[ExI] Uploads are self

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 11:46 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 19/03/2026 11:15, Jason Resch wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2026, 6:06 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> >     On 18/03/2026 04:03, Jason Resch wrote:
> >
> >     Ben wrote:
> >
> >     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.
> >
> >
> >
> > I think you misread what I was saying. I was not saying there's nothing
> unique or special about any mind, I was saying there's nothing unique or
> special about a mind in the sense of it being a "privileged I". This is
> because every mind, from its own perspective, feels it is privileged in
> this way, just as contemporaries in every point in time, consider their
> "now" to be the special (only existing) point in time.
> >
> > But the more scientifically valid "block time" view of the universe
> dissolves the idea of a privileged now, just as open individualism
> dissolves the notion of a privileged I.
>
>
> I think the language here is getting a bit too complex, making it
> difficult to follow (I think you are contradicting yourself above, but I'm
> sure you don't think so, so some clarification is needed).
>
> Can we say that each mind is a specific information pattern (which is a
> shorthand for 'a dynamic information pattern with certain characteristics,
> some of which we aren't yet sure of'), and that of course there are many
> things that different minds have in common?
>


I don't think we can. If the mind is a dynamic information pattern, then it
is constantly changing, and so there is no way to pin it on being any
specific set of information. This is especially true when you consider
different possible branching paths that may follow from one original state
of the mind at one particular point in time.

For example, if you assume many worlds:  across all the branches where you
diverged a year ago, your mind has entered a vast number of distinct
states, yet they all shared a common point of origination a year ago.

I think what we could say is that a single observer-moment could be
identified with a particular computational-state. But once time and change
are introduced, there's no single objective description we could give that
includes all the infinite ways a mind may evolve from that point.



> And there will be some things that some minds have in common, and some
> things that all (known) minds have in common. Probably.
>
> You claim that all minds of interest have 'subjective experience' in
> common. I agree (it's a bit of a tautology, really).
>

Yes, but more specifically, all subjective experiences are experienced in a
way that feels immediate and direct. This is what makes all experiences had
by any mind feel like "they are mine."


> You seem to claim that this means that all minds are therefore the same
> (?).


No I am not saying they are all the same. I am saying they all have what is
needed to feel as though they "are mine."


I disagree.
> Apart from the obvious logical fallacy (If all chairs have legs, that
> doesn't mean that all chairs are the same), there's the tricky problem that
> we can't, even in principle, measure subjective experience, or compare it
> between different minds, so the statement "all minds have subjective
> experience" contains very little information, almost none, I'd say. Can we
> even define the term? It could be something entirely different for every
> different person, we'd never know.
>
> I'd agree with "all minds (of interest) have some things in common", as
> that's quite obvious. All human minds have a ton of things in common, but
> they are all still separate minds (I'm going to stop saying 'unique',
> because that probably won't be true in the future (at least momentarily, in
> the scenario of duplicating mind-states).
>


I think we agree broadly about this, but that you may still be missing my
point here. Think about the question: "Of all the beings that exist in the
universe, how do you know which one is you?"

You don't decide who you are by checking the name on the ID card in your
wallet. Instead you use the simple fact: "I am the one having the direct,
immediate experiences of being Ben Z."

In other words you rely on this feature of the subjective experiences you
have access to, to decide which person (out of all the people in the
universe) you happen to be.

But next: consider that this feature of experience (feeling like it is
mine, because it is direct and immediate) is a feature of every experience
has by ever conscious being.

So this method of deciding who it is you are, is flawed. This is the point
I am making.


> I don't see any significance in your 'privileged I'. In fact, I'm not sure
> what it actually means. It would seem to mean that each person has a
> first-person perspective. But that's so obvious and trivial that I can't
> see it being a useful thing to note.


It is trivial, but the point is when we think about how we use this trivial
property to try to uniquely identify "which person I am" we can then see
how it is erroneous to use this fact to pick out one unique person in the
universe.


And it certainly doesn't follow from that, that everyone is really the same
> person (if that isn't a caricature of your position. I don't /think/ it is,
> from what you say).
>

I am saying something a bit different than "we are all one" (which is
ambiguous and mystical sounding). What I am saying is rather "all
experiences are mine" because they all have what is required for any
experience to be mine: they all feel as if they are mine.

By this I am not saying all experiences are "Jason R.'s" or all experiences
are "Ben Z.'s", I am saying all experiences have the properties required to
make them mine -- every experience is felt as if it is happening to me (in
a first person, direct, and immediate way).


