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Interesting thoughts.

Reminds me of Donald Davidson's 'Swampman' thought experiment.

Worth a read if you have never come across it:

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

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What if you copied your self to a machine and the machine decided it didn't want to have anything to do with you and your wife? What if it fell in love with another machine and they ran off to Tahiti together? Or to Mars, or Jupiter? Could it demand child support payments from you until it reaches 18 years of age? Could a copy of yourself enter into legal contract for you or on your behalf, or would it exist as a completely free and independent entity? If you saved yourself every 5 years or so, would the earlier copies have to be destroyed, or would they continue to live and grow on their own?

Sounds like a good premise for a sci-fi story.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Originally Posted By: Amaranth Rose II
What if you copied your self to a machine and the machine decided it didn't want to have anything to do with you and your wife? What if it fell in love with another machine and they ran off to Tahiti together? Or to Mars, or Jupiter? Could it demand child support payments from you until it reaches 18 years of age? Could a copy of yourself enter into legal contract for you or on your behalf, or would it exist as a completely free and independent entity? If you saved yourself every 5 years or so, would the earlier copies have to be destroyed, or would they continue to live and grow on their own?


Okay, stop already, you're making my brain hurt smile

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Quote:
The difference is murder: Seriously!

Surely a system that could read the signals in the brain with the exactitude necessary to recreate those signals in another system would have to be so invasive as to destroy the original tissue.

But is it murder? You find yourself in the machine. You have lots of sensors hooked up to you, you have plenty of interesting reading material on your harddrive, and you have the ability to explore places you could never have gone before. You're happy as a clam. (A digitized computerized clam, but a clam nonetheless.) Are you dead? I wouldn't think so: You have the same drives and emotions as before the transfer. So where's the murder?

And what's running on the machine? The same program that was running in wetware is now running in hardware. Just because you port a video game from PC to Mac doesn't mean that the program itself must be fundamentally different. So now that you've ported from wetware to hardware, aren't you still you? The same program on a different machine?

Sounds like a soul, to me. And like a program. And I'm not sure there's a difference.

w

Last edited by Wayne Zeller; 03/22/07 05:01 PM.
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Originally Posted By: Wayne Zeller
Surely a system that could read the signals in the brain with the exactitude necessary to recreate those signals in another system would have to be so invasive as to destroy the original tissue.

Maybe not. Already we see Nuclear Magnetic Resonance equipment producing incredibly detailed images of internal anatomy, quite harmlessly.

"You find yourself in the machine."

I wonder. Do you? Is it you, or have you ceased to exist, and someone else is in the machine with your memories?


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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are you sure that the brain and thoughts are the same? are you really sure that brain or DNA or whatever is what makes us who we are?
i know that may sound not scientific enough and that most of you wont agree with this, but can anyone actually dispute it?
besides, no mater how sofisticated machine you are, will the touch, the smell, the music, the feeling be the same as you remember it?

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"are you sure that the brain and thoughts are the same?"

'Mind and brain seem to be separate' says professor
http://thepsychictimes.com/articles/fenwick.htm


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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redewenur - quote from the article you told me to look:
Now, you can't say these are transcendent experiences because the people are unconsciousness. You can't say they are psychological because the brain isn't working. You can look at physiological models as to what state the brain is in, and if the brain function won't support the experience you have to argue that mind and brain are separate.
"So, let's look at the physiological state of the brain and body at the time of reported NDEs. No detectable cardiac output, no respiratory output - they certainly weren't breathing. Neither did they have any brain stem reflexes - in other words they was no activity whatsoever in the brain.
"The NDE experiencers say that they didn't have the experience before the heart attack occurred. We know that it couldn't have occurred during the recovery of consciousness because in such cases the mind is very confused and the reported experiences are very lucid and clear.
"So we are left with a real scientific problem. It looks as if what the NDE experiencers are saying is probably correct. Now, if that's true then you have to say some very fundamental things about brain and mind. That carries a huge cost and consequence for science. So research in this area has to be done properly. But it looks as if mind and brain - if the data is correct - are separate."

now, i cant safely speek about this with knowledge i have, but the fact is that there were certain experiments and events that confirm this and are not likely to be explained. also, there are certain informations about free forms of energy that people like to call ghosts and which can be related to this phenomena.
NDE could be, but doesn't have to be connected to God or spiritual world, could be some chemical reaction that occurs in millisecond (or less), a protein, a hormon...they say it can't be, but how can they be sure? the brain is not yet explained!

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The brain, the mind, consciousness, are very much a mystery. I try hard to keep my ideas consistent with scientifically derived knowledge. On the other hand, I once had one of those infamous precognitive dreams. Not only did it turn the standard idea of consciousness on its head, it did the same for time and space. It concerned about 20 minutes of time from a place 5000 miles away and 18 months in the future. So you see, I'm compelled adopt a non-standard view.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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redewenur: I try hard to keep my ideas consistent with scientifically derived knowledge. On the other hand, I once had one of those infamous precognitive dreams.

that's my problem too! but it didn't happen once.
sometimes a dream, sometimes a thought (you know, when the phone is ringing and you think on someone and it turns up to be him calling). even worst things than that. but as you said I try hard to keep my ideas consistent with scientifically derived knowledge.
who knows, maybe that can be explained scientifically but it's way out of our time?

