance with philosophical traditions such as
Advaita Vedanta, which emphasizes the ultimate unity of all reality.2 The
term "Open Individualism" was coined by philosopher Daniel Kolak.2 This
perspective carries significant ethical weight, potentially fostering
greater empathy and compassion by blurring the perceived boundaries between
oneself and others.2 The connection to Eastern spiritual thought suggests a
potential intersection between philosophical inquiry and certain forms of
contemplative or mystical experiences, as exemplified by the phrase "Tat
tvam asi" meaning "You are that".2 A recurring analogy used to illustrate
Open Individualism is that of a single actor embodying numerous characters,
each deeply immersed in their role yet fundamentally the same underlying
individual.8

Each of these three views on individualism is supported by various
philosophical arguments. Empty Individualism finds support in the
observation of the constant flux and change inherent in our physical and
mental states, which challenges the notion of a stable, enduring self.4 The
difficulty in identifying a permanent "core" of personal identity further
bolsters this perspective.16 It aligns with the idea that our sense of self
might be a constructed narrative or an illusion created by the brain's
processes.13 The "pigeon hole theory" proposed by Fred Hoyle offers an
intriguing analogy, suggesting that each moment in time is a pre-existing
slot occupied by a transient consciousness.2 Intuitively, an understanding
of the impermanent nature of all things, without necessarily grasping the
concept of "no-self," can lead one to favor Empty Individualism.4 This view
can also provide an explanation for the feeling of detachment or
unfamiliarity we sometimes experience towards our past selves.14
Furthermore, analogies drawn from technological advancements and the
discrete nature of mathematics can be seen as supporting the idea of
reality being composed of momentary, distinct units.14

Closed Individualism, despite facing philosophical challenges, is supported
by the strong intuitive feeling of being a single, continuous individual
throughout our lives.4 This view also appears pragmatically necessary for
the functioning of social structures, including our systems of moral
responsibility and law, which rely on the concept of enduring
individuals.36 The subjective experience of distinctness and separation
from other individuals provides a powerful argument in its favor.10 The
close correlation between brain activity and conscious experience suggests
a strong link between personal identity and a specific physical organism.36
Our natural language and conceptual frameworks for understanding "subject"
and "individual" are deeply embedded with the assumption of separate,
enduring selves.36 From an evolutionary perspective, Closed Individualism
might have offered a selective advantage by fostering a balance between
cooperation within a defined group and competition with others.5

Open Individualism is argued for on several grounds. It potentially offers
a solution to the hard problem of consciousness by proposing a single,
fundamental reality of experience that underlies all seemingly separate
conscious beings.5 This view aligns with interpretations of ancient wisdom
traditions like Advaita Vedanta and certain Buddhist concepts that
emphasize unity and the illusory nature of the individual self.2 It
provides a framework for understanding the deep interconnectedness of all
conscious life and carries significant implications for the development of
a universal ethic grounded in compassion.2 The idea that the universe
functions as a unified system where identity arises from relational context
also lends support to this view.35 Some proponents suggest that a
physicalist understanding of the universe might even imply the continuity
of experience beyond individual death, as there is ultimately no separate
entity to cease existing.2 Open Individualism directly challenges the
seemingly arbitrary nature of the boundaries we typically perceive between
individuals.2 From this perspective, concepts like injustice and inequality
can be re-evaluated as ultimately forms of self-harm within a unified
consciousness.11

Despite the arguments in their favor, each of these views also faces
significant philosophical criticisms. Empty Individualism struggles with
the counter-intuitive nature of denying the strong subjective feeling of
personal continuity over time.4 If each moment constitutes a new
individual, it becomes difficult to explain our experience of change and
the sense of a unified narrative.13 The implications for moral
responsibility and our concern for the future become problematic if there
is no enduring self to be held accountable or to benefit from our current
actions.14 The meaningfulness of long-term personal projects and
relationships that extend beyond the present moment is also called into
question.17 Some critics argue that Empty Individualism leads to a
pessimistic view of survival, suggesting that we effectively cease to exist
from one moment to the next 38, and that it fails to account for meaningful
connections beyond the individual moment.35 Furthermore, from an
evolutionary standpoint, the lack of stable individual entities might
hinder the development of complex coordination and cooperation.5

Closed Individualism, while aligning with our immediate intuitions,
encounters difficulties in providing a clear and consistent metaphysical
foundation for personal identity that extends beyond this intuitive
appeal.5 Thought experiments involving identity transfer, duplication, or
the splitting of consciousness raise significant challenges to the notion
of a singular, continuous self.5 The persistent philosophical problem of
change ? how an individual can remain the "same" despite undergoing
constant physical and psychological transformations ? remains a key point
of contention.12 Some argue that advancements in modern physics and
neuroscience suggest that the idea of truly discrete and independent
individuals might be an oversimplification of a more interconnected
reality.35 Defining the precise boundaries of what constitutes an
"individual" also presents a challenge, particularly when considering the
continuous exchange of matter and energy between an organism and its
environment.16

Open Individualism, perhaps the most radical of the three views, faces the
significant hurdle of being highly counter-intuitive, directly
contradicting our deeply ingrained subjective experience of being a
distinct and separate individual.5 The "vertiginous question" of why we
experience the world from this particular perspective and not another
remains a profound mystery for this view.2 Critics often argue that Open
Individualism necessitates the adoption of additional metaphysical
assumptions, such as the existence of a universal consciousness, which may
lack independent support.27 Reconciling the concept of a single, shared
subject with our everyday interactions and our strong sense of personal
agency also presents practical difficulties.5 The idea of a unified
consciousness might also lead to logical paradoxes or contradictions,
particularly when considering conflicting desires or beliefs across
different individuals.36 From an evolutionary perspective, a natural
inclination to cooperate with absolutely everything might be
disadvantageous in a world where defection is possible.5 Finally, some
critics view Open Individualism as leaning towards spiritualism rather than
being grounded in scientific evidence.24

To better understand the relative standing of these three views, it is
helpful to compare their core tenets. Closed Individualism posits a
distinct, enduring self that persists continuously throughout a single
lifespan, with clear boundaries separating individuals, aligning strongly
with common sense. Empty Individualism, conversely, proposes a momentary
existence as a "time-slice," with identity lasting only for the present
moment and illusory boundaries across time, making it counter-intuitive.
Open Individualism suggests one universal consciousness experiencing all of
time, with illusory boundaries between individuals and persistence that is
eternal and encompassing, which is highly counter-intuitive.

Feature           Closed Individualism                                Empty
Individualism                               Open Individualism
Core Idea    Distinct, enduring self from birth to death.   Momentary
existence as a "time-slice."  One universal consciousness experiencing all.
Persistence Continuous throughout lifespan.                 Only for the
present moment.                  Eternal and encompassing all time.
Boundaries  Clear and distinct between individuals.      No enduring
identity across moments.    Illusory boundaries between individuals.
Common Sense   Aligns strongly.
Counter-intuitive.                                     Highly
counter-intuitive.


While Closed Individualism remains the most widely held view, primarily due
to its intuitive appeal, there is a growing trend within philosophy to
explore Empty Individualism and Open Individualism as responses to the
perceived limitations of the traditional view.10 Currently, there is no
broad philosophical consensus on which of these perspectives is most likely
to be correct, and the debate continues to evolve.14 Open Individualism,
despite its intriguing implications, especially in the realm of ethics,
faces significant skepticism due to its highly counter-intuitive nature and
its reliance on substantial metaphysical commitments.36 Empty
Individualism, while also challenging common sense, has gained considerable
traction as a serious alternative, drawing support from philosophical
traditions that emphasize impermanence and the critique of a substantial
self.3 It is important to note that the value of these frameworks might not
solely lie in their absolute "correctness" but also in their usefulness for
addressing specific philosophical problems and expanding our understanding
of consciousness and identity.5

In conclusion, Empty Individualism, Closed Individualism, and Open
Individualism offer distinct and contrasting perspectives on the enduring
philosophical problem of personal identity. While Closed Individualism
aligns with our everyday intuitions and remains the most widely accepted
view, it faces significant challenges from philosophical thought
experiments and ongoing debates about the nature of consciousness and
persistence. Both Empty Individualism and Open Individualism present
compelling alternative frameworks that challenge the traditional view.
Empty Individualism, with its emphasis on impermanence and the lack of a
substantial self, appears to have garnered increasing attention and
acceptance within the philosophical community as a viable alternative to
Closed Individualism.11 Open Individualism, while facing greater hurdles in
terms of intuitive plausibility, remains a significant and
thought-provoking perspective, particularly for its implications in ethics
and its potential connection to broader understandings of consciousness.11
The ongoing philosophical discourse reflects the complex and evolving
nature of our understanding of the self, with no single view currently
holding definitive sway.
---------------------------------
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From ben at zaiboc.net  Wed Apr  9 07:28:55 2025
From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 08:28:55 +0100
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>

On 09/04/2025 00:22, BillK wrote:
> Gemini 2.5 Pro AI has just released the Deep Research version, so I 
> repeated the same question. It took a while and looked at over 170 
> websites to generate a report.
> Impressive, but the question remains undecided.?? :)
> BillK Question - Which of the three alternative types of Individualism 
> is likely to be more correct? Empty Individualism Closed Individualism 
> Open Individualism


I can't help wondering if anyone has yet asked a chatbot how many angels 
can dance on the head of a pin.

-- 
Ben
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From ben at zaiboc.net  Wed Apr  9 07:46:34 2025
From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 08:46:34 +0100
Subject: [ExI] AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction
In-Reply-To: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Message-ID: <74693f59-ff23-4711-9d56-1d2c2a86d3d0@zaiboc.net>


On 09/04/2025 00:22, BillK wrote:
> In an interview with podcast host Lex Fridman, Eugenia Kuyda, the CEO
> of the companion site Replika, explained the appeal at the heart of
> the company?s product. ?If you create something that is always there
> for you, that never criticizes you, that always understands you and
> understands you for who you are,? she said, ?how can you not fall in
> love with that??

That's an easy one to answer:
"Because I'm not a baby anymore".
Surely one of the things you realise as you grow up is that people are 
not always there for you, so you can learn self-reliance (and it's 
corollary, self-esteem).

As for understanding you, nobody does, even other humans, much less 
these things. Just another thing that we learn that's part of growing 
up. Admittedly, that does cause a lot of problems, but I can't see 
chatbots helping to solve them, when they just reinforce each person's 
own views.

And we know what happens to people who are shielded from criticism. 
These days, we call them 'university students', or 'woke snowflakes'.

If people are really thinking like this, then they are deluding 
themselves, big-time, and I can't see any good coming from it. It seems 
to be a recipe for infantilising the human race. Maybe when real AI does 
appear, we will have no problem being their pets, because the chatbots 
will have already groomed us.

Finally, she has a rather twisted view of love, in my opinion.

-- 
Ben
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From jasonresch at gmail.com  Wed Apr  9 07:46:49 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 03:46:49 -0400
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
Message-ID: <CA+BCJUgu17idp8CSxdfLk5058NuXBPvF6BhecbOVSYPnoSOEaw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 3:29 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 09/04/2025 00:22, BillK wrote:
>
> Gemini 2.5 Pro AI has just released the Deep Research version, so I repeated the same question.
> It took a while and looked at over 170 websites to generate a report.
> Impressive, but the question remains undecided.   :)
> BillK
>
> Question -Which
>  of the three alternative types of Individualism is likely to be more
> correct? Empty Individualism Closed Individualism Open Individualism
>
>
>
> I can't help wondering if anyone has yet asked a chatbot how many angels
> can dance on the head of a pin.
>

A) If you freeze your brain for 100 years and it is thawed and placed in a
new body grown from your DNA is it still you, have you survived this
procedure?

B) What if they destructively scan your brain's connectome and 3D print a
new living brain from an entirely new set of material? Is it still you, and
have you survived this procedure?

C) What if they use the scan to upload your brain's connectome into a
computer to control a robot body that in all respects looks like and senses
like your biological body, is it still you?

D) What if part of your brain was damaged from a crack, corresponding to
memories of a vacation, but those parts of your connectome were
reconstructed from digital records (phone location data, digital photos,
emails taken while you were on that vacation, etc.). Is it still you, have
you survived the process?


The answer to these questions depends on which theory of personal identity
is correct.

So it isn't an idle question without consequences. Rather, the answer
concerns what is for many people, quite important: continuing to exist in
the world.

Jason
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr  9 13:59:01 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 06:59:01 -0700
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <CA+BCJUgu17idp8CSxdfLk5058NuXBPvF6BhecbOVSYPnoSOEaw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
 <CA+BCJUgu17idp8CSxdfLk5058NuXBPvF6BhecbOVSYPnoSOEaw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB7yo6YXraA3qxNX02+Tgw9x+HUrqPgR5k6tmTuO3BJhCQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 12:48?AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip

> The answer to these questions depends on which theory of personal identity is correct.
>
> So it isn't an idle question without consequences. Rather, the answer concerns what is for many people, quite important: continuing to exist in the world.

At the practical level, all these alternatives pulse some you did not
mention should be compared to the alternative of oblivion.

Keith

> Jason
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr  9 14:14:13 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 10:14:13 -0400
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
Message-ID: <CALAdGNRU81E_v3n2qEEH4KLityhbLA4A2-jpk_eYuqgmttNU2A@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 3:30?AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I can't help wondering if anyone has yet asked a chatbot how many angels
> can dance on the head of a pin.
>

https://claude.ai/ had this to say:

---

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

This is an old philosophical question often used to parody medieval
scholastic debates about metaphysics. It asks how many non-physical beings
(angels) could occupy a tiny physical space (the head of a pin).

The question doesn't have a definitive answer since it involves several
metaphysical assumptions:

That angels exist
That angels can "dance"
That angels occupy physical space in some way
Different theological and philosophical traditions would approach this
differently:

Some might argue angels are purely spiritual beings without physical
extension, so infinitely many could occupy any space
Others might suggest angels can take physical form temporarily, limiting
their number
Some might reject the premise entirely as meaningless
The question has become a metaphor for debating topics that are impossible
to resolve empirically or that have little practical significance. It's
often used to describe intellectual exercises that are abstract to the
point of being impractical.
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From jasonresch at gmail.com  Wed Apr  9 14:19:30 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 10:19:30 -0400
Subject: [ExI] Time and Personal Identity
In-Reply-To: <CAPiwVB7yo6YXraA3qxNX02+Tgw9x+HUrqPgR5k6tmTuO3BJhCQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.10.1744154544.18423.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 <059ce6b9-992c-4923-9fea-7607148fb5ab@zaiboc.net>
 <CA+BCJUgu17idp8CSxdfLk5058NuXBPvF6BhecbOVSYPnoSOEaw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7yo6YXraA3qxNX02+Tgw9x+HUrqPgR5k6tmTuO3BJhCQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CA+BCJUjk1-1rhUwjxz83cy05ZyXXDdF5JUfty43SOwxjV2NqGA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 9:59 AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 12:48?AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> snip
>
> > The answer to these questions depends on which theory of personal
> identity is correct.
> >
> > So it isn't an idle question without consequences. Rather, the answer
> concerns what is for many people, quite important: continuing to exist in
> the world.
>
> At the practical level, all these alternatives pulse some you did not
> mention should be compared to the alternative of oblivion.


Exactly. The question is: do you experience life again as these new
incarnations of yourself, or do you experience nothing (i.e., oblivion).

Or, to reverse the question, what is required to ensure you don't face
oblivion? Is some form of continuity required, and if so what forms of
continuity? Must there be material continuity, or is causal continuity
sufficient? Or is continuity not needed at all, so long as the result is
the same: a extent being that is like you?

Then if a being like you is enough, how exact must it be? You're not
exactly the same as you were two weeks ago, is similarity within this
two-week window sufficient? How many memories can be dropped or lost in the
process before you cease to survive at all (and are back to oblivion)? Or
might all memories be lost, and you could still survive (as your amnesiac
clone)?


Jason
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From pharos at gmail.com  Thu Apr 10 19:00:29 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2025 20:00:29 +0100
Subject: [ExI] AI Futures Project forecasts ASI arrival in 2027
Message-ID: <CAL_armi36YdRTOCEzTgbfFzKHh7TiFJWpjX-=iLjiGGsNpDBcQ@mail.gmail.com>

AI Futures have produced a scenario that says that Artificial Super
Intelligence will arrive by 2027.
The Research Section provides a bit more detail.
BillK

<https://ai-2027.com/summary>
Quote:
Scenario Takeaways

   1.

   *By 2027, we may automate AI R&D leading to vastly superhuman AIs
   (?artificial superintelligence? or ASI).* In AI 2027, AI companies
   create expert-human-level AI systems in early 2027 which automate AI
   research, leading to ASI by the end of 2027. See our timelines forecast
   <https://ai-2027.com/supplements/timelines-forecast> and takeoff
   forecast for reasoning.
   2.

   *ASIs will dictate humanity?s future.* Millions of ASIs will rapidly
   execute tasks beyond human comprehension. Because they?re so useful,
   they?ll be widely deployed. With superhuman strategy, hacking, weapons
   development, and more, the goals of these AIs will determine the future.

*--------------------------------*
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sat Apr 12 16:21:44 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2025 09:21:44 -0700
Subject: [ExI] Crosspost
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>

[I spent some time last night on this which might interest some of you.]

I am not quite as much of a Musk fan as Howard (Bloom) because I think
space mining and O'Neill cylinders are a better idea than Mars.
However, anything serious in space such as power satellites or space
mining requires low-cost lift, and no doubt Musk (SpaceX) was doing a
great job.  His foray into EV didn't mean as much to me, but I know
people who were totally taken.

Unfortunately, Musk's venture into politics has done enormous damage
to his EV business and I worry about it making such a mess of the US
that it wrecks SpaceX.  I can't blame Musk, the reward people get from
political attention was wired in through a million years of evolution.
Few people can resist it.  Out of the 1000 or more people my wife and
I have known, only 3 or 4 were able to resist.  (O'Neill was not one
of them, ask me the story in private sometime.)

Anyway, I am sure there is a general awareness about the guy who was
deported to the notorious prison in El Salvador and you know of Musk's
DODG.  Friday, using government computers, DODG sent an email to a
second-generation-born-in-the-US lawyer.  She posted it, kicking off
this thread.

 https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lmljpkrdj22h

?Aaron Reichlin-Melnick? ?@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social?
?
6h
There?s a big thread of baffled people on Reddit trying to figure out
what the emails mean or if they?re real. They include:

- Citizens
- Canadians (living in Canada)
- Green card holders
- DACA recipients

Worth spending a little time on the tread, but the point is that
Musk's association with DODG and this stunt is likely to cause the
kind of damage to SpaceX, including Starlink that happened to Tesla.
Or worse.

 Sigh.

Winner?  Hard to say.  Chinese maybe.


Keith


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sun Apr 13 06:46:53 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2025 23:46:53 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Apr 12, 2025 at 12:28?PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2025 at 12:22?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > I am not quite as much of a Musk fan as Howard (Bloom) because I think
>> space mining and O'Neill cylinders are a better idea than Mars.
>
> I strongly agree, although the exponential improvement in AI may render both Mars and O'Neill cylinders irrelevant,

True.  Not long ago I projected humans taking an upload and speed up
future.  If what we are seeing is the shadows of data centers, they
did not take a "sink in the ocean for cooling" and "make small for
short communication delay" approach.
http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/

The structures (if they are structures) are 1.5 light seconds across.
That implies that their subjective perception of time is about the
same as we use (again if there are any aliens).

> and may do so before the end of the Trump administration.

Maybe.  But as fast as things are moving up the exponential curve, I
don't think it will happen that fast.

> And Musk loves Bitcoin, I thought it was a pretty neat idea too when it first came out in 2009, but now it's pretty clear it was a failed experiment; the only thing you can actually do with a bitcoin is to use it to buy illegal drugs, pay off blackmailers and kidnappers, and sell it so you can get real money.

I think the biggest "market" for bitcoin is people trying to hide
assets from the government.

> And even the simplest transaction with bitcoin needs to use an obscene amount of electricity and state of the art computer chips that could be put to a much better use in AI. So my admiration of Elon musk has decreased about two orders of magnitude over the last two years.
>
>>
>> > Unfortunately, Musk's venture into politics has done enormous damage to his EV business
>
>
> It's ironic that a year ago the most enthusiastic buyers of Teslas tended to be on the liberal side, but now they hate Musk's guts and feel embarrassed to drive one of his cars. Trump's ridiculously high tariffs will enormously harm his EV business but it will harm his competitors even more, so he may be OK with that.

Hard to say, the policy is not fixed yet.  On the other hand, the
uncertainty has frozen business planning.

Keith

>> > and I worry about it making such a mess of the US that it wrecks SpaceX.
>
>
> It's almost a law of nature that anybody who gets close to Trump gets burned, they seem to end up impoverished, disgraced or jailed.
>
>   John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> jid
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv2YAO%3DQj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U%3D4qg%40mail.gmail.com.


From spike at rainier66.com  Sun Apr 13 14:57:28 2025
From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com)
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 07:57:28 -0700
Subject: [ExI] ai companionship bots.
Message-ID: <034201dbac84$6107e710$2317b530$@rainier66.com>

 

BillK wrote:

 

>.Designed to be the perfect person-always available, never critical-AI
companions are hooking people deeper than social media ever could.

They make the attention economy look like a relic.

By James O'Donnell        April 8, 2025

<https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/08/1114369/ai-companions-are-the-f
inal-stage-of-digital-addiction-and-lawmakers-are-taking-aim/>

 

Quote:

You might think that such AI companionship bots-AI models with distinct
"personalities" that can learn about you and act as a friend, lover,
cheerleader, or more-appeal only to a fringe few, but that couldn't be
further from the truth.

 

 

This has long been a tech-dream: a way to engage the elderly loners.  Of
course there is the risk that it becomes a form of digital addiction.

 

I bought a talking car a coupla months ago.  I tell it where I want to go,
she gives me directions.  If I drive past my turn, she calmly comes up with
a new plan, and she has the voice of an angel.  You know for sure whoever
they sampled to create that voice must be a total knockout.  It is just an
evolutionary requirement: any person with a beautiful voice must be an
actual beauty, no exceptions allowed.

 

Now. I sometimes ask her for directions to my home, even if I know exactly
where it is, just to hear her speak.  I intentionally drive past my turn, to
get her talking to me.  When I eventually get home of course there is hell
to pay:  Where have you been?  Never mind, I'll tell ya where ya been!
You've been with that Navigation Bitch, that's where ya been!  I would kick
her ass if she had one!  etc.  Oy vey, mercy.  

 

It is far too easy to imagine young people opting for AI companionship
rather than biological intelligence(?) and if so. well, all along we were
told it was going to be the atomic bomb.  Then it was an asteroid, or a new
ice age or global warming, or lab viruses, or the singularity, or some other
damn thing, when now it looks like AI will do us in by causing us to lose
interest in reproduction.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sun Apr 13 17:26:55 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 10:26:55 -0700
Subject: [ExI] ai companionship bots.
In-Reply-To: <034201dbac84$6107e710$2317b530$@rainier66.com>
References: <034201dbac84$6107e710$2317b530$@rainier66.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB7G21ar==hykMsSPEckSm62Kjd_n4eoxkon3SdFNa5-cQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Apr 13, 2025 at 7:58?AM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
snip

> thing, when now it looks like AI will do us in by causing us to lose interest in reproduction.
>
Charles Stross, a former poster on this list, wrote two novels where
the human race had gone extinct
for this very reason. The characters, needless to say, were fembots.

Keith
>
> spike
>st
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com  Sun Apr 13 20:35:22 2025
From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa)
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:35:22 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAN3PQpEy6MpShJ78Q=DDnwaBU9=jDhh8Q2G3pZdias06dgmY0Q@mail.gmail.com>

Marsr is a real story science fiction story

On Sun, Apr 13, 2025, 4:35?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 13, 2025 at 2:47?AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> *http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/*
>> <http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/>
>
>
> *That link doesn't work.*
>
>
>>
>>
>> * > The structures (if they are structures) are 1.5 light seconds across.
>> That implies that their subjective perception of time is about the same as
>> we use .*
>>
>
> *I don't think it's as simple as that for two reasons: *
>
> *1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain
> to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as
> important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for
> Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of
> times wider than any biological brain has.*
>
> *2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple
> tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would
> probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would
> He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the
> same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain
> used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat,
> he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.  *
>
> *> (again if there are any aliens)*
>
>
> *The events of the last two years have made me even more convinced that ET
> doesn't exist, if he did we'd know by now. *
>
> * John K Clark*
>
>
>
>>
>> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "extropolis" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg%40mail.gmail.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
> .
>
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sun Apr 13 22:38:53 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 15:38:53 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Apr 13, 2025 at 4:35?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2025 at 2:47?AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/
>
> That link doesn't work.

Try

https://web.archive.org/web/20121130232045/http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/

>> > The structures (if they are structures) are 1.5 light seconds across.
>> That implies that their subjective perception of time is about the
>> same as we use .
>
> I don't think it's as simple as that for two reasons:

The article assumed that uploading humans would communicate with the
same delay we now experience on Earth. A million-to-one speed-up
required shrinking the hardware-to-hardware distance to 300 meters for
the same subjective experience.

> 1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of times wider than any biological brain has.
>
> 2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat, he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.

Popularly I was tagged with conceiving of the Jupiter Brain.  It
wasn't me, I located the thread.  I responded by throwing cold water
on the idea for the reasons that a large computer would operate slowly
because it could not be of one mind if some parts were not
communicating due to the speed of light,

>> > (again if there are any aliens)
>
> The events of the last two years have made me even more convinced that ET doesn't exist, if he did we'd know by now.

What events?

If you can account for the blinking of 24 stars in a 2000 LY cluster
in any way that does not involve aliens I would be most interested.

I hope you can, I don't want to be right.

But the blinks did cause me to think about the fate of uploaded
humans.  If you want to build power and heat sink hardware for
trillions of uploaded humans, you would probably do it in the
"computational" zone say 5 AU where error rates are kept down by the
low temperature.

Keith

>  John K Clark
>
>
>>
>>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Power Satellite Economics" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to power-satellite-economics+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Mon Apr 14 19:43:01 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2025 12:43:01 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>

If you read the article, you seem to have missed that the 300-meter
sphere was a civilization, the brains were 10 cm cubes per Eric
Drexler.

Best wishes,

Keith

On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 10:52?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On  Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote on https://web.archive.org/web/20121130232045/http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/
>
>> > The problem is that the faster you run your brain, the more the world around you seems to slow down. With only a modest speedup, movement would seem like wading through molasses.
>
>
> That depends, interesting phenomena occur at all times scales. Even if your brain was sped up by a factor of a million billion, many particle physics phenomena would still seem to occur virtually instantaneously.
>
>>  > For a million-to-one speedup, that means that all the communicating nodes can be no more than 300 meters apart,  i.e., configured as a sphere 300 meters in diameter with a hole to pump water in or out (for cooling). The area of the sphere is ~283,000 square meters.
>
>
> In previous posts I have given my reasons why I don't think a brain would be limited to a sphere of only 300 m in diameter, but even if it is that works out to be a volume of about 14,000,000 cubic meters. The average human brain is about 0.00135 cubic meters. And the signals in the human brain travel between 0.5 and 120 meters per second depending on if the axon is myelinated or unmyelinated. The speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second.
>
>
>>  > One consequence that Eric Drexler discussed in Engines of Creation (end of Chapter 5) was a million years of science and engineering being done in one year. He didn?t discuss the subjective effect of a whole society uploading and subjectively experiencing a million years per calendar year.
>
>
> To GPT, Claude or Gemini it may seem like it's taken a million years to reach superhuman intelligence, but that doesn't mean we humans won't experience a superhuman AI before the end of the Trump administration.
>
>    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 5e2
>
>
>
>
>
> > 1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of times wider than any biological brain has.
>
> > 2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat, he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.
>
>>


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Tue Apr 15 15:24:01 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2025 08:24:01 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 4:58?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 3:43?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > If you read the article, you seem to have missed that the 300-meter
>> sphere was a civilization, the brains were 10 cm cubes per Eric Drexler.
>
>
> I don't think it makes sense to hypothesize about the brain activity of millions or billions of separate individuals being computed inside a sphere of 300 meters.

Try reading it again.  Only the surface had uploaded humans, 100 to
the square meter.  The reason for the shape was the water flow for
carrying off 20 kW of waste heat from running a brain simulation at a
millionfold.  The reason for the size limit was to keep subjective
communication delays no worse than what we have on Earth.

> If there was an extremely fast and astronomically wide communication channel between your brain and mine so that every thought I had you had and every thought you had I had then we would stop being separate people, only Keith Clark (or John Henson) would exist.

You are assuming something that is not in the design.  On a subjective
basis, the communication needs to be no faster or more bandwidth than
we use today.  You don't merge with someone by watching their youtube
video or talking on the phone.  Of course you could, but that was not
in the physical design which is about communication delay and waste
heat problems of running fast.

But while I think the physics works for a million to one speedup, if
what we see at Tabby's star is data centers with trillions of uploaded
aliens, they did not take the speedup route.  If they had we would
never see them.  Whatever, data centers or dust, the light blockers
are 1.5 light seconds across.  I have posted the math on the Exi list
if you want to check it.

Keith

>  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> >> > The problem is that the faster you run your brain, the more the world around you seems to slow down. With only a modest speedup, movement would seem like wading through molasses.
>>
>>
>> > That depends, interesting phenomena occur at all times scales. Even if your brain was sped up by a factor of a million billion, many particle physics phenomena would still seem to occur virtually instantaneously.
>>
>> >>  > For a million-to-one speedup, that means that all the communicating nodes can be no more than 300 meters apart,  i.e., configured as a sphere 300 meters in diameter with a hole to pump water in or out (for cooling). The area of the sphere is ~283,000 square meters.
>>
>>
>> > In previous posts I have given my reasons why I don't think a brain would be limited to a sphere of only 300 m in diameter, but even if it is that works out to be a volume of about 14,000,000 cubic meters. The average human brain is about 0.00135 cubic meters. And the signals in the human brain travel between 0.5 and 120 meters per second depending on if the axon is myelinated or unmyelinated. The speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second.
>>
>>
>> >>  > One consequence that Eric Drexler discussed in Engines of Creation (end of Chapter 5) was a million years of science and engineering being done in one year. He didn?t discuss the subjective effect of a whole society uploading and subjectively experiencing a million years per calendar year.
>>
>>
>> > To GPT, Claude or Gemini it may seem like it's taken a million years to reach superhuman intelligence, but that doesn't mean we humans won't experience a superhuman AI before the end of the Trump administration.
>> >
>> >    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
>>
>> > > 1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of times wider than any biological brain has.
>>
>> > > 2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat, he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.
>>


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 13:22:35 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 06:22:35 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv3KKxzDeEDTb2hZYu0bSgZWtzXiSL0Zic9ZQmpxgk1y_w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3KKxzDeEDTb2hZYu0bSgZWtzXiSL0Zic9ZQmpxgk1y_w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2+ADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 4:13?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
snip

> These days few if any astrophysicist still believe that Tabby's star has anything to do with ET, and that includes the astronomer who discovered it.

I really, really hope they are right.  Aliens 3000 years ahead of us
would be serious competition.  But I doubt they are the right experts.
They are, for example, not aware of directional waste heat radiation
from thermal power satellite designs which would account for the
impossibly low observed temperature of what they think are dust
clouds.

In any case, it got me thinking about the fate of uploaded humanity
and the idea of a cold computational zone and hardware, energy, and
heat sinks to house them.

Years ago I made a case for fast uploads sunk in the ocean for cooling
as the long-term fate of humanity.  That does not seem to be the only
solution.

If you can think of a third alternative, that would be cool.

Keith

>  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 6hn
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 4:58?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 3:43?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > If you read the article, you seem to have missed that the 300-meter
>> >> sphere was a civilization, the brains were 10 cm cubes per Eric Drexler.
>> >
>> >
>> > I don't think it makes sense to hypothesize about the brain activity of millions or billions of separate individuals being computed inside a sphere of 300 meters.
>>
>> Try reading it again.  Only the surface had uploaded humans, 100 to
>> the square meter.  The reason for the shape was the water flow for
>> carrying off 20 kW of waste heat from running a brain simulation at a
>> millionfold.  The reason for the size limit was to keep subjective
>> communication delays no worse than what we have on Earth.
>>
>> > If there was an extremely fast and astronomically wide communication channel between your brain and mine so that every thought I had you had and every thought you had I had then we would stop being separate people, only Keith Clark (or John Henson) would exist.
>>
>> .
>> >> >> > The problem is that the faster you run your brain, the more the world around you seems to slow down. With only a modest speedup, movement would seem like wading through molasses.
>>
>>
>> >> > That depends, interesting phenomena occur at all times scales. Even if your brain was sped up by a factor of a million billion, many particle physics phenomena would still seem to occur virtually instantaneously.
>>
>> >> >>  > For a million-to-one speedup, that means that all the communicating nodes can be no more than 300 meters apart,  i.e., configured as a sphere 300 meters in diameter with a hole to pump water in or out (for cooling). The area of the sphere is ~283,000 square meters.
>>
>>
>>  In previous posts I have given my reasons why I don't think a brain would be limited to a sphere of only 300 m in diameter, but even if it is that works out to be a volume of about 14,000,000 cubic meters. The average human brain is about 0.00135 cubic meters. And the signals in the human brain travel between 0.5 and 120 meters per second depending on if the axon is myelinated or unmyelinated. The speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second.
>>
>>
>>  One consequence that Eric Drexler discussed in Engines of Creation (end of Chapter 5) was a million years of science and engineering being done in one year. He didn?t discuss the subjective effect of a whole society uploading and subjectively experiencing a million years per calendar year.
>>
>>
>> To GPT, Claude or Gemini it may seem like it's taken a million years to reach superhuman intelligence, but that doesn't mean we humans won't experience a superhuman AI before the end of the Trump administration.
>>
>> >> >    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
>>
>> >> > > 1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of times wider than any biological brain has.
>>
>> >> > > 2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat, he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.
>>


From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 15:00:32 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:00:32 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2+ADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3KKxzDeEDTb2hZYu0bSgZWtzXiSL0Zic9ZQmpxgk1y_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2+ADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CALAdGNQ2yhZuosPLXjyn_0ZLAZfbp65mMqcMcH8uw6VtkYftvA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:24?AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> If you can think of a third alternative, that would be cool.
>

Pun intended?

For example, is it known that it is impossible to do computation where all
the substrate is gas and plasma, or is it theoretically possible to have
computers inside a star operating at stellar temperatures?  In the latter
case, how many uploads could our sun support?  What about a typical white
dwarf, or a typical red supergiant?
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 16:22:09 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:22:09 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <000001dbaed6$eda5c4e0$c8f14ea0$@sbcglobal.net>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAPiwVB4Sg+QCOFSOyOJPbtgt9aTsGCJOZBZbvJYiBn6fuu0uRA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 6:53?AM <jkstrickl at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Anyone who has been uploaded is almost certainly dead already.
> Thus an uploaded future is rather depressing,

You have read "The Clinic Seed" where people were able to freely move
between being uploads and being physical state humans.

Now it is going to take a lot of technical development to get there,
but can you see any reason it is not possible?

Keith

> John S
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: power-satellite-economics at googlegroups.com <power-satellite-economics at googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Keith Henson
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 8:23 AM
> To: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
> Cc: extropolis at googlegroups.com; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>; Power Satellite Economics <power-satellite-economics at googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [Extropolis] Crosspost
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 4:13?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> snip
>
> > These days few if any astrophysicist still believe that Tabby's star has anything to do with ET, and that includes the astronomer who discovered it.
>
> I really, really hope they are right.  Aliens 3000 years ahead of us would be serious competition.  But I doubt they are the right experts.
> They are, for example, not aware of directional waste heat radiation from thermal power satellite designs which would account for the impossibly low observed temperature of what they think are dust clouds.
>
> In any case, it got me thinking about the fate of uploaded humanity and the idea of a cold computational zone and hardware, energy, and heat sinks to house them.
>
> Years ago I made a case for fast uploads sunk in the ocean for cooling as the long-term fate of humanity.  That does not seem to be the only solution.
>
> If you can think of a third alternative, that would be cool.
>
> Keith
>
> >  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> > 6hn
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 4:58?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > On Mon, Apr 14, 2025 at 3:43?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> > If you read the article, you seem to have missed that the
> >> >> > 300-meter
> >> >> sphere was a civilization, the brains were 10 cm cubes per Eric Drexler.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > I don't think it makes sense to hypothesize about the brain activity of millions or billions of separate individuals being computed inside a sphere of 300 meters.
> >>
> >> Try reading it again.  Only the surface had uploaded humans, 100 to
> >> the square meter.  The reason for the shape was the water flow for
> >> carrying off 20 kW of waste heat from running a brain simulation at a
> >> millionfold.  The reason for the size limit was to keep subjective
> >> communication delays no worse than what we have on Earth.
> >>
> >> > If there was an extremely fast and astronomically wide communication channel between your brain and mine so that every thought I had you had and every thought you had I had then we would stop being separate people, only Keith Clark (or John Henson) would exist.
> >>
> >> .
> >> >> >> > The problem is that the faster you run your brain, the more the world around you seems to slow down. With only a modest speedup, movement would seem like wading through molasses.
> >>
> >>
> >> >> > That depends, interesting phenomena occur at all times scales. Even if your brain was sped up by a factor of a million billion, many particle physics phenomena would still seem to occur virtually instantaneously.
> >>
> >> >> >>  > For a million-to-one speedup, that means that all the communicating nodes can be no more than 300 meters apart,  i.e., configured as a sphere 300 meters in diameter with a hole to pump water in or out (for cooling). The area of the sphere is ~283,000 square meters.
> >>
> >>
> >>  In previous posts I have given my reasons why I don't think a brain would be limited to a sphere of only 300 m in diameter, but even if it is that works out to be a volume of about 14,000,000 cubic meters. The average human brain is about 0.00135 cubic meters. And the signals in the human brain travel between 0.5 and 120 meters per second depending on if the axon is myelinated or unmyelinated. The speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second.
> >>
> >>
> >>  One consequence that Eric Drexler discussed in Engines of Creation (end of Chapter 5) was a million years of science and engineering being done in one year. He didn?t discuss the subjective effect of a whole society uploading and subjectively experiencing a million years per calendar year.
> >>
> >>
> >> To GPT, Claude or Gemini it may seem like it's taken a million years to reach superhuman intelligence, but that doesn't mean we humans won't experience a superhuman AI before the end of the Trump administration.
> >>
> >> >> >    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> >>
> >> >> > > 1) The maximum time it takes to send a message from one side of the brain to the other is NOT the only factor, another factor that is just as important if not more so is the bandwidth of that message channel; and for Mr. Jupiter Brain that bandwidth would be many billions or trillions of times wider than any biological brain has.
> >>
> >> >> > > 2) Mr. Jupiter Brain wouldn't need to use His entire brain for simple tasks, such as finding the integral of a 4D tensor equation, He would probably not be consciously aware of the steps He used to find it nor would He need to be, for Him the answer would just be intuitively obvious. In the same way a baseball player is not consciously aware of the steps his brain used to figure out the split second when he should start to swing his bat, he swung it when his intuition told him the time was right.
> >>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Power Satellite Economics" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to power-satellite-economics+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/power-satellite-economics/CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2%2BADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA%40mail.gmail.com.
>


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 16:29:50 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:29:50 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CALAdGNQ2yhZuosPLXjyn_0ZLAZfbp65mMqcMcH8uw6VtkYftvA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3KKxzDeEDTb2hZYu0bSgZWtzXiSL0Zic9ZQmpxgk1y_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2+ADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNQ2yhZuosPLXjyn_0ZLAZfbp65mMqcMcH8uw6VtkYftvA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB7YeCr3xg-uOMi4jzOXN4Q7Fa4Zd0Z2qT-EbEy2r=vOTg@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 8:02?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:24?AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> If you can think of a third alternative, that would be cool.
>
> Pun intended?
>
> For example, is it known that it is impossible to do computation where all the substrate is gas and plasma, or is it theoretically possible to have computers inside a star operating at stellar temperatures?  In the latter case, how many uploads could our sun support?  What about a typical white dwarf, or a typical red supergiant?

Robert Forward wrote a story about sententents living on the surface
of a neutron star.

But I doubt computers are possible at high temperatures.  They need
stable states and the hotter you get, the harder it is to find stable
states.

Keith

> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


From foozler83 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 16:48:38 2025
From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:48:38 -0500
Subject: [ExI] questions
Message-ID: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>

If we could have saved the Dodo, should we have?  Is there a dept.
somewhere that is searching for a new environment for species going extinct
in the environment they are in?  Does it matter if one does not know when
the Renaissance period becomes the Enlightenment?  Is a unique new science
possible?  Does taking a photo collapse a wave form in some unique way?  Is
there a way to kill Elvis in every possible universe?

Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.

bill w
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From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 16:57:48 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:57:48 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAPiwVB7YeCr3xg-uOMi4jzOXN4Q7Fa4Zd0Z2qT-EbEy2r=vOTg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
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 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CALAdGNS4MoRXATP6TqqUwbpdeK2kSMi2SOENdz5q-xoYgdAknA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:30?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 8:02?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > For example, is it known that it is impossible to do computation where
> all the substrate is gas and plasma, or is it theoretically possible to
> have computers inside a star operating at stellar temperatures?  In the
> latter case, how many uploads could our sun support?  What about a typical
> white dwarf, or a typical red supergiant?
>
> Robert Forward wrote a story about sententents living on the surface
> of a neutron star.
>

I've read such a story.  I forget the author, but it could be the same
story you're thinking of.


> But I doubt computers are possible at high temperatures.  They need
> stable states and the hotter you get, the harder it is to find stable
> states.
>

What about self-stable toroidal plasma (no need of external magnets, but
manipulating the plasma structures to perform operations), or using the
magnetic fields already present to control electron and.or plasma (and thus
information) flow?
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From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 16:59:50 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:59:50 -0400
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:50?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.
>

