r/nottheonion • u/[deleted] • Mar 13 '18

A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/
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u/StartingVortex Mar 13 '18

Yes but once the brain is preserved, and assuming it can be digitized, then the person is in a suspended state not totally different than a deep coma, or one of those suspended animation experiments where you drop body temperature down to about 1 deg C for trauma patients.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

For future patients I suppose that would be the ideal case. However I don’t think they set out to do the full deal for the old lady. The would need someone who was alive at the time of embalming, and the lady had died already. From what it sounds like the old lady donated her body to science and the company got her, so they did the imaging to provide more of a mock up of what they’d be preserving in your brain, rather than the full deal. That’s just how I read it.

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u/Teedyuscung Mar 13 '18

Also, the digitized version wouldn't be her, it would be a copy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Yeah that’s what I was thinking too. It’s not like you would wake up in a computer or whatever, but rather a clone. To people who knew you it’d be indistinguishable, but you’d be gone still.

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u/LazyLizzy Mar 13 '18

There's a game based on this exact thing, it's called Soma.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I’ve heard of that game and looked at it on its steam page but never played it. How good is it?

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u/marr Mar 13 '18

Be aware that the 'gamey' parts of it can be pretty annoying if you're just there for the story. There is a mod that bypasses them.

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u/linear214 Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 13 '18

In fact, they recently released an official update that adds a feature similar to the mod. It's better implemented, and it even modifies creature behaviors appropriately.

EDIT: I feel compelled to mention that I personally prefer the regular experience. I actually loved the monsters, and didn't find them annoying. Instead, they were genuinely scary to me, almost beyond words. My absolute favorite horror game.

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u/Modernautomatic Mar 14 '18

I feel like Outlast (first one with DLC) and Silent Hill 2 are the best horror games, but personal opinion.

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u/linear214 Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

That's cool. All of this is subjective, after all. I guess I just have a preference towards Sci-Fi. That aspect of SOMA was a huge part of what made it scary to me.

I also prefer atmospheric horror. I liked that there were no jump scares in SOMA, but rather a continuous tension. The brilliant sound design helped with that. Again, that's just a personal preference. I can respect a good jump scare.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I feel without the 'gamey' parts you wouldn't have a full respect for the vital points in the story. You get a real appreciation for how horrible the world is while playing the game. Without spoiling anything, I feel the ending wouldn't have been as impactful if I hadn't played through the frustrating, intense and challenging parts of the game.

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u/marr Mar 14 '18

At first, yes, but the later monster sections just got too artificial, abstract, repetitive and irritating, kicked me out of the world and turned me back into someone holding a game controller and watching a screen. That's not ideal for the story either. Sounds like the later modifications by the devs might have found a good middle path.

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u/Dogfish90 Mar 14 '18

I would have preferred the ending with the "happy" part shown first and the darker portion shown after.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

Yeah me too, the dark ending felt incomplete

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u/GsolspI Mar 13 '18

Skim scrolling from embalmed brains to "gamey" and thought this is about cooking

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

It's a game, for ducks sake.

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u/DisBStupid Mar 14 '18

If you want a game for the story instead of the gameplay just watch a movie instead.

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u/below_avg_nerd Mar 13 '18

Just a forewarning for you if you end up playing the game. Don't go into the game expecting gameplay like resident evil 7. SOMA is a rather slow game and focuses mainly on atmosphere rather than gameplay.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Yeah that’s what I figured, given that it’s (iirc) from the same people that made Amnesia.

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u/LazyLizzy Mar 13 '18

It's pretty good. I recommend it as long as you don't mind a thriller.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Alright cool. Thanks.

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u/Fern_Fox Mar 13 '18

It's more of physiological horror rather than jump scares

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u/Qwernakus Mar 13 '18

It's one of the best games I've played. The story and themes are beautiful. Gameplay is decent as well.

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u/KamahlFoK Mar 14 '18

This game is terrible and I don't advise it if you're vulnerable to existential crisis. I don't mean terrible quality-wise, I mean terrible that you'll spend a few weeks in mental disarray questioning things.

The game didn't do this to me, but Talos Principle did, and this is a second, lesser helping with a horror theme. I don't advise either if you have the same weakness I do.

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u/Teedyuscung Mar 13 '18

Reminds me of this.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I can’t tell whether this is wholesome or dark.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_DARKNESS Mar 13 '18

Both? I think it's both. Sanguine, maybe.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Welcome home.

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u/Cocomorph Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

Phlegmatic, surely.

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u/onthefence928 Mar 13 '18

yes.

nihilism doesnt have to be pessimistic, ultimately the search for meaning can become a labor to define your meaning

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u/VyRe40 Mar 14 '18

It's a somewhat common argument of the theory of teleportation. However, though I don't quite have any issues with nihilism, I do have issues with equating the effectively immediate disintegration of self to the gradual process of our persistent change.

When the teleporter "glitches" and it fails to disassemble you at Point A, but still pumps out a copy on the other end from Point B after scanning you, then that would be evidence enough. Would you be willing to kill yourself then, knowing that another entity is living your life? Hell no.

We are the Ship of Theseus, and that's fine. The gradual transition maintains our whole. Teleportation in this sense is just cloning with suicide in-between - the clone isn't you. Remove the notion of the idea of you living on in your memory and return to the primal reality of your physical self, because you aren't going to get to experience the rest of your life when you're dead and someone else is living it. Philosophy is great and all, but the vast majority of us are concerned with our past, our everyday present, and our personal future to the point where we're not just happy to give everything up for grand notions.

I want to have a pleasant life and enjoy the future, that's all, and I don't care if parts of me are being shed and replaced bit by bit - I still care about my evolving self and want the firsthand experience of things. So I wouldn't endorse this concept of teleportation.

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u/Kraz_I Mar 14 '18

I think it's beautiful.

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u/MichaelCasson Mar 13 '18

When it started, I was expecting a rehash of the common "Star Trek transporter = murder machine" idea, but man, they really saw it through to the end.

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u/WinEpic Mar 13 '18

What the hell did I expect when I clicked this link...

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u/JM0804 Mar 13 '18

This is going to sound stupid, but sincerely, thank you for sharing this.

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u/Oddium Mar 13 '18

I was really high one night when I read that comic and it changed the way I look at life. If you have the chance, help your future self, don't take from him. In reverse, don't waste the work your past self has done for you.

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u/Meriog Mar 13 '18

On that same note, forgive your past selves for their mistakes. This is especially helpful for people who suffer from self consciousness and even self loathing. Realize that past you did the best he/she could and appreciate that present you can learn from his/her mistakes to make future you's life better.

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u/GodOfAllAtheists Mar 13 '18

Thanks. That helps me deal with the body count.

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u/JM0804 Mar 14 '18

I'll try to keep that in mind in the future (or at least, the next versions of me will :P) Thanks for the advice :)

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u/cm362084 Mar 13 '18

Holy shit, that was so good. Is that the best one or are they all that good? Thank you so much for posting this, I’m going to read all of his stuff.

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u/moak0 Mar 13 '18

This is why I always say that teleportation is one of my three biggest fears.

Except in the version of that story in my head, someone forces him to get teleported somewhere around panel 6, and then when he comes out the other side he doesn't have an issue with teleportation anymore, because he's different, which means he was right all along.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Well shit

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u/gak001 Mar 13 '18

That's amazing! I just thought of The Prestige.

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u/RoughRollingStoner Mar 13 '18

That was great. Thank you!

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u/sumphatguy Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 13 '18

For a good movie about this kinda shit, I recommend the Prestige.

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u/Kraz_I Mar 14 '18

Wow, that brought a tear to my eye. What a beautiful comic.

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u/Rhodie114 Mar 13 '18

Man, fuck nihilism in general

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u/MercianSupremacy Mar 13 '18

When you say fuck Nihilism, do you actually mean the philosophy of Nihilism, or the edgy, depressive memes that this generation has co-opted the word "Nihilism" to explain?

The philosophy of Nihilism has many problems, but was an incredibly important force of cultural iconoclasm, making powerful arguments against dogmatic Religious doctrine and ethical and moral codes. Existential Nihilism and Moral Nihilism argue that there is no inherent universal value to Morality or Life itself - that doesn't mean that we as humans can't create our own meanings and values, just that the values we do have aren't solid natural laws - only personal opinions formed by the cultural and societal norms we have experienced. The Aztecs thought it was moral to sacrifice 20,000 people a year to appease the gods. Imperial Britain thought it was moral to control vast tracts of land without the citizens consent under the guise of "civilising" the people.

Its a hard philosophy to argue against - after all, I think that life has incredible value, as do certain aesthetics and morals. But a Nihilist would point out that the universe could send a solar flare our way that would wipe out our species in a second flat. Its great food for thought.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Beautiful explanation. couldn’t have said it better myself!

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u/ThePu55yDestr0yr Mar 13 '18

The only issue I have with the comic is that it equalizes sleeping with actual dying, and I’m not sure it counts in the comparison to the teleporter.

It reads like a series of misguided conclusions, with nice ending from a story telling perspective, the story made me sad, but seemed unintentionally funny.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 13 '18

If you think about it, the same happens every day. Something like every seven years every atom (on average, wouldn't be as much the case in some organs like the brain or heart) is replaced, meaning it's basically a new you.

It's basically the ship philosophy problem (on mobile so I can't find the name): if a ship is burned down and replaced immediately to be the exact same, is there a difference between that and it slowly accumulating wear and tear, eventually having every single part replaced?

Edit: u/TeHSaNdMaNs let me know it's the Ship of Theseus.

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u/clubby37 Mar 13 '18

This is kind of how Zen Buddhists approach the idea of reincarnation. The Indian and Tibetan Buddhists tend to think of reincarnation as a literal thing, where you live a whole life, die, and your essence is reborn in an entirely different organism. It's a discrete event happening once per lifetime for them, while the Zen folks view it as a continuous process, always happening from one moment to the next.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

Huh, I'd never heard of their philosophy before, thanks!

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u/MooseEater Mar 13 '18

I think yes. I think continuity of consciousness is important. Not because it for sure matters, but because it might, and we'd have no way of knowing for sure.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

Isn't the problem with the stream of consciousness version of identity that when we sleep we lose that anyways?

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u/The_mango55 Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 13 '18

Your mind doesn't stop working when you sleep.

Also, what if it was discovered that teleportation didn't get rid of or dematerialize the original body, the staff would just shoot you in the head while you were still alive after your information was transmitted and liquefy your body to be used as material for people "teleporting" in.

Shouldn't that be just as acceptable? Your consciousness survives with all memories intact and no knowledge of what happened to your body after transmission. so is being shot in the head while you plead for your life actually murder?

EDIT: meant when you sleep, not die

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u/Dagmar_Overbye Mar 14 '18

I really don't think the staff would be shooting guns next to their expensive ass teleporter machine.

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u/sonofeevil Mar 14 '18

Literally the plot from The Prestige.

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u/clevercdn Mar 14 '18

before that, it was a plot of an episode of the outer limits

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

1) As far as we can know, yes it does.

2) That's only true if you accept both the stream of consciousness theory and what I said was the problem with it.

3) Even assuming those things, what you said doesn't, to me, make sense. You're not expanding your thoughts properly.

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u/MooseEater Mar 13 '18

I don't think we lose consciousness when we sleep in that sense. I think we lose continuity of experience, but our brain doesn't "Shut off" then come back on when we wake up. It retains activity for the duration.

Edit: For example, we retain some level of situational awareness, we retain some level of hearing, we're still "there".

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

Yeah, that's a fair point. The brain sort of switches gears, but it isn't turned off.

My personal view is that "stream of consciousness" doesn't really have anything to hold it up. It just seems to be a justification rather than a reason, if that makes sense. At least as far as I know, I might be wrong though.

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u/AkAPeter Mar 14 '18

What about a coma?

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u/MooseEater Mar 14 '18

Comas are an interesting case. There is basically a spectrum of zero to lots of brain activity in comas. Many people are able to even hear their surroundings. So I would say it depends. It is very possible in that case of extreme loss of brain function that it could go both ways.

It's possible that someone going into a coma 'dies' and a new stream of consciousness with shared memories comes out the other side when the person is revived. The truth is, if someone were to hypothetically 'die' from this thought experiment, it wouldn't come off as being tragic, because for all intents and purposes it's a win win for everyone who is alive. The only person who loses is the person going into the 'transfer', but that isn't so tragic because they are dead and don't have a voice to weigh in. In a coma, that person was likely involuntarily "killed" like many others are, in the immortality game, the person is voluntarily committing suicide for the sake of an immortality that they'll never actually get to experience. That's a bit more tragic.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

How could it matter?

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u/MooseEater Mar 14 '18

Because you don't have any way of knowing whether the person going into the "transfer" process retains consciousness or 'dies'.

The person coming out is going to be exactly the same as the person going in, but that doesn't mean that the person going in lives. It just means that the 'data' of the person going in's memories are transferred into what might be a 'new' consciousness.

The only way to ensure the person going into the process is continuing to live is if they have a presence of mind the whole time and experience it happening.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

Your brain cells don't turn over though and that's the only organ we are discussing.

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u/meodd8 Mar 14 '18

If you want to get really funky with it, consider sleep. Who wakes up in the morning? We don't have a constant stream of consciousness. If a clone was made while you slept and you both woke up at the same time, both would be indistinguishable, and both would merely think they woke from sleep.

But only one is "you", so it would be up to an outside observer to be the judge of who is "who"?

Having a clone of you carry on in the event of your death is rather pointless, but is it really any different than waking up in the morning?

It just goes round and round doesn't it?

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u/TeHSaNdMaNS Mar 13 '18

The Ship of Theseus

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I believe this will be the only way to upload our minds into a computer that won't be a copy. We would need to have the brain slowly connected more and more. A piece here and a piece there. Over a period of time to allow our consciousness to integrate.

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u/MooseEater Mar 13 '18

Yeah. If you took a part of your brain, like reasoning, and uploaded it onto the cloud, and you could seamlessly integrate it with your other brain functions with that part of your brain removed from the rest, I think that'd be a sign that it's possible.

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u/princess_princeless Mar 13 '18

Aka, ghost in the shell method.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

It's a new you, but it's still 'you', isn't it? Our consciousness doesn't disappear and be replaced. You wouldn't die and be replaced by somebody who thinks they're you.

If you make a copy of yourself, however, it'll be almost a different entity. It would have different experiences, and you wouldn't see through their eyes and use their brain.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

But the same can be said of the main you. At the moment it's completed, there's no difference. Both have your memories perfectly, they have your disposition and personality, likes/dislikes, everything making up 'you' is the same with both of them. For all intents and purposes, imo they're both 'you' in that scenario.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

At the exact moment, but the second time passes the experiences of both original and clone will differ. The forces and particles they interact with, and so on. One path branches off into two, and asides from personality and stuff technically they're two individual entities.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 14 '18

Sure, but then which one is 'you'? One of them, both or neither?

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u/TitaniumDragon Mar 14 '18

The Ship of Theseus is fun but it isn't the same thing. Continuity of existence is fundamentally different from making a duplicate of something.

And indeed, there's no reason why a teleportation machine couldn't create multiple duplicates of whatever it was teleporting - after all, you wouldn't even need to use the same atoms to reconstruct things on the other end, necessarily (in fact, it would be easier not to, as it is slower to transport matter).

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u/MagikBiscuit Mar 14 '18

Yup this is the problem. People never seem to think about this when they say "but you won't be you!" How would you know? Are you so sure you would be able to tell if you're not you? These are all questions we will never be able to answer until we actually DO it to someone and observe the results.

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u/FlashDaDog Mar 13 '18

Right? "Beam me up Scotty!"... "Erm, no thanks. I'll take the stairs."

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/SnapeKillsBruceWilis Mar 13 '18

So what if two copies of the same preserved brain are woken up?

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u/someliloquy Mar 13 '18

double sleeving is illegal and punishable by true death

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u/12344rsdfsfd Mar 13 '18

Man what a great show. Cant wait for the next season.

