Ray Kurzweil, Cyberprophet or Crack-Pot?

[JoeStrout]

This conversation has left me in the dust. I don’t take illegal drugs, but has anyone here been smoking marijuana while reading or participating in this thread? Care to elaborate? Any pot induced insights? I’m lost.

Sorry about that — you're right, we haven't been very organized about it. Try the Personal Identity section of the Mind Uploading Home Page for a brief introduction. That's over ten years old now (which is ancient in web terms!) but still a reasonable intro.

Since writing that, I've revised my view a bit from a concept of "shared history" to one of "mental structure" (which takes into account memories, aptitudes, personality traits, etc.).

What about amnesia? Does that concept illuminate anything? Say someone looses her memory for a while. The personality doesn’t change, just the lack of conscious memory of past experience. Is she still the same person she used to be?

Mostly so, though not completely. People in casual conversation would say things like "she's not the same person since the accident" — and if pressed, would claim that they didn't mean it literally. But actually, this casual view is quite right, if worded sloppily. More precisely, she's not as much the same person she used to be as you would expect given just the amount of time that has passed.

From her point of view she might still have a feeling of continuity from some unknown past; maybe feelings, ideas and skills that she has no explanation for, but are present nonetheless.

Right — but this is because episodic memory is only one small part of total memory (and even all of memory is only one part of who we are). There have been interesting cases of people with anterograde amnesia, i.e., the inability to form new episodic memories. Researches would go in each day and have them practice some difficult task, like copying a complex picture while only seeing their hand in a mirror. It's very hard at first but after a week or two it becomes easy — yet they insist every day that they've never done it before.

Then her memory gradually comes back, does she gradually become the same person again? Wasn’t she always the same person, only lacking long-term memories?

Yes, she was always mostly the same person anyway. That's a really interesting case, though, where you might actually become more the same person over time, as the brain recovers from some injury.

If someone offered you the choice of death or permanent amnesia of everything that happened before the “procedure” what would you choose? Both seem sucky to me.

No kidding! Both are sucky, because the second one largely amounts to death anyway. Total, permanent amnesia takes away a big part of who you are; the person on the other side of the procedure is still partly you, but partly not you. I'd still choose it over total death, but I wouldn't be happy about it.

Best,
- Joe

[MSimon]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpU8sX10_4

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[MSimon]

And of course people are more important than novels — I would expect you to be more upset when a person you love dies than when a novel you've worked on for years is lost. But that's not relevant to the argument as far as I can see.

I don't know Joe. It depends.

I had a guy who worked for me go into total mourning over the death of his pet mouse. My group thought it was hilarious (behind his back).

[Betruger]

I've typed this much and now see that JohnSmith has mostly the same perspective. I don't have time to go thru my post to cull the redundant parts.. Gotta run for work.
So it's not intentionaly written to get on your nerves.. But if you don't mind, have a look and tell me where I'm wrong.

I don't see it either. The only copies of me I'd consider being me would be those thru whose eyes I could see at the same time as mine. Anything else is just a replica.

This theory of personal identity is preposterous — it says, by very definition, that you can't have the same person at two different points in time. So you are not the same person you were a second ago, because you can't see through the eyes of the second-ago-you and the now-you at the same time.

Please try again — come up with a theory that explains how you are you, even over time, yet you are not the same person as me or John McCain or your twin brother. Given person P1 at time T1, and person P2 at time T2, how do you define whether P1 and P2 are the same person?

If you want a shortcut, I've been considering this question for many years, and the only sensible answer I've found is: P1 and P2 are the same person to the extent that they share the same mental structure. But by all means, come up with a new one if you can.

Best,
- Joe

I am the past me because I remember doing everything I did. No one else does, just as I don't remember doing anything anyone else has done. You sound like you see exactly what I mean, so it must be me that's missing something. It's sounding more like an argument about time than about self or consciousness. I've thought about this sort of thing before.. e.g. I've read Julian Barbour's 'The end of time' where he details a theory that time doesn't exist, and that the finite instants we live thru are gone thru in a particular way (I won't spoil it) so that we experience the timely sequence of our lives.