At the risk of veering into politics, is there a science to manipulating
the standard reason-eschewing low-information MAGA masses and politicians
into implementing desired social outcomes?
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 17:27:02 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 10:27:02 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CALAdGNS4MoRXATP6TqqUwbpdeK2kSMi2SOENdz5q-xoYgdAknA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv2YAO=Qj8s9dZwfPsuCoMCUKONJ6DtBd6iW5V9u1U=4qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7FbFBEkAAkfJnSKWZ+JaV-61yeUA_9V97gNP8MfZ55Gg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv11wg8rAKZYTruBoUp9fW5thaWPUKTe9noNLWjfL_T7dg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7iczi9y_RJXk4ebcQf6a6-O8q3UfhWTyTUSitDBJtMww@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv28GK7YZqTd-zP=ByZJykuXsQSecVsFuvvdBrSNPeGz=w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6=MENH4m9abWJEjUzOzAVy+J6ixv6iF8cyunQPihYQ2A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3yX_XKmk8f_zfGU=bskJJ0oPiYWQg8h9MhijYTV0PDvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6pqsD+9qaDohPku0o3PRUzawo795t+v27o0=EHRbpX6g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv3KKxzDeEDTb2hZYu0bSgZWtzXiSL0Zic9ZQmpxgk1y_w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB4Wt30GL2+ADSFpPGQ1SiKXTn_i5XkWENRrvZoBRToNcA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNQ2yhZuosPLXjyn_0ZLAZfbp65mMqcMcH8uw6VtkYftvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB7YeCr3xg-uOMi4jzOXN4Q7Fa4Zd0Z2qT-EbEy2r=vOTg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNS4MoRXATP6TqqUwbpdeK2kSMi2SOENdz5q-xoYgdAknA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB5pxVfhb9J-av-ZptixQ9mUZyYrzga5ZR_RFgXPo=_n7g@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:59?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:30?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 8:02?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> > For example, is it known that it is impossible to do computation where all the substrate is gas and plasma, or is it theoretically possible to have computers inside a star operating at stellar temperatures?  In the latter case, how many uploads could our sun support?  What about a typical white dwarf, or a typical red supergiant?
>>
>> Robert Forward wrote a story about sententents living on the surface
>> of a neutron star.
>
> I've read such a story.  I forget the author, but it could be the same story you're thinking of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
>>
>> But I doubt computers are possible at high temperatures.  They need
>> stable states and the hotter you get, the harder it is to find stable
>> states.
>
> What about self-stable toroidal plasma (no need of external magnets, but manipulating the plasma structures to perform operations), or using the magnetic fields already present to control electron and.or plasma (and thus information) flow?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

Landauer's principle states that the minimum energy needed to erase
one bit of information is proportional to the temperature at which the
system is operating. Specifically, the energy needed for this
computational task is given by

E ? k B T ln ? 2 ,

where k B is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature in
Kelvin.[2] At room temperature, the Landauer limit represents an
energy of approximately 0.018 eV (2.9?10?21 J). As of 2012, modern
computers use about a billion times as much energy per
operation.[3][4]

Keith


> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


From dsunley at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 17:54:53 2025
From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:54:53 -0600
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>

Keeping it non-political, I'll take a stab at a serious answer to that very
important question.

There is indeed a very well-developed science of political propaganda at
this point. Unfortunately it's almost entirely destructive and
destabilizing. They can divide populations, they can sow dissent, they can
entrench existing divisions in opinion, they can even make people
permanently stupider and more violent. It used to be against the law to
employ it domestically in the US, but the relevant law was repealed during
the Obama administration.
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1203&context=nulr
.

The results have been manifest for anyone with eyes to see.

What they /can't/ do is make people smarter, or make people change sides
around the axes of division they define, once they define them.

[This is in stark contrast to the alleged science of public education,
which for over 50 years now has been well-established as not being able to
accomplish much of anything.]

If you haven't read Scott Alexander's "Sort by Controversial"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ , I /highly/
recommend it. It may be remembered as prophecy and documentary rather than
science fiction.

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 11:01?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:50?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.
>>
>
> At the risk of veering into politics, is there a science to manipulating
> the standard reason-eschewing low-information MAGA masses and politicians
> into implementing desired social outcomes?
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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From foozler83 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 18:53:30 2025
From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:53:30 -0500
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAO+xQEaJ1uBtegc5eM464crVHuKLa2qNygu3Ysp+grZmST743A@mail.gmail.com>

re education:  I taught college and witnesed first hand educators and what
went on at their get-togethers (hint - educational theories devised with a
nod to fantasy, magic, and extremely unrealistic expectations, along with
research papers which could have been done better by 7th graders without a
knowledge of scientific procedures).  If I had no morals I would have been
in favor of a successful Trump assassin (fyi - Arabic/hashassin).  But if I
knew more I might be in favor of his policies towards the Education
Department.   Science and Education demonstrate the mixture of oil and
water. It's really a psychology tragedy: so many available subjects and so
few good studies.

re amazing slate article:  being entirely ignorant of every area mentioned
in that article I can say:  people don't know what they want - they have to
be told and sold (no, I am not naive- pretty sure most of you know all of
this).  You can always find someone to design the program/write the
article/write the book/etc.   Don't think the Brooklyn bridge can't be
sold?  A genius can sell it to intelligent people)  In effect it is sold
billions of times every day.  Studies show that depressed people (probably
depressed about people) make more rational decisions/predictions.  bill w

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:55?PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Keeping it non-political, I'll take a stab at a serious answer to that
> very important question.
>
> There is indeed a very well-developed science of political propaganda at
> this point. Unfortunately it's almost entirely destructive and
> destabilizing. They can divide populations, they can sow dissent, they can
> entrench existing divisions in opinion, they can even make people
> permanently stupider and more violent. It used to be against the law to
> employ it domestically in the US, but the relevant law was repealed during
> the Obama administration.
> https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1203&context=nulr
> .
>
> The results have been manifest for anyone with eyes to see.
>
> What they /can't/ do is make people smarter, or make people change sides
> around the axes of division they define, once they define them.
>
> [This is in stark contrast to the alleged science of public education,
> which for over 50 years now has been well-established as not being able to
> accomplish much of anything.]
>
> If you haven't read Scott Alexander's "Sort by Controversial"
> https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ , I /highly/
> recommend it. It may be remembered as prophecy and documentary rather than
> science fiction.
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 11:01?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:50?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.
>>>
>>
>> At the risk of veering into politics, is there a science to manipulating
>> the standard reason-eschewing low-information MAGA masses and politicians
>> into implementing desired social outcomes?
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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From dsunley at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 19:30:43 2025
From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:30:43 -0600
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAO+xQEaJ1uBtegc5eM464crVHuKLa2qNygu3Ysp+grZmST743A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAO+xQEaJ1uBtegc5eM464crVHuKLa2qNygu3Ysp+grZmST743A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEptUkTF6ssbc87rRnt+DQKsqxNEOuxoO15UxkQHxqVwgO4Uug@mail.gmail.com>

At this point, anyone with any stake in US politics who doesn't have 600
deep-reasoning chatgpt instances running, one for each congressmen,
senator, senior elected official and cabinet member of the us government,
with a context window stuffed with every public utterance and obtainable
private communication, running a simulacrum of the the entire US
government, just isn't playing the game seriously.

"They're dinosaurs. And they're going to be sitting on their asses on the
couches in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series." -
Moneyball

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:55?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> re education:  I taught college and witnesed first hand educators and what
> went on at their get-togethers (hint - educational theories devised with a
> nod to fantasy, magic, and extremely unrealistic expectations, along with
> research papers which could have been done better by 7th graders without a
> knowledge of scientific procedures).  If I had no morals I would have been
> in favor of a successful Trump assassin (fyi - Arabic/hashassin).  But if I
> knew more I might be in favor of his policies towards the Education
> Department.   Science and Education demonstrate the mixture of oil and
> water. It's really a psychology tragedy: so many available subjects and so
> few good studies.
>
> re amazing slate article:  being entirely ignorant of every area mentioned
> in that article I can say:  people don't know what they want - they have to
> be told and sold (no, I am not naive- pretty sure most of you know all of
> this).  You can always find someone to design the program/write the
> article/write the book/etc.   Don't think the Brooklyn bridge can't be
> sold?  A genius can sell it to intelligent people)  In effect it is sold
> billions of times every day.  Studies show that depressed people (probably
> depressed about people) make more rational decisions/predictions.  bill w
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:55?PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Keeping it non-political, I'll take a stab at a serious answer to that
>> very important question.
>>
>> There is indeed a very well-developed science of political propaganda at
>> this point. Unfortunately it's almost entirely destructive and
>> destabilizing. They can divide populations, they can sow dissent, they can
>> entrench existing divisions in opinion, they can even make people
>> permanently stupider and more violent. It used to be against the law to
>> employ it domestically in the US, but the relevant law was repealed during
>> the Obama administration.
>> https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1203&context=nulr
>> .
>>
>> The results have been manifest for anyone with eyes to see.
>>
>> What they /can't/ do is make people smarter, or make people change sides
>> around the axes of division they define, once they define them.
>>
>> [This is in stark contrast to the alleged science of public education,
>> which for over 50 years now has been well-established as not being able to
>> accomplish much of anything.]
>>
>> If you haven't read Scott Alexander's "Sort by Controversial"
>> https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ , I
>> /highly/ recommend it. It may be remembered as prophecy and documentary
>> rather than science fiction.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 11:01?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:50?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.
>>>>
>>>
>>> At the risk of veering into politics, is there a science to manipulating
>>> the standard reason-eschewing low-information MAGA masses and politicians
>>> into implementing desired social outcomes?
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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From foozler83 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 19:54:54 2025
From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:54:54 -0500
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAEptUkTF6ssbc87rRnt+DQKsqxNEOuxoO15UxkQHxqVwgO4Uug@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAO+xQEaJ1uBtegc5eM464crVHuKLa2qNygu3Ysp+grZmST743A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkTF6ssbc87rRnt+DQKsqxNEOuxoO15UxkQHxqVwgO4Uug@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAO+xQEaBG5V5wQvyPCfbTryGkGqLwtBxRhzghMiYKBMcEcmLjQ@mail.gmail.com>

I guess this answers the question: Quis ipsos custodes custodiet      bill w

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 2:32?PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> At this point, anyone with any stake in US politics who doesn't have 600
> deep-reasoning chatgpt instances running, one for each congressmen,
> senator, senior elected official and cabinet member of the us government,
> with a context window stuffed with every public utterance and obtainable
> private communication, running a simulacrum of the the entire US
> government, just isn't playing the game seriously.
>
> "They're dinosaurs. And they're going to be sitting on their asses on the
> couches in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series." -
> Moneyball
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:55?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> re education:  I taught college and witnesed first hand educators and
>> what went on at their get-togethers (hint - educational theories devised
>> with a nod to fantasy, magic, and extremely unrealistic expectations, along
>> with research papers which could have been done better by 7th graders
>> without a knowledge of scientific procedures).  If I had no morals I would
>> have been in favor of a successful Trump assassin (fyi -
>> Arabic/hashassin).  But if I knew more I might be in favor of his policies
>> towards the Education Department.   Science and Education demonstrate the
>> mixture of oil and water. It's really a psychology tragedy: so many
>> available subjects and so few good studies.
>>
>> re amazing slate article:  being entirely ignorant of every area
>> mentioned in that article I can say:  people don't know what they want -
>> they have to be told and sold (no, I am not naive- pretty sure most of you
>> know all of this).  You can always find someone to design the program/write
>> the article/write the book/etc.   Don't think the Brooklyn bridge can't be
>> sold?  A genius can sell it to intelligent people)  In effect it is sold
>> billions of times every day.  Studies show that depressed people (probably
>> depressed about people) make more rational decisions/predictions.  bill w
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:55?PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Keeping it non-political, I'll take a stab at a serious answer to that
>>> very important question.
>>>
>>> There is indeed a very well-developed science of political propaganda at
>>> this point. Unfortunately it's almost entirely destructive and
>>> destabilizing. They can divide populations, they can sow dissent, they can
>>> entrench existing divisions in opinion, they can even make people
>>> permanently stupider and more violent. It used to be against the law to
>>> employ it domestically in the US, but the relevant law was repealed during
>>> the Obama administration.
>>> https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1203&context=nulr
>>> .
>>>
>>> The results have been manifest for anyone with eyes to see.
>>>
>>> What they /can't/ do is make people smarter, or make people change sides
>>> around the axes of division they define, once they define them.
>>>
>>> [This is in stark contrast to the alleged science of public education,
>>> which for over 50 years now has been well-established as not being able to
>>> accomplish much of anything.]
>>>
>>> If you haven't read Scott Alexander's "Sort by Controversial"
>>> https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ , I
>>> /highly/ recommend it. It may be remembered as prophecy and documentary
>>> rather than science fiction.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 11:01?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:50?PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
>>>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hint - we need some new topics.  Object:  disinter Spike and Bill w.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At the risk of veering into politics, is there a science to
>>>> manipulating the standard reason-eschewing low-information MAGA masses and
>>>> politicians into implementing desired social outcomes?
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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From foozler83 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 19:59:53 2025
From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:59:53 -0500
Subject: [ExI] new question
Message-ID: <CAO+xQEYaRLJQ_uFrOsW+JVj3i=6Dho8Tqpnf4VajkgfxOqDMqg@mail.gmail.com>