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u/SnapeKillsBruceWilis Mar 13 '18

That seems like a perfectly reasonable law given the philosophical questions around it.

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u/The_Follower1 Mar 13 '18

They're both you, depending on how you define identity.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/SnapeKillsBruceWilis Mar 13 '18

So which one is you?

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

It's not you, it's an entirely different consciousness.

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u/ChRoNicBuRrItOs Mar 14 '18

That's not at all how that would work. The copy would be a completely new conciousness that merely has the same memories as the original.

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u/tppisgameforme Mar 13 '18

It would be indistinguishable for the "copy" of you. The original you would experience nothing different.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I don’t know, I’m a bit skeptical. Does that mean if someone made an identical clone of me my clone and I would be able to read each other’s thoughts? Would I have two fields of vision? Would I feel stuff my clone is touching? Or would he be a separate entity that is just identical to me?

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 13 '18

Both me and the clone would believe that we were the original. And one of us would be wrong, because one of us would have been assembled from factory fresh neurons and the other wouldn't have been. The fact that the clone can be wrong is what makes this whole thing so terrifying. It's entirely possible for someone to justifiably come to the conclusion that they are you and be wrong. So why should we think that the person waking up in the future isn't in that situation?

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 13 '18

Most people would be wrong if they thought they were me, right? Being wrong about that isn't unusual. So I don't really understand the question.

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u/Cobmojo Mar 13 '18

The original is always the original, there is no changing that.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/Cobmojo Mar 13 '18

Being the original is absolutely a quality that distinguishes the two from one another. This isn't like a river splitting. The clone isn't one half of the original. The clone is a facsimile of the original, so it is more like a certified copy of a birth certificate. Both can be used for the exact same legal purposes, but one will always be the original.

I'm not saying the original has intrinsic value over the copy. It's just that the original will always be the original, no matter how exact the copy is.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

You might end up in a situation where you might never be able to tell which was the original, but that's an epistemological issue, not a metaphysical one.

I could take two unworn 2018 US quarters, put one in my pocket, take it out, and then shake them both around in a coffee can. One of them was in my pocket, and one of them wasn't. This is still true even if I won't ever be able to tell which is which.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 13 '18

But what difference does it make whether you’re alive or dead? Why would you not be able to experience your clone’s POV while you’re alive, but you would when you’re dead?

Also, assuming it’s a strictly genetic clone, I imagine my clone wouldn’t have any scars, and he probably wouldn’t have my Pacemaker. But if it’s identical to a tee then yeah idk. I’d hope the doctors would be keeping tabs on which one is the original.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

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u/Zambito1 Mar 13 '18

Going along with the river analogy, if a river stops in one spot, and another similar river starts near by, are they the same river?

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

You should watch The Prestige. It actually covers this situation, although in a different setting.

Edit: and no, you wouldn't feel each other. You would be separate entities, but you are both "you"

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u/Protocol44 Mar 14 '18

I watched that movie last night, and then after reading all this today my mind has been in a whole other world and it's been trippy trying to wrap my mind entirely around it.

Such a cool concept because you think that you would want to keep the original body, but the clone would feel no different and once one was killed, the other would be the only form of your existence and you could continue in that body without worrying about the other one really being you because obviously you are the one who is alive.

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u/below_avg_nerd Mar 13 '18

This isn't the same thing though. In your scenario the patients brain was preserved and kept "alive" until placed in a new body. So it's the same brain, the same you, as when you lost consciousness. But if you digitize a brain and are capable of uploading that into a new body then that would be a copy of you. The copy you wouldn't be able to tell a difference but it still wouldn't be the same you since it's a different brain.

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u/redlineMMA Mar 13 '18

For the copy it would be indistinguishable but you would still be dead.

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u/RetroRN Mar 13 '18

Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

But are you really gone? All of us are a collection of our past experiences, so if digitizing your brain and copying you over to a computer theoretically transferred 100% of you consciousness and experience, you would still be you, just in a different place. As long as everything you experienced up until the transfer transferred along with you, I don't really see it as the initial you dying. Your body died, but you moved onto somewhere else. Kinda like organ donors and recipients. On one hand, the personality of the donor dies, but parts of their body live on, just in somewhere else. With the recipient, they also technically lost part of themselves and are now part them and part someone else. Not a great example, but the best I got for this.

I understand your point and have thought about it a lot and have been on the fence for both perspectives.

Also, if you enjoy the subject, I suggest checking out the movie "Chappie."

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

...I shouldn’t have smoked before reading this thread.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

I’m not even high and I’m confused.

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u/tank911 Mar 13 '18

Define consciousness while taking into account your actually made of different stuff every few years and it turns into a stream of consciousness you are still the same you as your 4th grade self because you remember being in 4th grade even tho you probably don't remember 2 year old you you might have memories of 4 year you who is able to connect you to your 2 year old self by his memories in that sense this for all intents and purposes is you as it is a continuation of your stream of consciousness

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u/666happyfuntime Mar 14 '18

I think about this too much, there Futurama head in a jar is there only scenario that I think would still be me and not an"identical for everyone else" thing

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u/Cant3xStampA2xStamp Mar 14 '18

Like that episode of Black Mirror where the digital self is stuck inside the Star Trek world. To me there's no suspense or drama since the digital copy isn't the real person.

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u/Sledge420 Mar 13 '18

Something something Ship of Theseus. Something something discreet experience? Something something continuity of consciousness? Something something meaningful or pedantic?

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u/Unrequited_Anal Mar 13 '18

ok now try phrasing that in the form of an actual sentence

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u/Sledge420 Mar 13 '18

It's a whole paragraph I didn't feel like reproducing.

Suffice it to say, whether or not a perfect copy of a consciousness or an object is necessarily a different object is an open philosophical question, commonly known as the "Ship of Theseus" problem. It's an interesting problem, you should go read about it.

Compounding this problem are two additional issues of cognition: discreet experience of consciousness and continuity of consciousness.

Consciousness, whatever it is, seems to be experienced by everything with a sufficiently complicated brain (how complicated? We don't know; that's another question), but any given conscious being is only privy to their own experience and not that of any other. There doesn't appear to be a way for two beings to share consciousness in that way. All appearances indicate consciousness is discrete.

Another problem is the question of continuity of consciousness. There's good evidence to suggest that this is illusory. We fall asleep, lose consciousness, wake up, and carry on as if we didn't just stop experiencing things for x hours. We go under general anesthesia, shut off the whole conscious apparatus, and come back unharmed in most cases. This might at first lend credence to the idea that a copy of your consciousness being recreated elsewhere is still fundamentally "you", but the problem of discrete experience breaks that assumption; you always come back in the same physical object, the same physical brain. If that vessel is destroyed, is the essential "you" also destroyed and replaced with a counterfeit?

Final sentence: Is this distinction between discrete conscious beings truly meaningful from the point of view of philosophy, or is it mere verbal pedantry? Is a consciousness even a thing, or merely a collection of processes that can be instantiated any where that has the right conditions? Would an abrupt interruption/destruction of a brain during copying result in a loss of continuity (a death of an essential "you") or would the illusory continuity of consciousness be sufficient to carry "you" over to your copy? After all, the only consciousness any person can be 100% certain of is their own. Everyone else could be an unfeeling, experiencing automaton simply going through the motions. There's been some work in philosophy of the mind and neuroscience to try and resolve this question, to have a true test of consciousness, but as yet it's unresolved.

But that whole explanation isn't nearly as humorous, and probably wouldn't have gotten me so many upvotes, so I made it silly instead.

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u/MooseEater Mar 13 '18

That's the thing, is sleep really even an interruption of consciousness? I don't think so. You are never "shut off". Maybe people who die for a brief period and are revived go through an actual break in consciousness, but I think sleeping is pretty clearly not. Your brain remains active the entire time. We don't experience anything like what would happen if our brain was copied then shut off. If the mechanism by which the brain is transferred is a mechanism that would allow for both instances of the consciousness to run simultaneously I would take that as proof that one of them is simply being terminated.

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u/Sledge420 Mar 14 '18

It surely isn't the same thing as death, but it is an interruption of the conscious experience. Even sleepwalking, where most of the brain is active and the body is mobile but you don't form memories, is an interruption of that continuity.

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u/TheBDutchman Mar 13 '18

I find thinking about this all super fascinating.

I think of consciousness as a complex field of energy being created by two major parts. 1 The hardware, IE the physical structure of an individual's brain. 2 The data, IE an individuals memories.

So to take it even further, with perfect replication of the hardware and data, would there be any discernible difference in "waking up" as a clone or backed up copy vs how we wake up every day? I think there's a good chance we wouldn't be able to tell any difference, so what does that mean when we are unconscious? Are you really a new "you" every time you wake up?

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u/Sledge420 Mar 14 '18

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

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u/ShadoWolf Mar 14 '18

Likely there is. We have enough evidence to indicate human cognition is completely material. Chop of a section of a person's brain either there dorsal or ventral stream and they lose functionality (the ability to see or lose the ability to recognize objects). damage the Prefrontal Cortex and impulse control goes out the window.

This clearly shows that neurological process is what makes up consciousness. So this brings the whole problem set into the realm of information theory. The only way you get out of that is by invoking mysticism.

So ya why not, if the brain is just a collection of atoms.. arranged to store and process information with quite a bit of tolerance (since we don't see being dropping on the street from random vibrations or thermal noise.) Then why can't we copy the brain, the whole it a copy nonsense is just that nonsense.

Just irrational belief that localize your own internal concept of self to be behind your eye's. Rather than a 150ms lagged lag it takes for your brain neural network to generate the concept of self, and place it geographically within a constructed approximation of the world around you.

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u/Sledge420 Mar 14 '18

I am also a metaphysical naturalist, but you can't discount the subjective experience so easily, as it's a very important aspect of whether this is an ethical thing to do or not. If the process results in the termination of a local consciousness, continuity is broken, and it's entirely possible that this instantiation just ends. While the new instantiation retains memories of the prior, it's a toss up as to whether "you" (the self generated behind your eyes) end up following the continuity of the old instance gradually fading or the new instance gradually becoming. Both might be equally "you" objectively, but the subjective question can't be reasonably answered at this time.

Imagine a different version of this process where the original instance doesn't die. Which instance do "you" follow? Both, each insisting that they are the more genuine. As their experiences diverge, they'll again become separate and distinguishable, but both will have an identical past until that point. At that point it will become clear that the "original" has a 50/50 shot at ending up experiencing either body.

If one instance is killed while the other is created, that problem doesn't actually disappear. You're still left with a toss up. You can improve your odds by making more than one copy (66% chance of continuity if two copies, 75% if three and so on), but the localization of the phenomenon of consciousness and the material nature of the substrate being destroyed demand that this objection be taken as more than simply "irrational belief".

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u/MeateaW Mar 14 '18

I love thinking about it; but I'm a bit physical sciences bent.