It's sounding like you mean that we don't exist anywhere else than in the present moment and, in accumulation, are as legion as there are instants multiplied by so many different people. If I'm not the me I was when I was doing something this last morning, then what's the point of life extension? It wouldn't be my life extension but someone else's.
I just don't see it.. It would also mean that there's no sense in entreprising anything, since the beneficiary wouldn't be me.. But here I am! Reaping the benefits of what I sowed all my past life. It really does sound like an argument about time rather than consciousness or memory or identity.

I don't see a crutch at all. I see the only way to empiricaly confirm that we can convert to another substrate than our original nervous system.. The things you point out only seem like gaps in our understandings, not necessarily proof either way (same or different person across time). Gaps in understanding and/or abilities on time and memory.
Don't get too irritated at me not seeing it.. I think there's some piece of the puzzle that's missing.. I just don't see it.

Some replies to the points made in other posts:
Someone who's had his brain on ice for a while before being reanimated.. I think that would be like simply losing time. Like watching a videotape that had been paused for a bit when it was originaly recorded.

Now, to say that "the pause in your mind never resumes" would be true only if the mind we're considering at T3 is not the same mind as that at T1. Or in more standard terms, if the person at T1 and the person at T3 are not the same person.

So, you've simply asserted your own argument: after you're dead, the person you are isn't there any more. I would agree with that. But that implies that if the person you are IS there, then you are not dead.

I still don't see how that makes sense. Twins don't consider themselves one another. There needs to be more precise terminology. I see that the "T1 and T3" persons are indeed different, but their identity is the same. I am still the person that went to sleep last night, dreamt, and woke up this morning.

In fact, you've come (in a somewhat roundabout way) to the very reason that personal duplication (whether by mind uploading, Star Trek transporter, nightly aliens, or whatever) constitutes survival. If there is a person in the future who is me, then I have not died (even if some particular instances of me were destroyed).

That's just a copy. If I immediately clone a room full of myself, all of those are merely acting just as I would, and no one else but me sitting at the computer typing right now, and looking at them, and them, would know that it's them that were cloned. In that sense we are the same; same memories, same physical constitution. But otherwise it's them who've branched from my timeline thanks to the cloning event.
I think this debate is not going to be resolved because what consciousness is, is as good as supernatural, as far as empiricaly poking and prodding is concerned. There's no debating that sort of thing.

So you will continue to be there (and not cease to exist) as long as either one persists.

As far as you, Joe Strout, could tell - yes, JohnSmith lives on. But as far as John can tell, it's game over.
A biological twin doesn't consider that they live on if he or she dies while the other lives on.. Those twins were the same at birth, and lived different lives from that point on. They're the same as a clone of me that's made today, except that the branch was made decades after birth, rather than at T=0.

This is only difficult because we're used to identifying persons by their bodies, because we lack the means to copy the complex pattern of mental structures that really (in my opinion) defines a person.

That still seems wrong to me. The pattern is still some specific matter or energy. The matter and energy that constitutes Me_1 isn't the same as that of Me_2. Symetry doesn't equate to being the same.
The book analogy seems like another pov issue. I couldn't tell which book is which, but if the book were conscious, they would.

Either you're wrong or I'm spinning in mud here.. I don't see what's wrong with my understanding of things. I think the only possible fault is being agnostic about the matter. The only proof I'll buy is an empirical one. Not a leap of faith that I somehow live on when I can in fact see a separate copy of me bent over my deathbed waving goodbye as I sink into death. That's not me.. It's a perfect facsimile at best and an imposter at worst.

[JohnSmith]

Not a leap of faith that I somehow live on when I can in fact see a separate copy of me bent over my deathbed waving goodbye as I sink into death. That's not me.. It's a perfect facsimile at best and an imposter at worst.

Awesome. And that line pretty much sums up my viewpoint.