If you had to list the finer things in life would cleavage be one of them?
bill w
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From pharos at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 20:28:26 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 21:28:26 +0100
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAEptUkTF6ssbc87rRnt+DQKsqxNEOuxoO15UxkQHxqVwgO4Uug@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALAdGNRTwSgT8XY-U0TBRtRvgEHrvNEPpuneFAgtgAt4-Vi-=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkSPmvbzW731DkEgJEeGbftckZtfYkLvUszm1G_cEwawGA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAO+xQEaJ1uBtegc5eM464crVHuKLa2qNygu3Ysp+grZmST743A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEptUkTF6ssbc87rRnt+DQKsqxNEOuxoO15UxkQHxqVwgO4Uug@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAL_armhHmdKbw_57upsOPQCZAjkMtj4jfZoNXYXuEP+QZS4D2g@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 at 20:32, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> At this point, anyone with any stake in US politics who doesn't have 600
> deep-reasoning chatgpt instances running, one for each congressmen,
> senator, senior elected official and cabinet member of the us government,
> with a context window stuffed with every public utterance and obtainable
> private communication, running a simulacrum of the the entire US
> government, just isn't playing the game seriously.
>
> "They're dinosaurs. And they're going to be sitting on their asses on the
> couches in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series." -
> Moneyball
>
> ----------------------------------------



I asked Gemini Pro 2.5 Deep Research about this possibility.
Not feasible at present was the conclusion. Human behavior too
unpredictable.
It produced a long report, detailing all the problems.
Here is the Conclusions paragraph.
BillK

In conclusion, while the concept of using 600 Deep Reasoning AIs to emulate
and predict the behavior of the US government is theoretically captivating,
it faces substantial hurdles with current and near-future technology. The
inherent limitations of AI in understanding human-like reasoning, the
unpredictability of human behavior in political contexts, the immense data
and computational power requirements, and the significant ethical and
societal implications all present formidable challenges. While AI can
undoubtedly contribute to political analysis in more focused and specific
applications, such as analyzing large datasets and identifying trends, the
comprehensive emulation of a system as complex and human-driven as the US
government remains a distant prospect. The continued importance of human
expertise, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of political science
principles will remain paramount in analyzing and interpreting governmental
behavior. Future advancements in AI might make more sophisticated modeling
feasible, but this will necessitate careful consideration of the ethical
and societal consequences to ensure the responsible and beneficial
application of such powerful technologies.

------------------------------
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From foozler83 at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 20:45:37 2025
From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:45:37 -0500
Subject: [ExI] questions
In-Reply-To: <CAL_armhHmdKbw_57upsOPQCZAjkMtj4jfZoNXYXuEP+QZS4D2g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAO+xQEY+JJN59Z98YYbR=yhu8MRrnZaPGPPopcjFjUP7a66UCg@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAO+xQEbehFk6VgwHFopz0y1S2ENdB3y6KzYpuYv6z9MJ8QajQw@mail.gmail.com>

Do not think of predicting the behavior of a group of 600 people.  Think of
predicting the behavior of an individual 600 times.  Even with all the data
on each person's actions and votes, it is very difficult to predict the
actions and votes on one issue by each person.  bill w.

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 3:30?PM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 at 20:32, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> At this point, anyone with any stake in US politics who doesn't have 600
>> deep-reasoning chatgpt instances running, one for each congressmen,
>> senator, senior elected official and cabinet member of the us government,
>> with a context window stuffed with every public utterance and obtainable
>> private communication, running a simulacrum of the the entire US
>> government, just isn't playing the game seriously.
>>
>> "They're dinosaurs. And they're going to be sitting on their asses on the
>> couches in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series." -
>> Moneyball
>>
>> ----------------------------------------
>
>
>
> I asked Gemini Pro 2.5 Deep Research about this possibility.
> Not feasible at present was the conclusion. Human behavior too
> unpredictable.
> It produced a long report, detailing all the problems.
> Here is the Conclusions paragraph.
> BillK
>
> In conclusion, while the concept of using 600 Deep Reasoning AIs to
> emulate and predict the behavior of the US government is theoretically
> captivating, it faces substantial hurdles with current and near-future
> technology. The inherent limitations of AI in understanding human-like
> reasoning, the unpredictability of human behavior in political contexts,
> the immense data and computational power requirements, and the significant
> ethical and societal implications all present formidable challenges. While
> AI can undoubtedly contribute to political analysis in more focused and
> specific applications, such as analyzing large datasets and identifying
> trends, the comprehensive emulation of a system as complex and human-driven
> as the US government remains a distant prospect. The continued importance
> of human expertise, critical thinking, and a deep understanding of
> political science principles will remain paramount in analyzing and
> interpreting governmental behavior. Future advancements in AI might make
> more sophisticated modeling feasible, but this will necessitate careful
> consideration of the ethical and societal consequences to ensure the
> responsible and beneficial application of such powerful technologies.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 22:04:26 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 18:04:26 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAPiwVB5pxVfhb9J-av-ZptixQ9mUZyYrzga5ZR_RFgXPo=_n7g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CALAdGNTVkixdyjibS3k2zeQTmyKE4481_vytWqJng9rd=fuK_w@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 1:27?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:59?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I've read such a story.  I forget the author, but it could be the same
> story you're thinking of.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg


That's the one.


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
>
> Landauer's principle states that the minimum energy needed to erase
> one bit of information is proportional to the temperature at which the
> system is operating.
>

This rules out computers being made out of gas and plasma, how?

Maybe they would need to use a lot more energy.  The Sun's temperature is
around 15 million Kelvin, vs. room temperature being a few hundred Kelvin,
so maybe a bit less than 100,000 times as much as a computer on Earth.
Being literally inside the Sun, abundant energy would be available - more
than 100,000 times what is available on Earth.
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 23:04:56 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:04:56 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv2eumuuYS4rtDnAsOxEUQD4OE_EVEAe-yH-tKi5cdNhRg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
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 On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:01?PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

snip
>
> If ET does exist, and I don't think he does, then it would be very surprising if he was only 3000 years ahead of us because the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
>
Surprising is certainly the right word, not only in the span of time
but *close* physically.  1470 ly is practically next door.  On the
other hand, it might be that ET civilizations of this kind are
relatively common, but for some reason don't communicate.

But no matter how unlikely something is, if it happens, that's reality.

>> > But I doubt they are the right experts. They are, for example, not aware of directional waste heat radiation from thermal power satellite designs which would account for the
>> impossibly low observed temperature of what they think are dust clouds.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "impossibly low observed temperature".

A natural dust cloud, like a comet tail, will be in thermal
equilibrium.  At the distance you can determine from the transit time,
it is getting a little over 100 W/m^2.  For incoming and outgoing to
balance, the cloud should be at 210 deg K.  It measures 65 K.
>
 Years ago I made a case for fast uploads sunk in the ocean for cooling
>> as the long-term fate of humanity.  That does not seem to be the only
>> solution. If you can think of a third alternative, that would be cool.
>
> The deep ocean is cold but empty space is even colder, only 2.7? kelvin.

That's true, but to get rid of 500 MW at that temperature takes
thousands of square km.  At 20 deg K, it takes 60,000 square meters to
radiate one kW.

Keith

And the Boomerang Nebula is colder yet, the dust is at only 1? kelvin;
unusual thermodynamic conditions there cause it to act like a natural
refrigerator so it's even colder than the Cosmic Microwave Background
Radiation.
>
>    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> ed6
>
>


From jasonresch at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 23:20:12 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:20:12 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CALAdGNTVkixdyjibS3k2zeQTmyKE4481_vytWqJng9rd=fuK_w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 6:05 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 1:27?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 9:59?AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
> > I've read such a story.  I forget the author, but it could be the same
>> story you're thinking of.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
>
>
> That's the one.
>
>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
>>
>> Landauer's principle states that the minimum energy needed to erase
>> one bit of information is proportional to the temperature at which the
>> system is operating.
>>
>
This isn't that important of a limitation in my view given that reversible
computers and reversible logic gates can be made and they can perform any
computation, and they can compute without erasing bits.

Launder's limit would kick in when initializing the program, or reading the
result, but during the computation no energy would need to be expended so
long as information is conserved.

Consider all the computation involved in all the molecular collisions
taking place in a glass of water on your table. Far more computation takes
place in that glass than all the computers on earth, and it can sit there
perpetually never needing any more energy to run, and never expending any
waste heat.

This is possible because all physical transformations are reversible, so
information is neither created nor destroyed in any physical process. Thus
the glass of water can continue computing quantum mechanically detailed and
precise updates to all the particles in the glass perpetually.


> This rules out computers being made out of gas and plasma, how?
>
> Maybe they would need to use a lot more energy.  The Sun's temperature is
> around 15 million Kelvin, vs. room temperature being a few hundred Kelvin,
> so maybe a bit less than 100,000 times as much as a computer on Earth.
> Being literally inside the Sun, abundant energy would be available - more
> than 100,000 times what is available on Earth.
>

A difference in energy between two locations is required if the energy is
to be applied to perform work.

There's lots of usable energy at the sun's surface (because you can make
that heat do something useful before sending it off into cold space) but
very little can be done with all the heat within in the sun while inside
the sun.

Think of a combustion engine. The reason it can spin a wheel is because
inside the combustion chamber it is hot and high pressure while outside the
chamber it is cold and low pressure. If things were the same high
temperature and pressure both outside the combustion chamber as well as
inside, then piston would not move and the engine could not turn.

Any conceivable engine would fail for the same reason when inside the sun
(where it is essentially the same temperature and pressure in every
direction). Useful energy is concentrated energy (relative to some less
concentrated outside).