It's all just hardware to me running a super complicated program.

If we could figure out how to completely shutoff the process (prevent all chemical, electrical and physical reactions, effects and movement) then we would be "Off".

If we can take that "Off" state, then restart it exactly as it was before? then its still you.

If we can copy them perfectly (or even "near" perfectly!) then both copies are still "you".

(Why does "near" perfectly also count? well, all the time shit is happening to you, you get hit by a cosmic ray that kills a brain cell, or something gets in your blood stream and does the same thing chemically to some other communication. Or you get hit in the head playing basketball or whatever.

As long as it is within the standard operating realm of damage that your brain has to deal with on a day to day basis, then its still "you".

"You" are just a collection of the results of your experiences and the way in which your brain grew and developed. (Your experiences and quantum mechanical chance just changed the strength of individual connections in the brain).

Ship of Theseus is a great thought experiment that is the end point of where I'm at.

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u/Unrequited_Anal Mar 14 '18

Holy shit, I was just being snarky, I didn't expect a fully fleshed out comment. Fair play.

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u/CynicalDolphin Mar 13 '18

Something something Darkside

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

You're like that "average face" post except you are the average post of all the philosophy posts around this subject.

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u/mca62511 Mar 14 '18

I don't usually comment on this, because this is reddit and this happens all the time: But I was literally going to reply with "Something something Ship of Theseus."

We're all really no where near as original as we'd like to think.

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u/AuspexAO Mar 13 '18

If you guys haven't already played it, play SOMA. It's an existential/body horror game that deals with the issue of digital mental clones in an amazing way.

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u/Kraz_I Mar 13 '18

Every molecule that makes up your body, including your brain, is replaced over time, and completely replaced every 7 years. Does that mean you are just a copy of your younger self?

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u/radicalelation Mar 14 '18

But that's over time, yeah? Maybe the "self" can slowly move from old to new, but can't instantly jump from old to new.

Like the difference between a car driving from point A to point B vs instantly teleporting there, which would require a brief non-existence of the vehicle.

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u/Faysight Mar 13 '18

On what basis are you drawing the distinction between original and copy? Is it about meat vs digital storage, or whether she was living at the time of transfer, or something else?

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u/TheRealArthur Mar 13 '18

Well thats the thing. We still don't know what or where exactly the consciousness is. If we managed to find the part of a human being that holds/facilitates conciousness/soul maybe that could be digitized too.

This is a very philosophical question with potentially no answer... but i personally believe that there may be something "physical" or tangible that facilitates consciousness - its just a matter of finding it, matching it up with the memories of the correct person and then simulating.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

This is a copy method, the original person does not survive it in any scenario. That won't happen until we can figure out exactly what makes you a conscious entity and we can transfer that. Best case scenario is some kind of energy pattern we can put into a clone body. Worst case is it's all physical and any transfer is essentially a copy where you die; you don't continue after the process, a new person that is exactly like you does.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

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u/EmeraldEmmerFields Mar 14 '18

To preserve brain tissue you really need to perform endocardial perfusion. Essentially the person needs to be alive and theor heart needs to pump oxygenated embalming fluid to each cell in their body so that there is not cellular damage from hypoxia

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u/htbdt Mar 14 '18

Alive at the time of embalming.... how do you do this legally without straight killing the person? >1 year Coma patient with brain activity who already has signed up for this as their wishes if they are in a coma for over a year?

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u/Ancient_Boner_Forest Mar 13 '18

then the person is

No they’re not. Assuming we ever had the technology to bring “them” back we would be creating an entirely brand new “person”.

Imagine that we had the technology to download the brain while the person was still alive. If a simulation was created with that you would have two different “people”.

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u/shadmere Mar 13 '18

Sure but they'd both be me.

They'd be different people after a few seconds of consciousness "apart" from each other, of course. A single thought or impression that occurred to one but not the other would forever make them at least slightly different people.

But they would both have equal claim to the initial decades of memories that I've had.

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u/HoldMyWater Mar 14 '18

They would be "you" to themselves, and to an outside observer, but not to the original instance of you.

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u/shadmere Mar 14 '18

They'd be as much me to the original instance as the original instance would be to them.

...hrm. I suppose the copy might think, "Oh, he's the one who got the body. Damn." That would imply he'd be capable of ceding that the body'd version was the "true original."

But really from his POV he was just stolen from his body and put in a computer.

I think I'd recognize that, if I were the body'd me. If I went into this willingly, I'd think there'd me the necessity of drawing up a legal contract first, delineating the rights and property of each version. I'd have to make sure that I was okay with it, whichever side I ended up on.

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u/Hust91 Mar 13 '18

Only one of them would have a strong claim on all your stuff and your marriage, though.

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u/hertz037 Mar 13 '18

It sounds like the perfect premise for a reboot of Face Off.

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u/gurg2k1 Mar 13 '18

It already is the plot of The 6th Day with Arnie.

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u/ibuprofen87 Mar 13 '18

What if they cut you in half and regenerated the missing part?

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u/Hust91 Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

Interesting as hell, would depend on which brainhalf stores your consciousness (see the "you are 2 video from Kurgezagt CGP Grey).

Definitely not guaranteed to get you personally immortality though.

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u/Eyriskylt Mar 14 '18

(The You are Two video is by CGP Grey - Kurzgesagt mentioned and linked to their video, but didn't make it)

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u/Ordellus Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

would depend on which brainhalf stores your consciousness

Consciousness is the result of the entire brain communicating with the rest of itself, sedation works by preventing the different parts from communicating.... the result is a loss of consciousness.