[TallDave]

Not a leap of faith that I somehow live on when I can in fact see a separate copy of me bent over my deathbed waving goodbye as I sink into death. That's not me.. It's a perfect facsimile at best and an imposter at worst.

But you wave goodbye to yourself every night, and a facsimile takes your place every morning.

[TallDave]

I more took issue with your 'allow' statement than your position. Like I said, it's a terrible argument.

Your criticism of the word "allow" as "a terrible argument" makes no sense. The argument is whether consciousness is something that can be explained physically. We either allow emergent properties as an explanation or we don't because they're supposedly inexplicable (as you seem to be arguing). In the latter case, this makes emergent properties mystical and arguing nonphysicality for something we've defined as nonphysical is a circular argument.

Sorry, that just doesn't hold any water. Emergent properties are not mystical, and it's a perfectly valid argument.

[JohnSmith]

Dave, I was trying to say that your argument was pointless. You're saying it's easy to explain subjective experience if we allow that it's an emergent property.

It's like saying that it's easy to explain water forming ice, if we allow that water gets harder as it gets colder.


John

[TallDave]

And water does form ice when it gets colder, just as increasingly complex systems do increasingly demonstrate consciousness (from thermostats to bacteria to insects to cats to humans).

If someone were arguing that ice has no physical explanation and is not a product of water, how woukld you convince them otherwise?

That's why the only way the physicality argument can be rejected is by assigning the emergent property of consciousness a mystical status.

It makes perfect sense. I'm not sure what you think doesn't make sense here.

[Betruger]

But you wave goodbye to yourself every night, and a facsimile takes your place every morning.

Hmm no.. Saying that is like saying I'm not the same person as I was when I started this reply. What a huge coincidence that him and I (and me, hi!) are all different people and yet the same person.
Really, just because something is deep in the slumber of sleep doesn't mean there's some disconnect. I see no evidence for it. In fact there's been a number of periods in my life where I've gone to sleep and had very lucid dreams well tied with that time's waking routine.. Those few weeks were like one continuous swing. Saying I'm not the same person as I was yesterday or an hour ago or one brownian motion's period ago is reaching. It sounds like a philosophical riddle or logical paradox like the moving/not moving "conflict" of Parmenides & the Eleates vs. Heraclitus... We're getting lost in semantics.

And if we ignore that flaw for the sake of argument.. It's still not a continuation of my life. I'm the blue guy at the bottom.. No continuation for me. Saying we aren't a continuation of ourselves because sleep can't be remembered.. That's not sufficient. The same way that a tree does exist even if you aren't there to hear it fall, we are the same continuous person even if we somehow can't recall the duration of sleep.

[JohnSmith]

Ah, you responded before I finished an edit.

Ok, it makes sense, it's just pointless.
You said it's easy to explain.
So explain it! If you can't, than it's not easy to explain. Maybe it's an emergent property, but it's not easy to explain.

Back to water and ice. Ice is an emergent property, from interactions between all the various atomic forces. But it's not simple.

[TallDave]

Saying that is like saying I'm not the same person as I was when I started this reply.

Of course you aren't.

What a huge coincidence that him and I (and me, hi!) are all different people and yet the same person.

It's not a coincidence, it's a product of the fact your physical substrate has been stable and the amount of experience you've undergone in that time is small relative to the total.

[TallDave]

Ah, you responded before I finished an edit.

Ok, it makes sense, it's just pointless.
You said it's easy to explain.
So explain it! If you can't, than it's not easy to explain. Maybe it's an emergent property, but it's not easy to explain.

I already explained it.

[TallDave]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_property

[Betruger]

This is getting a bit embarassing.. I'm really not playing thick. I'll sleep on that one and hopefully have something to make this argument move forward.

Saying that is like saying I'm not the same person as I was when I started this reply.

Of course you aren't.

What a huge coincidence that him and I (and me, hi!) are all different people and yet the same person.

It's not a coincidence, it's a product of the fact your physical substrate has been stable and the amount of experience you've undergone in that time is small relative to the total.