Jason
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From atymes at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 23:32:44 2025
From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:32:44 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CA+BCJUgQpQ9e9xizzsq1Z-+fgfM4Sg8p6Z18H3kWMUOHqDS4-A@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 7:21?PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 6:05 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> This rules out computers being made out of gas and plasma, how?
>>
>> Maybe they would need to use a lot more energy.  The Sun's temperature is
>> around 15 million Kelvin, vs. room temperature being a few hundred Kelvin,
>> so maybe a bit less than 100,000 times as much as a computer on Earth.
>> Being literally inside the Sun, abundant energy would be available - more
>> than 100,000 times what is available on Earth.
>>
>
> A difference in energy between two locations is required if the energy is
> to be applied to perform work.
>
> There's lots of usable energy at the sun's surface (because you can make
> that heat do something useful before sending it off into cold space) but
> very little can be done with all the heat within in the sun while inside
> the sun.
>

Fair enough, though even just confined to the surface layers of the sun,
that's still quite a lot of potential.
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From jasonresch at gmail.com  Wed Apr 16 23:40:36 2025
From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:40:36 -0400
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CALAdGNQunO3edD2BoZFiA3XRRn+t=wB+PdjzZR5cWB=afzxxcw@mail.gmail.com>
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 <CALAdGNQunO3edD2BoZFiA3XRRn+t=wB+PdjzZR5cWB=afzxxcw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CA+BCJUiefkJ3BN62BJMFrtYnk6sBfao44H4gKCSfBx=z9+m8kQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 7:33 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 7:21?PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 6:05 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> This rules out computers being made out of gas and plasma, how?
>>>
>>> Maybe they would need to use a lot more energy.  The Sun's temperature
>>> is around 15 million Kelvin, vs. room temperature being a few hundred
>>> Kelvin, so maybe a bit less than 100,000 times as much as a computer on
>>> Earth.  Being literally inside the Sun, abundant energy would be available
>>> - more than 100,000 times what is available on Earth.
>>>
>>
>> A difference in energy between two locations is required if the energy is
>> to be applied to perform work.
>>
>> There's lots of usable energy at the sun's surface (because you can make
>> that heat do something useful before sending it off into cold space) but
>> very little can be done with all the heat within in the sun while inside
>> the sun.
>>
>
> Fair enough, though even just confined to the surface layers of the sun,
> that's still quite a lot of potential.
>

There is. At the Launder limit, the sun can power 10^48 operations per
second at room temperature.

However, using reversible computing, you could achieve 10^50 computations
per second using no energy and just 1 kg of matter.

Jason
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Thu Apr 17 18:05:46 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:05:46 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv0bd7OyKn_qjW3dMcpR6p7OQhVduVfK9xFbFPiHWLo=ew@mail.gmail.com>
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I could go through the math and logic starting with the size of the
dips and the transit times plus why I was strongly biased against
megastructures and why very reluctantly came to the conclusion I did,
plus some of the local long-term consequences for humanity where this
line of thinking led regardless of what we are observing.  But it does
not seem to be worthwhile to do so.

I freely acknowledge my tentative conclusions could be wrong, and hope
they are because they may have dire consequences for the future of
humans and our AI offspring.  I understand why people don't want to
deal with this possibility and I don't blame you,  The local problems
are enough to saturate our worry centers.

Just FYI, the thing that pushed me over the edge was reports that
there are 23 other stars in a cluster that also have light dips like
Tabby's star.  I lack the imagination to understand this as anything
but intentional or to dismiss it.  The closest one is 511 ly.  The
spreading seems to be around 1/3 of c.  Either we will go there, or
they will come to us and we will know.  If we see Vista being turned
into a data center we will know.  Not that we could do anything about
it.

Keith

On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 3:51?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 7:05?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> > If ET does exist, and I don't think he does, then it would be very surprising if he was only 3000 years ahead of us because the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
>>
>>
>> > Surprising is certainly the right word, not only in the span of time
>> but *close* physically.  1470 ly is practically next door.
>
>
> Doesn't that make you question your theory that ET is responsible for the dimming of Tabby's star?
>
>>
>> > But no matter how unlikely something is, if it happens, that's reality.
>
>
> I don't doubt the reality that Tabby's star is dimming, but I do doubt the reality of your theory about the cause of that dimming.
>
>
>> >>> I doubt they are the right experts. They are, for example, not aware of directional waste heat radiation from thermal power satellite designs which would account for the impossibly low observed temperature of what they think are dust clouds.
>>
>>
>>
>> >> I don't know what you mean by "impossibly low observed temperature".
>>
>> > A natural dust cloud, like a comet tail, will be in thermal
>> equilibrium.  At the distance you can determine from the transit time,
>> it is getting a little over 100 W/m^2.  For incoming and outgoing to
>> balance, the cloud should be at 210 deg K.  It measures 65 K.
>
>
> I have no idea where you got those temperature figures. Real dust clouds around stars can NOT be considered to be blackbodies, things are more complicated than that. The amount of radiation a dust cloud gives off that we are able to detect depends on the total amount of mass in the cloud, the size of the dust particles in the cloud, and the metal content of those particles. In the case of Tabby's star all those factors are very imprecisely known, the best determined is the particle size and even then all we can say is they are between 10^-6 and 10^-7 meters across; we know it can't be a solid object because there is more dimming in the blue and ultraviolet than there is in the infrared, but a solid object would dim all wavelengths equally.
>
>
> And of course the temperature of the cloud depends on how far it is from its sun which is also very imprecisely known. The result of all this is that the temperature estimate of that cloud has huge error bars, between about 100 and 1200 Kelvin.
>
>    John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> heb
>
>
>
>
>


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Fri Apr 18 18:01:49 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2025 11:01:49 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv0T7BJaF+iL0ThMpT7BfFWs8zeGGK=W4dxBCDdeqrx7zQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv0T7BJaF+iL0ThMpT7BfFWs8zeGGK=W4dxBCDdeqrx7zQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAPiwVB6HDKafpR1Hrt-87fvUumUuBTu_-XWvMrQtF1RffPAuaA@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 4:56?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 11:25?AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfieldquaternions at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> > The issue about downloading minds into computers may be resolved by realizing that a scan of a brain and the mapping of brain states takes time. By the time you reconstruct a mind in a computer the original mind may have progressed beyond that point, so the reconstructed mind in the machine is effectively a different mind. I rather doubt these things will happen in a practical sense.

Minds are always changing, you are not exactly the same person in the
morning you were when you went to sleep.  So what?  At a practical
level, I don't think it is worth being concerned about.
>
> You're talking about fast non-destructive scanning of the brain and I'm not sure that's possible;  a slower destructive scanning is difficult but not impossible. The following is one possible scenario:

I don't have the slightest interest in a destructive brain scan.
That's like insisting that the original copy of a file be destroyed
when you make a copy.  Poor archival process, and not needed.  There
is no reason I can see why all the structures in a brain could not be
mapped out by infiltrating it with nanomachines.  If there is an
argument against this, I would like to know what it is.

Keith

> More cell damage occurs during the thawing process than the freezing process, and if ASC chemical fixation is used there is no brain shrinkage and the synaptic connection information is preserved; we know this because beautiful electron microscopic pictures have been taken of brain cells preserved in this way. Then the frozen brain could be disassembled from the outside in, one very thin layer at a time, and the information about where and how strong all the synaptic connections in that layer could be recorded, and then work could start on the next layer and you keep going until there is nothing left of the brain.  After all the information in all 10^14 synapses have been recorded that information is later translated into electronics and the uploading has been completed.
>
> OK OK I admit the above scenario may seem like a crazy fantasy but it should be remembered that, unlike perpetual motion or faster than light spaceships or traveling to the past, it does NOT need to invoke new science to become a reality, all it needs is improved engineering.
>
>> > I also doubt that ET beings create mega-structures or planet sized computers or brains.
>
>
> I too think ET is very unlikely.
>
>>
>> > If it does happen it might be in one out of a trillion galaxies. It will not be done by us. I suspect we will be off the Darwinian game table in the rather near future.
>
>
> I very much doubt biological humans will still be around a century from now and perhaps not a decade from now, but I have some hope that Mr. Jupiter Brain will have at least a little affection for us, after all He wouldn't exist except for us, so maybe He will give us access to a small (by His standards) server so that a few billion uploads can be run in a pleasant virtual world.
>
>   John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 5oo
>
>>
> --
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From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sat Apr 19 02:08:42 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:08:42 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv2K5a=4HAzP617s0ArgtDnFQ5e6C3Q3_kRSuCFjUhkVvA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAJPayv0T7BJaF+iL0ThMpT7BfFWs8zeGGK=W4dxBCDdeqrx7zQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAPiwVB6HDKafpR1Hrt-87fvUumUuBTu_-XWvMrQtF1RffPAuaA@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAPiwVB4MTnJ+yzGZVpGjvyDqE1vc9qH0Cpo2Tw2+NVEG8RnSuQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 11:18?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 2:02?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > I don't have the slightest interest in a destructive brain scan.
>
> There's no disputing matters of taste. As for me I'd prefer a destructive scanning that didn't corrupt information over a non-destructive scanning that did.

You might convince me that destructive scanning preserves information
better than non-destructive scan.  Can you make such a case?
>>
>> > There is no reason I can see why all the structures in a brain could not be
>> mapped out by infiltrating it with nanomachines.
>
> That might be possible but it would be slower, harder and more expensive than a destructive scan,

I am curious why you would be concerned about slower.  As to harder,
it's not like humans would be doing this, as long as it is automated,
who cares about harder or expensive?

BTW, have you ever seen a destructive scan of a brain?  The one I know
a little about uses a vibrating diamond knife and slices off the
(mouse) brain while collecting data. It is not fast, and if anything
goes wrong, you lose the data.  Presumably advanced technology would
do better but between slicing and infiltration, I can't say which
would be faster, not that speed matters.  But if you don't have to,
destroying the original is a poor archive procedure.

we are both ALCOR clients and if we're lucky enough to be revived I
don't think we will have much say about how it was done.

You can write specifications into your contract.  One Alcor patient
is/was blind.  He specified that he is not to be revived until the
procedure can give him sight.

But you are essentially correct.