>
> >
> >     >>     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).
> >
> >
> >
> >     > 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.
> >
> >
> > But you said you could survive as an imprecise upload (giving the fruit
> fly as an example). For this to be true, a person must be more than an
> "exact information pattern." You've already loosened that definition to an
> approximate information pattern.
> >
> > If one steps into a teletransporter, and emerges on the other side
> having lost a single long term memory that they hadn't recalled in the past
> 10 years, is such a memory loss fatal to that transported persons
> subjective survival? I think not, but am curious to know what you think.
> >
> > Then repeat the consideration with more and more memories being lost in
> the process. At what point do these changes flip from the person surviving
> to the person dying?
>
>
> We can quibble about what 'precise' means, but the fact is we just don't
> yet know what level of precision will be necessary for an accurate upload
> of someone's mind (I was just speculating about the 'attractor state'
> thing). There will probably be a spectrum, and some kind of consensus will
> emerge about just how 'precise' the information needs to be.
>

If there is any wiggle room, then a person's survival can't be tied to a
specific information pattern. The concept of "you" then necessarily
dissolves into a spectrum that ultimately includes everyone.

Here is a good description of the continuum of persons:
http://frombob.to/you/aconvers.html

"And we can take this even further. It can be shown that there exist an
infinite number of universes that each contain almost Everyone!

You see, The Object contains the Continuum of Souls. It is a connected set,
with a frothy, fractal structure, of rather high dimensionality. The
Continuum contains an infinite number of Souls, all Souls in fact, and an
infinite number of them are You. Or at least, close enough to being You so
that nobody could tell the difference. Not even You.

And the Continuum also contains an infinite number of souls that are almost
You. And an infinite number that are sort of You. And because it is a
Continuum, and because there is really no objective way to tell which one
is really You, then any method one uses to try to distinguish between You
and non-You will produce nothing but illusion. In a sense, there is only
one You, and it is Everyone.

Of course, You can tell which one is you, can’t you? Or can you?"



> I don't think the example of 'losing a single long-term memory' is very
> realistic, given the nature of memories and the way we store them, but you
> are again asking questions that we don't have any answer to yet.


But for the purposes of the thought experiment we can imagine the
possibility of such a thing.

If you take a long train ride, you emerge on the other end having gained or
lost some memories. Few consider train rides lethal. Yet many might
consider a faulty upload or teletransporter that performed the same
modification to be fatal. Is this consistent?

If not, then my point is perfect identity of memory isn't necessary to
survival.


Once we start trying to upload human minds, we will doubtless find out. I
> don't think there is any 'flip from surviving to dying', any more than
> there is a hard line between a biological creature living and dying.
>

I don't think empirical results will help at all in settling this question
objectively, as I explain in my paper.

Instead , you will with need to volunteer to undergo a faulty upload
yourself to find out if you survive, or you will need to use some logic or
reason (i.e. philosophy) to settle the question.


> Have you read Greg Bear's 'The Way' stories?


I haven't. But thank you for the reference. I will check these out!


There's a character in there known as 'the architect', that pretty much
> sums up these questions, as he is dead (murdered, if I recall correctly),
> then 're-assembled' from data and memories taken from different sources,
> because certain parties needed his knowledge and skills. There's some
> debate as to what degree this re-constituted person is 'really' the
> architect, because he is definitely missing some parts of his original
> mind. There's no definite answer to the question, and I don't think there
> can be.
>

I think there can be. Personalities or memories may be measurably
different, but even if say, only 50% or only 20% of the original memories
are survive, that surviving person still feels 100% to be alive and
conscious and experiencing something. I don't know how it can make sense
for someone to feel only 20% alive. I just heard a story today about a kid
who had a stroke and a had to relearn how to walk and talk, and lost most
of his memories and had significant personality changes. Yet something in
him survived, despite these losses. It's not a loss anyone wants to
undergo, but there is still a subject in that mind who is continuing to
have experiences.