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Redewenur wrote:
"So you see, I'm compelled adopt a non-standard view."

Alternatively, of course, you might just consider how many dreams you have that were not worthy of remembering and no precognitive and consider that the one or handful of exceptions are merely coincidental.


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and what if precognitive dreams hapen more than "normal dreams"?
can they be considered coincidental then?

few days ago there was some show on Discovery and it was about parapsychology. they mentioned those cards used in tests (not sure what their name is - they show a star, a circle, curved lines, square...), anyway, they said that if you guess more then 9 cards of 25 that it is not the coincidence and you have some kind of "abilities".
what's your opinion about that?

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Show me somebody who can prove that they have precog dreams more frequently than normal dreams and then we can talk about that. Until such a person appears, you might as well ask, "What if a person could fly like Superman? Then would you believe people could fly that way?"

As for the cards, every week in lotteries around the world, people pick far more correct numbers than are statistically likely. We call them lottery winners, not psychics.

You show me a person that can pick more than 9 out of the 25, and do it every time without fail 50 times in a row and then maybe we'll talk. But even then, it is not statistically impossible - it's still attributable to amazing luck. (But at least I'd be forced to admit something was probably up.) Doing it once, twice, even three times in a row is just very, very lucky.

I love the Discovery Channel. They show some great shows and can be very educational. They also show some shows that are out to make ratings by appealing to the gullible. The big problem is that many of the latter are disguised as the former. I wish there was a good, hard science channel. The closest thing I know of is the NASA Channel, but so much of their schedule is filled with watching paint dry that I rarely even look for it any more.

(How incredibly cool it would be to have the "Peer Reviewed Channel"!!! Make the shows interesting and exciting like many of the Discovery Channels good science shows, but only allow content that has been vetted by appropriate scientists. Now THAT would be a popcorn and Coke channel to watch!)

w

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Wayne: Show me somebody who can prove that they have precog dreams more frequently than normal dreams and then we can talk about that.

making notes about dreams every time you wake up and tracking them isn't impossible. by doing that for a year, two, you'll see are they consistent. if the outcome of precog dreams is amazingly high, you'll repeat the test. and again, and again... but you can't keep repeating them forever (even if you don't like the idea that precognitions are possible).

i'm not saying they are!
just that experiments are possible. and experimenting to disprove something are part of the science, right?

Wayne: I wish there was a good, hard science channel.

i know...
apsolutely agree!!

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But quantum, the experiments ARE being done. For decades people have been doing experiments to find evidence of things like precog dreams. People HAVE been writing down their dreams and comparing them to reality. It isn't that the experiments aren't being done, it's that they have had nothing but negative results. The few times where a positive seemed to exist, it quickly evaporated. Some people got lucky, but luck never lasts. (I love Penn Jillette's take on luck: "Luck is statistics taken personally.")

Princeton University has even had a dedicated laboratory called PEAR, for Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research. They studied the paranormal for 28 years, involving millions of trials. They are now shutting down because of finances. If they had positive results I seriously doubt they'd have any financial woes - the government would be throwing money at them hand over fist.

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Originally Posted By: Wayne Zeller
And what's running on the machine? The same program that was running in wetware is now running in hardware. Just because you port a video game from PC to Mac doesn't mean that the program itself must be fundamentally different. So now that you've ported from wetware to hardware, aren't you still you? The same program on a different machine?


This is one of the fundamental problems with trying to understand something as fiendishly complex as the mind. You say 'Wetware' as if it is a direct couterpart to 'Hardware'. Before computers, people thought of the mind as some sort of system similar to valves & transistors. It has always been seen in terms of the prevailing technology.

The minds ability to compute seemingly has little in common with current hardware, and our ability to upload it is absolutely zilch.

We may never be able to 'upload' it to anything else until we are in a position to actually grow our own organic brains. I suspect 'Hardware' will never do it.

See:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070227105247.htm

I have posted it on the science board. Brains are more chaotic than we previously thought.

And I'm sure we still don't have half the story.

Hardware will find it difficult to simulate the plasticity of the brain.

A blow to the hard materialist's view of the brain is emerging from Neuroscience:

"Collectively, the findings of the neuroimaging studies reviewed here strongly support the view that the subjective nature and the intentional content (what they are ?about? from a first-person perspective) of mental processes (e.g., thoughts, feelings, beliefs, volition) significantly influence the various levels of brain functioning (e.g., molecular, cellular, neural circuit) and brain plasticity. Furthermore, these findings indicate that mentalistic variables have to be seriously taken into account to reach a correct understanding of the neural bases of behavior in humans."

It seems that mental events are themselves somehow distinct from physical events and actually have the ability to alter the physical makeup of the brain.

How does hardware emulate that?

Blacknad.

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I was merely using "hardware" to mean whatever machine we can come up with with better longevity or better resistance to the elements than our own brain.

