A view on cryonics (was Re: [extropy-chat] Bad Forecasts!)

[Emlyn]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:19:05 -0400, Slawomir Paliwoda
<velvethum at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps Slawomir feels that part of his 'identity' is encoded in the
> > dynamics of moving chemicals and charges and that this dynamical
> > information is lost during cryopreservation.
> 
> Here's my precise definition of identity:
> 
> Personal identity is defined by the uniqueness of mind process in
> space-time.
> 
> (Dynamic of moving chemicals and charges, or a "flow of matter in
> space-time", as I call it, is the correct characterization of what I
> perceive as a process. Cryopreservation, if it works correctly, doesn't
> destroy that process, but merely pauses it. Since identity is grounded in
> that process, it won't dissolve as long as that process doesn't degenerate
> into a non-mind activity or perish altogether).
> 
> Slawomir
> 

I have in the past thought that we were process, not program, as
Slawomir evidently does. However, the more I think about it, the less
I can identify this process. What is a process? Show me a process!

Even in a computer, a process is a nebulous thing. A program can be
identified as a pattern of bits stored somewhere. Hardware can be made
to run programs, but here we get into trouble. A process seems to be a
the pattern in memory which the hardware, running according to the
instructions in a program, causes to exist at any point in time; that
pattern is self influenced because the hardware refers both to it and
to the program to work out what to do next.

Now that process looks like a dynamic thing, until you realize it can
be frozen. The hardware can be stopped momentarily, for instance. In
that moment, where is the dynamic nature of the process? It is a
pattern in memory.

Further, computers implement process switching (multi processing).
They can take all the memory that defines a process, and write it
elsewhere (eg out to different memory or to disk). Then they can copy
another process into the memory space previously inhabited by the
original process. Where is the original process? It sits as a static
pattern somewhere, waiting to be brought back to the place where
hardware can act on it according to the program and to its own
contents. If it is brought back, is it the same process, or a copy?

This same analysis applies to a human. I trivially support this by
noting that we could hypothetically upload a human including brain,
body, and virtual environment, into a computer if we had detailed
enough instruments and powerful enough machines. Then the human would
run on a sim brain and sim body, but function exactly as before, so
that if the original was a conscious entity, so too should be the
uploaded copy. This uploaded copy would now be process in the software
sense, subject to the same regimen of process switching, memory
management and whatnot that a regular computer process is subject to.

My analysis here is supposed to show that process is nothing but
pattern. A computer process has a stored pattern called program and a
usually (but not necessarily) more volatile pattern called process. A
person has a program pattern that is the sum of the arrangement of
materials in the brain and body, and a process consisting of the sum
of positions of chemicals, electrical signals, etc, in that brain and
body. The boundary here in fact is difficult to define. This is all
pattern, information.

To propose that process is somehow something more than information
begs the question of what it is. What is the second entity invited
into this universe of information? Is process somehow supposed to be
soul?

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *