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On 24/05/2020 14:02, bill w wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.12.1590325369.23343.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Just to toss in
my two cents, one with inflation, <br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.12.1590325369.23343.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><cite><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"> What
do you think a consciousness is, if not the information
that is being duplicated? Your language implies that
someone's consciousness, their mind, is a separate thing
from the duplicated information. ben</span></cite><cite><br>
</cite></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Well,
that's what I think. I think that consciousness is a
dynamic process, which can show up on an EEG, whereas
stored information is a static process (it used to be
thought that a memory was a circuit continually running and
if it stopped running the memory was lost). Consciousness is
the part that accesses the static elements if desired
(pulling long term memory into short term memory), along
with processing sensory information. I also would not call
consciousness the mind, since most of the mind is
unconscious (and static unless called on (?), like accessing
the definition of a word). bill w</span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I see a contradiction here. You're completely right to say that most
of a mind is unconscious (so we shouldn't really use the word
'consciousness' the way we are doing, fair enough), and that the
dynamic processes are, well, dynamic. But it's not correct to say
that dynamic processes can't be represented by static data. We do
this all the time. Again, the example of music comes to mind. So
does John Conway's Game of Life. The dynamic and self-interacting
processes of the game can be represented by a simple set of
formulae, and additional data about a starting state can exactly
reproduce the dynamic progression of states displayed by the game,
when implemented by a suitable computing system.<br>
<br>
I see no difference, in principle, between the Game of Life and a
mind, except for a large difference in complexity. We'll need a lot
more information to represent the patterns of dynamic interactions,
and the substrate to run them on will also be (potentially,
depending on exactly how things are implemented) more complex.<br>
<br>
Basically, any information process, no matter how complex, or
dynamic or self-interactive, can be captured as static data then
re-implemented later.<br>
<br>
Let's say that it is true that<font size="-1"> <span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">a
memory is a circuit continually running, and if it stops running
the memory is lost.</span></font><br>
Let's say that the information in the circuit consists of a specific
set of spike trains in a loop. If you take the circuit in isolation,
and break it or stop it, the spike trains are lost and there's no
way to tell what they were, so restarting the circuit won't make the
same pattern reappear.<br>
<br>
But how did the pattern get there in the first place? There must be
some configuration of neuronal connections, synaptic weights, and
ionic concentrations that produced it, looking at the wider brain
connected to the circuit. So if you can reproduce those, then
stopping and restarting the whole brain instead of just the circuit
in isolation <i>will</i> make the same pattern reappear (in fact,
our brains depend on this, otherwise Marcel Proust would be an
obscure nonentity). The same is true of any dynamic process in the
brain. Or anywhere, for that matter.<br>
<br>
You can quote the 'butterfly effect', and say that it won't
necessarily be exactly the same pattern, but that doesn't matter,
for two reasons. First, it will be close enough. A small variation
of a pattern in a circuit won't constitute a totally different
memory, as it's the result of exactly the same inputs, and second,
the butterfly effect won't even be a factor in a brain, because it
isn't something like a weather system with many independent
variables, it's a tightly-integrated system with many attractors
that similar patterns will settle into, just as the cells in a
tissue do, so that you can provide some of the cues, and the cells
themselves will provide the rest to settle into a 'mucle tissue'
pattern or a 'fibrous connective tissue' pattern, etc.<br>
<br>
If this weren't true, then people under deep anaesthesia, or in any
state where their mental processes are interrupted, wouldn't be able
to resume them (or would display different personalities, be
completely different people upon resuscitation). All the processes
that are suspended, are stored in a static form which is then used
to restart them.<br>
<br>
We don't kill people by anaethetising them, or cooling their brains
to 4 degrees centigrade, therefore dynamic processes can be stored
as static data.<br>
<br>
On a separate note, if your mind is not information, and is not
matter, then what else could it be? The only things we have to work
with (unless you think magic is true) are space/time, matter/energy
and information. Information changing with time is still information
(information which changes, plus information about how it changes
with time. Plus, if needed, information about how the changes
change, and so on, ad infinitum), and we can easily demonstrate that
suspending a process in time does not irretreivably destroy it.<br>
<br>
So, for cryonics to successfully preserve enough information to
recreate a mind, it looks like we'll need the connectome, and the
synaptic weights of all the crucial synapses for personality (what
these are, we don't currently know. I doubt that all of them in the
whole brain will be needed, but I may be wrong), plus possibly the
concentrations of certain key ions in certain key places might be
desirable too, although I suspect that omitting them would just
cause a bit of vagueness, and an upload becoming conscious would
experience some confusion about what has happened, much like waking
from a dream. But if we have the technology to record the weights in
billions of synapses, I don't think adding information about neuron
hillock excitation states would be that hard, so waking up as an
upload could be a pretty seamless experience. You die, then you wake
up again, with your train of thought uninterrupted. Would that be
important? Personally, I'd be happy to forgo it, I think.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
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