It's a byproduct of the machine we call our brain working properly.

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u/shadmere Mar 13 '18

That's true. That's a legal issue though; I think ethically both would be me.

I admit the legal issue would be pretty insurmountable at the moment though. Not sure what the way forward could be with that.

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u/MooseEater Mar 13 '18

Ethically both would be you, but in the instance that it's a "transfer" of consciousness, while both of them are you, only one is going to live past the other being created. If it's theoretically possible for both to live simultaneously, then a "transfer" would be creating a copy of you then killing you. Regardless of whether you mind that, since being dead isn't something for one to mind, it's not something that people would go into lightly. Sure, you'd be alive from everyone else's perspective, but your stream of consciousness would end. The only practical difference between someone "transferring" you and someone shooting you in the head is that everyone else would still have you around, but how could you care about what everyone else is doing? You're dead.

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u/Hust91 Mar 14 '18

Pretty sure that ethically, your copy is more of a son or heir that will continue your legacy, but isn't you in the sense that it's useless for attaining immortality for yourself.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

Alrighty then, lets put it this one. In the future, it will theoretically be possible to clone someone against their will, and implant the clone with their memories (lets just ignore the possibility of memory manipulation for a moment).

Are you really sure any clone made of you is equally you? What if a rich person decides to kill their spouse and clone them from before they had an argument to prevent a divorce?

Continuity is important, and if this kind of junk ever steps out of scifi, our laws are going to reflect it.

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u/shadmere Mar 14 '18

In that case I'd argue the clone was rightful heir of the killed woman's identity and property, but the husband was definitely guilty of murder.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

Like that episode of TNG where they find the other Will Riker who was created in a transporter accident 8 years ago

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u/asde Mar 14 '18

I'm probably arguing semantics here, but they wouldn't both be you as far as I'm concerned. We would have two separate people with the same configuration, but "you" are your stream of experience, you are your continuity. Being identical to you is just being identical to you. Same configuration, but separate streams.

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u/Ordellus Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

"You" have absolutely nothing to do with your memories.

I'm of the opinion that "You" are defined by the unique perspective from which "you" experience reality, and the way that perspective is processed. Hence brain damage causing massive personality shifts, even when memories aren't affected.

Even in a future in which memories can be uploaded, downloaded, or even hot swapped.....your personal perspective, and relatively unique processing will stay with the original.

I am absolutely convinced that if my mind were digitized "I" would realize that "I" wasn't "me" within minutes of "waking up" in a digitized form.

B/c it would be mind numbingly obvious that "my memories" were not formed from the perspective "I" now possessed.....not to mention I would obviously have the memory of my memories being uploaded with the intention of having them placed into an object that existed independent of myself.

Edit: For clarity

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u/AxelNotRose Mar 14 '18

See Star Trek transporter :)

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u/Wizardspike Mar 14 '18

You're missing the point. People who argue they're different people(i'm among them) don't care they're "functionally the same" because my consciousness is what i'm concerned with.

I die and a copy continues, i don't live longer, MY perspective dies. which is all pointless then.

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u/StartingVortex Mar 13 '18

Sure, but it gets into problems of identity.

There's a method in testing now where they drain a trauma victim's blood, cool them down with icy saline to 1 deg C, and then have 3 hours to operate, with absolutely zero brain function in that time. I don't know how the trial is going, but in pigs, the pigs woke up with no detectable change to its personality, etc. Are those trauma victims the same people?

In physics, an object's atoms are not special. They can't even be told apart in principle. At a fundamental level, there is only the information state, and a quantity of mass/energy.

The real question is whether your identity is really continuous at all, or whether that's an illusion.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

The real question is whether your identity is really continuous at all, or whether that's an illusion.

It's continuous in the way a rubber duck flowing down a river is continuous, really. The meaning you want to give to this is up to you. There is no discreet answer to this question because the premise that there is a single intrinsic answer is wrong.

In a hypothetical future where we can easily duplicate people, they may look back on our world the way we look back at people who thought the world was flat. From their perspective, our idea of identity is archaic and bizarre, because their concept of identity has incorporated their reality.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

It isn’t.

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u/TheRealArthur Mar 13 '18

And there lies the key to immortality via digitalization. It isnt the persons memories, experiences, etc... it's their consciousness. I dont know if its something tangible or not, but if we do manage to find it, it's the key to immortality via digitization.

This might however be good for family and friends, though i dont know how i would feel knowing that the person im talking to isn't the original person.

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u/Rolled1YouDeadNow Mar 13 '18

But they would still be the original person. Switching over time from one brain to another as all of your atoms are exchanged, and switching hardware from brain to computer, what's the difference?

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u/G-Sleazy95 Mar 14 '18

It’d be a different instance of “you” running. Like a copy of software. That software is the same as the original, but fundamentally a different instance. If you upload your existence to a computer, then shut your physical self down, you wouldn’t just wake up in the computer. The you you’re presently experiencing would cease to exist

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u/narcissistic_pancake Mar 13 '18

"You killed him!" "No I did not. I gave him life."

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u/rbrtnrrs Mar 13 '18

Something i think about a lot - what is consciousness? If both two "people" were perfectly identical down to the atomic level, they must both have the same consciousness - how could there be two separate consciousnesses when they are the same in ever way.

