[ExI] Uploads are self

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 6:10 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 22/03/2026 18:25, Jason Resch wrote:
> >
> >     > Drawing unique personal boundaries around minds then becomes
> rather difficult.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     Ben Wrote:
> >     Nonsense. You're saying that rewiring someone's brain so as to turn
> them into someone else makes it difficult to distinguish between different
> minds?
> >
> >     This is a new and exciting brand of nonsense.
> >
> >
> >
> > But it follows from your earlier (strong) insistence that all 5 uploads,
> despite each ending up with very different final mind states, would all be
> you.
> >
> > Jason:
> >  >> Have you have become these 5 different people?
> > Ben:
> > >     Of course.
> > >     What other possibility is there?
> >
> > So I would ask you for a resolution, or at least an explanation, of this
> inconsistency, since above you deny the cases of survival in situations
> where ones mind has been modified to equal another.
>
>
> There's no inconsistency.
> The five me's will all remember their past as me. The overwritten me that
> becomes Bob, won't. That one will remember Bob's past, not mine.
>

Think of the conscious experience of riding a bike enjoying the sun on your
face and the wind in your ears, simply being in there moment.

How much of your life's past memories are you recalling during such a
conscious experience? If none, then what makes this experience any more
Bob's than it is Ben's?

If you forgot what you had for breakfast 217 days ago, does that mean it
was someone else (besides you) who consciously experienced eating every
bite of that breakfast? What has become of that person?

Memories matter for giving a person context for their life, but they're
largely irrelevant when it comes to having a feeling of being alive and
conscious. You don't die or lose consciousness when there's a name you
can't remember.


> Tinkering with someone's brain to re-wire it so that it becomes a copy of
> someone else is effectively uploading that someone else over the top of the
> original brain, destroying its original pattern. In that case, the atoms
> remain (which is irrelevant), but the pattern is overwritten completely.
>

Which neural weight change results in your death: the first, the
5,647,822,953th, the last, or something else?


> >
> > To clarify (or muddy) the situation, consider that Bob could in
> principle be arbitrarily close to you. (E.g. an identical twin with the
> same upbringing and same education and hobbies/interests).
>
> Not possible.
> You can have 'arbitrarily close' in maths (and philosophy), but not in
> real people.


Across an infinitely large universe such arbitrarily close instances exist.

Across the multiverse of QM such arbitrarily close instances exist.

But regardless, denying the setup of a thought experiment to avoid a
conclusion you don't like isn't helpful. Instead we should treat thought
experiments that reveal a weakness in one's assumptions as a gift: an
opportunity to refine and perfect one's thinking to better approximate
reality.


There will be a practical limit to how close two people can be, because
> they will have to have different experiences and memories, arbitrary
> differences in brain wiring, etc.
>

We test theories by imagining situations in which they might break down.
There's nothing physically impossible about the scenario I've proposed. It
is worth thinking through.

Indeed in cases like the quantum eraser experiment, it is arguable that two
divergent mind states fuse back as one. Physicists already have to confront
this possibility.


> > These are just classic fission/fusion cases of personal identity. Given
> they have revealed an inconsistency in your predictions, we must now
> attempt to identify the source of this inconsistency in your assumptions or
> reasoning. (We are now doing philosophy)
>
> There's no inconsistency, and no need for any philosophy.


Then you should be happy to give your answer to what happens when the
conscious states of two formerly different people intersect.

These are matters that can be decided with science. It doesn't matter what
> kind of wild thought-experiments can be dreamed up, in reality it's
> neurology and physics that will determine these things.
>

As I've explained, there are questions that can't be decided by objective
empirical means. This seems to be a question in that class.

Physics reveals only how things behave. It doesn't tell us anything about
what things are.

Jason

>
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