>
> >
> >
> >     >  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"
> >
> >
> > Okay you can use that wording. The patterns one consists of change
> drastically throughout one's life.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     >  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.
> >
> >
> > It answers it for me, but I am still not sure if our answers are aligned.
> >
> >      Unless you are asking how simple can a mind be, which we don't
> currently know the answer to.
> >
> >
> > No, I am asking what must be preserved in the pattern for survival (e.g.
> of an upload process). If you said it must be 100% identical, then I am
> afraid perfect uploading will never be realized. If you said some good
> enough approximation is all that is needed, then we can in theory survive
> an upload, but then you have broken the need for perfect identity of an
> information pattern. This raises the question: just what exactly is
> required to subjectively survive.
> >
> > You abandoned the notion that a specific group of atoms was necessary to
> survival.
> >
> > Now I ask to take the next step, which is to abandon the notion that a
> specific pattern of information is necessary to survival.
> >
> > Certainly getting the pattern close is important for preserving what is
> important to each of us: one's memories, personality, and goals. But my
> argument is it is of absolutely no importance when it comes to the question
> of subjective survival. The person who emerges on the other side of the
> upload will consider themselves to have survived the process even if they
> lose memories in the process.
>
>
> I suppose that depends. We can imagine that someone missing significant
> chunks of memory would be aware of it, and feel that they are incomplete in
> some sense. If they lost most of their memories, would they be a different
> person?



In that sense, we are each a different person from every moment to the
next, but the question I want to focus on is whether there is any notion of
survival from one moment to the next.


I don't know the answer to that. I don't think anyone does.


This is the point of my write up. There are reasons we can expect certain
answers to these questions, and moreover we don't need to do any empirical
experiments to get them (in fact, such experiments will only give the
illusion of answers to these questions).


There will be certain features of the information pattern that are
> essential to having a conscious mind at all, of course, but between that
> and an 'exact' replica, there will be a large grey area, I expect. But
> there won't be a clear line, on one side of which you are 'the same
> person', and on the other side of which you are 'a new person'.
>

I think you are already half way to open-individualism. If specific atoms
don't matter for survival, and if specific patterns don't matter for
survival, what does?


> I don't think you can reasonably say it's of 'absolutely no importance'
> though.


Note that I said it was of absolutely no importance when it comes to the
question of subjective survival, not that that it was of no importance
generally. I acknowledged the importance of wanting to preserve knew
memories, personalities and goals.


I doubt you would be happy to undergo uploading if you knew that it would
> remove or substantially change your memories, personality, and goals.


Of course, and I said as much.

But even if the upload failed in this way, I would still find myself as a
being that considered himself alive and conscious, and thus to have
survived, despite my amnesia.


I certainly wouldn't be, and I'd be asking what the hell kind of uploading
> is that? It reads like the kind of personality reprogramming that criminals
> undergo in some SF stories, in order to turn them into 'model citizens' (or
> the kind of thing that would have the chinese communist party rubbing their
> hands in glee!).
>
> Someone with some kinds of brain damage can change their personality, or
> lose important parts of their memories. Are they still the same person?


The question of "same person" is too ambiguous. And it isn't what I am
asking. Instead I ask: can someone *survive* amnesia?



> But all this doesn't matter. We will obviously do our best to replicate as
> closely as we can, within the limits that animal experiments establish, the
> original mind.


It matters for those who currently think:
"If it isn't exact, then I won't survive, so why bother freezing my brain?"

What do you say to such people?


I don't really see the point of all this talk of incomplete uploads,
> missing memories etc., when we will do what we can to avoid them. I'm sure
> that after we have perfected uploading to some degree, we will want to
> investigate these issues, but it's just not relevant now.


It is, for the people who philosophically believe they won't survive the
upload process.

For example:
https://www.brainpreservation.org/content-2/killed-bad-philosophy/

It is a big issue for a lot of people.

In fact, this bad philosophy affects even the cryonics community. Alcor,
for instance, is opposed to using chemical preservation even though it
likely results is less information loss. The opposition stems from the fact
that the preservation chemicals are poisonous biologically. So here is an
example where people who hope to survive by having their frozen brains
thawed and ice damage healed, are jeopardizing the recovery of people who
are philosophically inclined to believe in survival via scanning and upload
to a new substrate.


When you want to build a bridge but don't know a lot about bridge-building,
> you over-engineer it, to do your best to make sure it will work. You don't
> try to figure out what is the weakest or cheapest, etc., bridge you can
> build that will still be safe, that stuff comes later.
>
>
> >
> >
> >     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.
> >
> >
> > These are exactly the sort of questions one must ask to break through to
> seeing the unimportance of particular details in the pattern as being
> necessary to subjective survival.
>
>
> You are assuming a conclusion here.


I established that conclusion in my write up.

My suspicion is that 'particular details' will be very important - vital,
> even - for subjective survival, but we don't know what they are.


You discounted identical atoms.
You discounted identical information patterns.
What's left?


Let's get the answers before drawing any conclusions.


I agree we should do everythingnwe can tk get answers.

This will have to wait until we have the technology needed.
>

Unfortunately, no technology or experiment will help in this case. Please
see my document to understand why.

Jason
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