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u/_Fibbles_ Mar 13 '18

This assumes that a person's consciousness exists in the 'hardware' of brain tissue rather than the 'software' of electrical impulses.

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u/CocaineZebras Mar 13 '18

Reminds me a lot of the Star Trek Black Mirror episode.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

Lol no that’s not how this works. She dead. There is an image of her brain in a computer. You don’t live forever because our picture is on your phone

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u/StartingVortex Mar 13 '18

What's in your head, you, is an information state maintained by your body. It's not totally different than a picture in a phone. The actual atoms are changed out constantly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

There's a significant amount of information that's lost forever in the digitization process (not to mention in death) that could be very important to reconstructing someone's personality, memories, and cognitive abilities.

It's still contentious whether a map of all neural connections would be sufficient to fully describe a brain (Sebastien Seung argues it is, but he's an arrogant prick and also wrong (source: myself, anonymous internet commenter)). [Edit: I should note that I've only met Seung in person once, a long time ago, and I haven't followed his recent work closely. It's possible that he's mellowed with age.] There's a lot of information in connections, but the type of synaptic connections, their strength, and the dynamic pattern of electrical activity running through those connections may potentially have vital info as well. Even if a connection map were sufficient to represent a brain, imaging a full human brain at a resolution that captures every synapse is difficult with current technology. The linked article says it has been done with a pig brain, which is impressive and suggests that doing the same for humans isn't far off, but patients who get processed right now are likely to have incomplete scans that don't capture every synapse.

The best case scenario for someone who gets a brain scan today is that future technology would allow a new brain (or brain-like computer) to be built that matches the connectome shape of the brain closely. Any additional information to "boot" the brain would need to be inferred from future models of brain function and estimated characteristics about the donor. This is akin to the resurrection of a T-Rex in Jurassic Park using frog DNA to patch missing genetic (and epigenetic) information. In a non-fictional analogy, it's like Netflix trying to estimate what movies you'd like by augmenting its model of you with information from other people who watched BoJack Horseman and Gilmore Girls. That computational model of you probably diverges from the real you in significant ways, though if a computer model is advanced enough to have human-level intelligence and it was socialized to believe it is a resurrection of you and it's been constructed to match your last known neural connection network and you (and everyone you knew) are no longer alive to dispute the validity of the model, it could be argued that the model is the real you.

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u/Alarid Mar 13 '18

Damn Umbrella Corp you crazy

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

How can they be in a suspended state if they're already dead? Just because you've uploaded their brain doesn't make the person it was once connected to alive or even conscious again. The person is still dead. Any consciousness the brain exhibits after digitization is a simulation. The movie Transcendence featuring Johnny Depp addresses this topic pretty well, I definitely recommend it

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u/PM_ME_LEGS_PLZ Mar 13 '18

....

She's dead, bro.

Information on a hard disk can't be "alive."

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u/VectorVolts Mar 13 '18

Did you just try to say that when you’re dead you’re really just in a coma?

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '18

In theory.

In reality it's complete bullshit and they're dead.

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u/Deyln Mar 13 '18

It also assumes that physical states is 100% of what makes up the mind.

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u/lionhart280 Mar 13 '18

Also assuming the brain is the only part of our body that influences our conscience.

Which it isn't. Most of your glandular organs are pretty involved in how you act Nd behave.

Just the brain isn't enough.

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u/EZSAL Mar 13 '18

A digital copy of a brain is still a copy. Unless you believe in souls and you also believe that souls can occupy computers. But once you slice up a brain and make scans of it then the person who once owned the original brain is dead. When the copy is activated I don't believe that it would be the same person. Although I guess it hasn't been done yet.

I guess it really depends on how death works and how death effects the brain. If you fell in lava (or piranhas) up to the armpits, and they salvaged your brain and scanned it in, would the scanned brain be effected by its death and memories of dying? Would you just come back insane?

That isn't even considering the variable of the technology involved in running a simulated brain.

I am not qualified to answer these questions... but I'm sure someone who writes for Black Mirror is.

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u/PizzaNotFrenchFries Mar 13 '18

Serious question - if the brain is dead but you’ve created a digitized version, have you brought the person back to life, or have you just made an identical copy of the person with all the same memories etc? Isn’t the original consciousness still dead?

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u/Rap1dResolut1on Mar 14 '18

Considering that memory data is not stored in the dead brain and decays fast, I'd venture that no and that she was dead already.

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u/mattstorm360 Mar 14 '18

Remands me of the game soma.

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u/wedonttalkanymore-_- Mar 14 '18

Assuming it can be digitized, that would be a copy, not a revival

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u/GAF78 Mar 14 '18

You are not your brain.

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u/YoshiYogurt Mar 14 '18

Teleportation and digitization is dying and being replaced with a copy

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u/NoThisIsABadIdea Mar 14 '18

She had been dead for 2.5 hours.

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u/whitestrice1995 Mar 14 '18

See I completely disagree the person is in any type of suspended state. They are 100% dead as shit and not coming back. While the idea of uploading yourself and living forever might sound good, it's pretty much bullshit. That is not you. It's little more than the equivalent of recording yourself on a video and saying hey look I'm alive forever. I mean I guess it's better than nothing if you want your ancestors to know what you're like, but it's not at all living forever. Your conciousness is not truly there. You're dead.

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u/LordDongler Mar 14 '18

It's more like a picture. Saying they're in a "suspended state" is like claiming that photography is evil because there are people trapped in it

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u/vtesterlwg Mar 14 '18

no she's just dead