[ExI] Uploads are self

Tue Mar 17 14:33:18 UTC 2026

On Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 3:56 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 9:35 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *I recently met one of the leading researchers involved in the fruit fly
>> brain scanning effort. He, and others mentioned two common objections
>> people have to the idea of brain preservation (with the eventual goal of
>> uploading):*
>>
>>    - *The first is the idea that silicon computers can't host human
>>    consciousness.*
>>    - *The second is the idea that even if my upload were conscious, "it
>>    wouldn't be me."*
>>
>> *I told him I would prepare a brief essay that uses the latest
>> philosophical arguments to serve as a counter to these objections (written
>> to be understandable to laypersons).*
>>
>> *So if there are people in your life who resist your choice to pursue
>> brain/cryro preservation, this document can help them understand the
>> various reasons for we can expect uploads not only to be conscious, but
>> also capable of extending one's very own subjective self and identity.*
>>
>> *Here is the document:*
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/103wDTRC7-AA6mHVzRj1JptqeulBRXinzvIdfC1Z50t8/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>
> *I read your document and I thought it was excellent.*
>

Thank you!

* I do have a few comments on the subject of personal identity and the
> soul, all of them are, I think, in harmony with your views. *
>

> *If what are you call "Empty Individualism" is true then I will not
> survive an upload, but then I have not been "surviving" from one second to
> the next since the day I was born, my brain changes to a different quantum
> state many trillions of times a second and I have become a different person
> each time.*
>

Yes empty individualism might say we are each trapped in a single moment
forever. But such a theory is incompatible with all decision theories, and
even empiricism in science, so it's not a very useful theory to live by,
even if it were true.

* And yet here I am, all those deaths have certainly not bothered me very
> much! That's not to say there might be an element of truth in the idea, I
> don't think survival is an all or nothing matter, after all the six year
> old John Clark no longer exists, although there are similarities we are
> different people. But if that is what is meant by "death" then death is not
> a big deal. And subjective consciousness is always continuous, although the
> objective outside world can jump discontinuously. *
>

Yes it certainly seems as though it can. Our sense of time leaves is with a
powerful impression that empty individualism is false, though I don't think
we can rely on our personal experience to decide which theory of personal
identity is true. After all relativity shows the subjective flow of time to
be an illusion, and yet we still feel as though things constantly change. A
similar sort of illusion could be behind our belief that we're not
eternally stuck in a single moment.

> *As for the "soul", it is a word that means the essential part that makes
> you be you and me be me, and I agree there must be something that causes
> that, but the religious claim it can never be understood so we might as
> well give up even trying, and I disagree with that part.  I can only
> conceive of 3 things existing in the universe, matter, energy, and
> information. Atoms are interchangeable, energy is fungible, so information
> must be the thing that causes you and I to be different people.*
>

Yes I saw a good argument for this last night. If we accept any theory
besides empty individualism, then we must equate two different observer
moments with the same person. This the same person is maintained between
these two experiences, and thus there is some "Identity Carrier" that
preserves the same person from moment to moment. Understand the workings of
this Identity Carrier, and under what conditions it preserves an
individual, is in my view a way of better understanding what most people
mean by the word "soul".

If we use this Identity Carrier idea to analyze a split brain patient who
develops two independent conscious minds, then we have a situation where
the person before the surgery "A" has their identity carried to their left
hemisphere "B" and the right hemisphere "C".

If there is an identity between A and B, and there is an identity between A
and C, then by the  transitivity of the identity relation, then B is also
identical to C. So we have a case where the same mind is now in two
locations at once!

I saw this argument last night here:
https://youtu.be/hhoqz4PEtkU

> *I think information is as close as you can get to the traditional concept
> of the soul and still remain within the scientific method. *
>

Yes, I agree.

*The soul is non material and so is information. It's difficult to pin down
> a unique physical location for the soul, and the same is true for
> information. The soul is the essential, must have, part of consciousness,
> exactly the same situation is true for information. The soul is immortal
> and so, potentially, is information.   *
>

There are many parallels.

The information is distinct from any material organization, so it leads to
a sort of "dualism" in that then the soul is distinct from the body, just
as a story is distinct from a book.

Information can be copied between universes. Think about how we simulate
and look at gliders in the game of life. A more powerful intelligence,
could in principle simulate our universe and see all the conscious entities
that evolve in it. If it had access to unlimited computational resources in
its universe, then this intelligence might choose to "save the souls" of
beings in this universe, by copying their information patterns (their
souls) into computer simulations it ran in its universe.

In this way, the soul (as an informal pattern) is not only immaterial, but
non physical it can in principle leave this universe and travel to another,
where it can survive and continue as before. The other universe need not
even have matter as we know it, even the game of life universe can support
the building of computers, and that is the only physical requirement for a
universe to host your consciousness (according to functionalism).

> *But there are also important differences. A soul is unique but
> information, at least conventional non-quantum information, can be
> duplicated. The soul is and will  always remain unfathomable,
> however information is understandable, in fact you might even argue that
> information is the ONLY thing that is understandable. *
>

Yes it is for this reason that I have titled my book "The Science of the
Soul." The soul is comprehensible and science is uncovering this but by
bit. It would not be the first time science has shed light on what was
previously considered divine and beyond human comprehension (it happened
with "the heavens" and the "mystery of life").

*And  Information unambiguously exists, I don't think even the most
> religious would deny that, but even if the soul exists it's existence it
> will never be proven.  *
>

I think instead of trying to prove an unprovable idea, we will over time,
reform our understanding of what then word soul means. We'll keep the word
but update our conception, just as we've done with words like "heat",
"sunrise", "energy", "element", "atom", etc.

Jason
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