[ExI] Uploads are self

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 18/03/2026 04:03, Jason Resch wrote:
Ben wrote:
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>>     Even just the phrase 'my mind' is wrong, and reinforces dualistic thinking, because if 'I' HAVE a mind, then I and my mind are separate things. So then what am I?
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> I think there is still utility in differentiating the word "I" to refer to that universal property common to all minds. In the same sense that every place is (to itself) a here, and every time is (to itself) a now, every mind is (to itself) an I.
> Laying it out this way also dissolves the powerful impression that there is something special or unique about any particular mind feeling like a privileged I. All mind states are experienced as I.
> This can lead to the open-individualist/universalist realization: if all conscious moments are experieced by as I (in a direct, immediate, first-person way), then all experiences have everything they need to be considered "mine." There is nothing else about experience that makes it "yours" aside from the fact that it feels as if it is experienced in this direct, immediate, first-person way.
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OK, in /what/ sense is every place a 'here', exactly?

This is an abstraction, or a classification, that we create and use. It's not something that exists in itself, it's a mental construct that we use to help us make sense of the world. You can say that it doesn't 'really' exist, in the same way that boredom doesn't really exist, or red doesn't really exist, etc. These kinds of things are part of our minds, so only exist in our minds, and not external to them.

Just as the concept of 'here' doesn't exist outside a mind that creates and uses it, neither does this 'universal property common to all minds' version of 'I' exist, outside a mind that creates and uses it. It's a concept, not a thing.

If you claim that there is nothing special or unique about any particular individual mind, you also have to claim that there is nothing special or unique about any particular piece of music, any particular mathematical equation or any other particular pattern of information. That line of thinking leads to the conclusion that all information is the same thing. Not a particularly useful viewpoint.


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>>     Hopefully, you can see that this is a red herring. If our minds are information patterns, then 'I' don't HAVE a mind, I AM a mind. The mind that my brain is producing is actually what 'I' am. I am information. A complex, dynamic pattern of information. It necessarily follows that if that information is read and then instantiated somewhere else, so that the information processing goes on in the same way as in my original brain, then that is me. I am now somewhere else.
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>>     The logical consequence of this is that if the same information is instantiated in more than one place, there is now more than one me. Weird, yes, but necessarily true. And if my original brain is destroyed, but the mind that it used to produce is running in a different processing substrate, I'm not dead, I'm in that different processing substrate. Not a 'copy', but the actual real me.
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> Yes.
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>>     Once you realise that minds are information, the confusion goes away. As John K Clark has said, science tells us that there are only 3 things: Matter, Energy and Information. (I'd modify that, and say there are only 3 things: Space-time, Matter-energy, and Information, but it doesn't really matter). Minds can only be one of these things. Once you fully accept that, dualism can be dispensed with, and things like uploading and branching identity easily make sense.
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>     > What things do you be believe are necessary for one to survive? Would every synaptic weight have to be determined exactly, or is there some factor of "close enough" (say if it is as similar to how you were two weeks ago, that is sufficient)?
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>>     The recent fruit-fly upload seems to suggest that individual synaptic weights are not actually necessary to record (which surprised me. Apparently it's the number of synaptic connections between neurons that's important. Maybe this won't be the same with human brains, but we'll see).
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>>     My suspicion is that as long as you get the detailed connectome right (plus things like the type of neurons), this will establish 'attractor states' that are fairly tolerant to minor differences, so inaccuracies in things like connection strengths will not be so important, and maybe you would wake up feeling a bit strange, but that would soon fade as things settle down to their normal states. But that's just speculation, really. Or maybe wishful thinking, but I'd guess that uploading could actually turn out to be a lot easier than we think, given a certain level of technology (mainly for the scanning, I'm pretty confident that that will always be the hardest thing).
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> I think there is possibly one extra step you could take, one final dualism to dispense with, which is the idea that you are defined by a particular/exact information pattern.


That's not dualism, that is the exact opposite of dualism.
My whole point is that each mind does consist of a particular, exact information pattern, and nothing else. That this is what a 'soul' (if you should insist on using the word) actually is, that this is the only thing that a mind can be.


>  Certainly, throughout our lives, the information pattern we identify with


No, I have to stop you there. This is dualistic thinking. Or at least language that reinforces dualistic thinking. Who is the 'we' you refer to, if you are separating it from the information pattern? It would be better to say "the information patterns that we consist of"


>  changes drastically. Are there any limits to how much that conscious pattern could change before it ceases being an "I"


I hope that this question now answers itself. Unless you are asking how simple can a mind be, which we don't currently know the answer to.


> , before it would stop feeling as though you are still there, vividly having that experience? I think this too, is a last vestige of dualism, in defining some "similarity function" which when satisified, you live, and when not satisfied, you die. Note that in any case where your personality, or memories are altered, that perspective will still feel 100% certain that they are alive and have survived (despite the loss of memories or personality change). So my challenge is to push back, and say similarity (like bodily continuity) is another red herring, as far as subjective survival is concerned and as far as defining "What am I?" 

I'm not sure what you mean by 'similarity'. Similarity to what? To a past state? People change. I'm not sure that it's actually that useful to ask things like "am I the same person that I was at the age of 7?". You could equally answer Yes or No, they are both valid. It's basically asking "if something changes, is it still the same thing?".

I expect there are certain features, which we don't yet know, that will determine whether an information pattern can be regarded as a mind, or that will give rise to subjective experience. If you're asking what those features are, the only answer anyone can give at present is "We don't know". I suspect we'll find out eventually.

-- 
Ben