Keith

>   John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> mt4
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> > More cell damage occurs during the thawing process than the freezing process, and if ASC chemical fixation is used there is no brain shrinkage and the synaptic connection information is preserved; we know this because beautiful electron microscopic pictures have been taken of brain cells preserved in this way. Then the frozen brain could be disassembled from the outside in, one very thin layer at a time, and the information about where and how strong all the synaptic connections in that layer could be recorded, and then work could start on the next layer and you keep going until there is nothing left of the brain.  After all the information in all 10^14 synapses have been recorded that information is later translated into electronics and the uploading has been completed.
>> >
>> > OK OK I admit the above scenario may seem like a crazy fantasy but it should be remembered that, unlike perpetual motion or faster than light spaceships or traveling to the past, it does NOT need to invoke new science to become a reality, all it needs is improved engineering.
>> >
>> >> > I also doubt that ET beings create mega-structures or planet sized computers or brains.
>> >
>> >
>> > I too think ET is very unlikely.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> > If it does happen it might be in one out of a trillion galaxies. It will not be done by us. I suspect we will be off the Darwinian game table in the rather near future.
>> >
>> >
>> > I very much doubt biological humans will still be around a century from now and perhaps not a decade from now, but I have some hope that Mr. Jupiter Brain will have at least a little affection for us, after all He wouldn't exist except for us, so maybe He will give us access to a small (by His standards) server so that a few billion uploads can be run in a pleasant virtual world.
>> >
>>


From hkeithhenson at gmail.com  Sat Apr 19 15:38:29 2025
From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson)
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 08:38:29 -0700
Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Crosspost
In-Reply-To: <CAJPayv0h90Gze4_oXBnRagaaP4+otQ=Lie6DDogEyriD-bsorQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPiwVB4AcpfXtKWn+HznM3wQaHd-_S_WskWZPqkTkXqUfYt9_A@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CAPiwVB5QnsU16ox1VLMzA=FCsjE=C1wwDpL1mFJx31t0APjR9A@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Apr 19, 2025 at 5:03?AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 10:09?PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> >> There's no disputing matters of taste. As for me I'd prefer a destructive scanning that didn't corrupt information over a non-destructive scanning that did.
>>
>> > You might convince me that destructive scanning preserves information
>> better than non-destructive scan.  Can you make such a case?
>
> I can make a moderately strong case that destructive brain scaning has already occurred a few times, but nothing even close to a non-destructive scan exists today. Of course both will improve in the future but destructive scanning has a significant head start.  Today several human brains have been chemically fixed with ASC , sliced with a diamond saw into many very thin slices, the slices were photographed with a high power microscope, and then computers were used to analyze the photographs and trace out the neural connections.

I am a long way from thinking that the wiring diagram is enough to get
a person back from suspension.  From what we know, synaptic weight is
essential to memory.  I think without this data, which as far as I
know is not visible, you get back a blank brain with no memory.  I
don't know about anyone else, but to me, a no-memory on revival
cryonic suspension seems pointless.  Your case would be much improved
if you could show that memory could be recovered from a scanned brain
slice.

> The last two steps were the slowest and the most expensive, and those are also the two steps that are likely to improve the fastest in the coming years; and an organization such as ALCOR need not worry about those two steps because that is a problem for the future.
>
> Fun fact: one of the brains that were treated in this way was that of a convicted murderer who had been executed by lethal injection.
>
>>>> >>>
 There is no reason I can see why all the structures in a brain could
not be mapped out by infiltrating it with nanomachines.
>>>
>>> >> That might be possible but it would be slower, harder and more expensive than a destructive scan.
>>
>> > I am curious why you would be concerned about slower.
>
> If you're going to infuse a living human brain with nanomachines to record how things are wired up and expect the brain to continue to function normally then you're severely limited in the number of nanomachines you could put into that brain,

Given the relative sizes of nerve cells and nanomachines, I doubt
that's much of a limit.  But it is something we can put numbers on.
Brains function fine after swelling 5-10 percent.  How many machines
is there room for?  A bigger problem might be getting the connection
and synaptic weights out of the brain.  I have given a little thought
to this.  The reason you want to go slowly is to keep the waste heat
down.

[From the Clinic Seed story]

She was mildly distressed that she now had to voice talk to Suskulan,
who appeared as a projection, instead of "talking" directly to his
spirit in the spirit world she had inhabited.  Then she realized from
her new knowledge there was a way she could if she took a bit of the
clinic with her.  However, there wasn't much time to before her
parents came.

"Can I come back to visit even if I am not hurt?" she asked.

"Yes.  Anytime I don't have another patient."

"May I take the clinic's interface with me?"

"There is nothing so addictive . . ." thought Suskulan.

"You may."  Part of the cloud of nanomachines that had just left
Zaba's brain returned as a momentary haze.  Since they retained their
memory of where they had been it was a matter of a few minutes before
the machines reestablished their monitoring posts in Zaba's brain.

"I missed not being able to talk to you in the spirit world."   Zaba
said without voicing.  A wire frame image in Zaba's visual cortex
overlaid the physical projected image of Suskulan.

"Spirit talk does not reach as far as your garden."  Suskulan warned her.

Zaba lay down on the repair table that was now at the bottom of the
elevator shaft.   The elevator lifted it into its place in the clinic.
  Zaba was treated to seeing the rapidly thinning utility fog image of
her body that had comforted her family for the last ten days before
she merged into her image.

The nanomachine haze that had fogged her image and now her real body
withdrew into the low table.  She greeted her family as they came into
the clinic and in voice talk said goodbye to the image of an old man
Suskulan was projecting.  Then they stepped through the clinic's
keyhole door to where the other members of the tata were waiting for a
joyous celebration of the healing of Zaba.

Suskulan sent off a strictly factual report.  There were no replies
this time, but perhaps that was due to the high report traffic.

Her family had visited every day, but they were still delighted and
relieved that Zaba was back with no visible effects from being shot.
Her parents had been worried that her value as a bride might have been
damaged, but none of the tata seemed to be concerned, only very proud
of the growing powers of their clinic Suskulan.  (The elders had long
since wildly inflated the value of the fetish they had traded for the
clinic seed.)

Zaba had been warned not to flaunt her new knowledge to adults and
with Suskulan's help had built temporary inhibitions into her mental
processes.  She was under no such injunction toward the other
children, though.  They were absolutely fascinated and wanted the
ability to talk to Suskulan in the spirit world as well.  In spirit
world talk Zaba asked Suskulan if he would give the others an
"interface" like she had.

"Yes, though not in one day like I did with you.  It takes several
days to a week for an interface to establish itself unless you are
very cold."

[end quote]

> and that limitation is going to slow things down. I might add that if a mechanic is trying to change the spark plugs on an engine his task becomes much slower and more difficult if he is not allowed to turn that engine off while he works; it also makes it more likely that he will make an error.

This is not a problem since low temperature will shut down a
biological brain just fine.

With cryonics patients at LN2, you are starting with a shut-down brain.

>> > it's not like humans would be doing this, as long as it is automated, who cares about harder or expensive?
>
>
>  We know for a fact that ASC preserves the synaptic neural connections in the brain better than the procedure ALCOR currently uses because today we can detect those connections if ASC is used but cannot do so with ALCOR's procedure. We have some reason to be hopeful that ALCOR's procedure also preserves that information and it's just scrambled up more, but we do NOT know that for a fact. And why make things more difficult for future technology to bring us back if that difficulty can be avoided?
>
Do you have any pointers to ASC preserving synaptic information?  That
would be very interesting, essentially reading out memory.  As far as
I know (and I may be out of date) they can see synaptic nodes, but
pictures do not disclose the weighting of a node.

> This is what ALCOR had to say about ASC back in 2018 and as far as I know they haven't said anything about it since:
>
> "A new cryobiological and neurobiological technique, aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC)  provides strong proof that brains can be preserved well enough at cryogenic temperatures for neural connectivity (the connectome) to be completely visualized. [...] Current brain vitrification methods without fixation lead to dehydration. Dehydration has effects on tissue contrast that make it difficult to see whether the connectome is preserved or not with electron microscopy. That does not mean that dehydration is especially damaging, nor that fixation with toxic aldehyde does less damage."
>
> ALCOR's position on brains preservation
>
> I would maintain that the last sentence in the above is factually incorrect. ASC DOES cause less damage than ALCOR's current method. That's why we are able to trace the neural connections with today's technology with one method but not with the other. The damage caused by ALCOR's method may not be irreplaceable, the information may just be scrambled more than it is with ASC and require Mr. Jupiter Brain to jump through more hoops to recover it, but maybe not, so why take the chance?
>
>>> >> we are both ALCOR clients and if we're lucky enough to be revived I don't think we will have much say about how it was done.
>>
>> > You can write specifications into your contract.  One Alcor patient
>> is/was blind.  He specified that he is not to be revived until the
>> procedure can give him sight. But you are essentially correct.
>
>
> That seems unnecessary, if the future people have the technology to repair a freeze damaged human brain they certainly have the technology to restore his sight.

It is not a matter of restoration, the patient was blind from birth.
He was one of those blinded by preme oxygen treatment.

>I wrote no specifications in my ALCOR contract because I thought it unlikely that anybody would pay attention to them and if they did they might turn out to be counterproductive because I have only a hazy understanding of what the post singularity world will be like. For example, if somebody wrote that they do not wish to come back as an upload and that request was honored I don't think Mr. Jupiter Brain would bring him back at all.

Possible.  However, I think repairing brains/bodies is on a par with
uploading.  I suspect that uploaded humans will find that state more
desirable than the physical state, leading to a population collapse.

Keith

> John K Clark   See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> 288
>
>
>
>
>
>> >> > More cell damage occurs during the thawing process than the freezing process, and if ASC chemical fixation is used there is no brain shrinkage and the synaptic connection information is preserved; we know this because beautiful electron microscopic pictures have been taken of brain cells preserved in this way. Then the frozen brain could be disassembled from the outside in, one very thin layer at a time, and the information about where and how strong all the synaptic connections in that layer could be recorded, and then work could start on the next layer and you keep going until there is nothing left of the brain.  After all the information in all 10^14 synapses have been recorded that information is later translated into electronics and the uploading has been completed.
>> >> >
>> >> > OK OK I admit the above scenario may seem like a crazy fantasy but it should be remembered that, unlike perpetual motion or faster than light spaceships or traveling to the past, it does NOT need to invoke new science to become a reality, all it needs is improved engineering.
>> >> >
>> >> >> > I also doubt that ET beings create mega-structures or planet sized computers or brains.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > I too think ET is very unlikely.
>> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > If it does happen it might be in one out of a trillion galaxies. It will not be done by us. I suspect we will be off the Darwinian game table in the rather near future.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > I very much doubt biological humans will still be around a century from now and perhaps not a decade from now, but I have some hope that Mr. Jupiter Brain will have at least a little affection for us, after all He wouldn't exist except for us, so maybe He will give us access to a small (by His standards) server so that a few billion uploads can be run in a pleasant virtual world.
>>


From pharos at gmail.com  Sat Apr 19 18:28:10 2025
From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK)
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 19:28:10 +0100
Subject: [ExI] California Institute for Machine Consciousness
Message-ID: <CAL_armhLdNtD2ZaGdJP-gugCVr1jXHP3xY9o8fEa9iFPUfxO0Q@mail.gmail.com>

Call for Research Proposals in Machine Consciousness
After some months of incubation, the California Institute for Machine
Consciousness (CIMC) is now ready to onboard researchers exploring the
fundamental nature of the mind through computational approaches.
We've been quietly building the foundations, now we're opening the doors of
the institute to our first cohort of scientists!

<https://cimc.ai/#/>
Quote:
Consciousness is crucial for ethical AI, yet it remains largely unexplored.

Understanding the mind is the most important project in the history of
philosophy. The development of powerful, generally intelligent
agents?driven by economic, cultural, and military incentives?appears
inevitable. Attempting to control highly advanced agentic systems far more
powerful than ourselves is unlikely to succeed. Our only viable path may be
to create AIs that are conscious, enabling them to understand and share
common ground with us.
-------------------

BillK
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