Whether that's silicone (doubtful) or a "string net liquid" (maybe) or some material we have yet to discover/develop (most likely), the question remains - what is the entity in the contruct?

My point is that our minds seem to be programs running in a natural quantum computer right now. Porting that to another platform begs the question: What are we porting?

Whether or not it is or ever will be possible to port it is beside the point. DA Morgan suggested that we'll leave our bodies behind to explore the universe. That's great. What part of us will we be at that point? If we still exist after being ported into a piece of hardware, then an atheist would theorize that we are the same piece of software running on a new computer. A theist might say our souls have inhabited the computer. I say, "What's the difference."

This is a the kind of question that illuminates that area between science and religion. They aren't mutually exclusive. When faced with a question like this, the atheist becomes unccomfortable and dismisses it with a joke about his wife cheating on him with his digital clone. The theist gets upset that you could talk about a soul like a program and dismisses it as science fiction. But it could be a real thing in our future, and it becomes a question that must be faced by anybody not deluding themselves into thinking that they have the corner on truth.

Is science or religion right?
Is homosexuality nature or nurture?
Is killing in the name of patriotism right or wrong?
... I could go on ad infinitum, but all these questions have the same answer: "Yes!"

Too often we blind ourselves to the other side of the argument because we want a black & white world. Rarely does a complex question have a binary answer. Until we learn to see the commonalities, we'll be cursed with only half an understanding.

w


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The reality of human interaction with and understanding of dreaming is that it has been pseudoscience going back to the dawn of time.

Don't dream and you will be psychotic in a matter of days. That has been established. But dreams have no known value in a scientific in the context of using them to in the way that people often try.

To ascribe value to dreams is no different from ascribing values to getting stoned on acid. The relationship between what one experiences and reality is the stuff from which UFOs and Easter Bunnies are made.


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Hey, man, don't knock the Easter Bunny. He's agreed to pilot my ship back to the motherplanet next year.


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DA.

"Alternatively, of course, you might just consider how many dreams you have that were not worthy of remembering and no precognitive and consider that the one or handful of exceptions are merely coincidental."

- I have no problem with that, as a matter of good sense and logic. With one exception.

"The reality of human interaction with and understanding of dreaming is that it has been pseudoscience going back to the dawn of time."

- Agreed.

"Don't dream and you will be psychotic in a matter of days. That has been established. But dreams have no known value in a scientific in the context of using them to in the way that people often try."

- Agreed

"To ascribe value to dreams is no different from ascribing values to getting stoned on acid."

- as a generalisation, probably true.

"The relationship between what one experiences and reality is the stuff from which UFOs and Easter Bunnies are made."

- I wouldn't go that far. We've evolved, survived and over-populated quite well using our experiential interpretation of reality; but not without applying reason, of course.

It was in springtime of 1973. This was the dream:

I was wandering among crowds of people. To my left, at some distance, was the sea. To my right were low hills. Among the hills, people were climbing over and around the remains of walls. The clothing of these people was light, suitable for summer. I left them and walked toward the sea. When I arrived there, I saw, on the beach, a structure resembling a stepped pyramid. Standing in front of this was a dark-skinned soldier in khaki uniform and pith helmet. He stood to attention and held a rifle. I looked out to sea, and as I did so, regiments of black specks appeared on the horizon. These black objects were terrifyingly sinister - an embodiment of ultimate nastiness. Row after row appeared. They were moving quickly, directly toward the coast. They were all of identical menacing shape. The people nearby began running from the beach. - End of dream.

About a year later, my wife and I went to a travel agent in Great Russell Street, London, to book a flight to Malaysia. It was to be a three month holiday. As we reached the agent?s shop, and I had my hand on the door, about to enter, my wife said something like, ?Wouldn?t it be great if we could go by car!? We never entered the shop. I stopped and said that maybe we could, let?s go and think about it. So we walked toward Trafalgar Square, excitedly discussing how we might go about the adventure. With hindsight, the ideas I had for modifying my car were very unrealistic. Furthermore, I was hardly a motor mechanic. Eventually we found an advertisement in Time Out magazine for bus trips to India. That, we decided, was the way to go. On 19 October 1974, we were sitting in a coach, awaiting departure to Dover. Five adventure-filled weeks later, we reach New Delhi. We stayed in India for three weeks while waiting for our ship to Malaysia. In Madras, we visited a tourist office and were given the usual sort of information about places of interest. One of these was on the coast ? a town called Mahabalipuram. We arrived at Mahabalipuram by bus. Leaving the bus, we joined many other people who were meandering toward some nearby low hills, to our right. My wife and I were, no doubt, a little tired and irritable, possibly through so much journeying, camping, sleeping on buses, and not infrequent stomach upsets. For whatever excuse, we began to argue, she insisting that we follow a particular group with their courier, who was giving an interesting account of the archeological site (with it's remains of walls etc.), and I that we should take a look at the beach. Finally, I left her with them, and walked to the beach. There, on the beach, was a temple, in the shape of a stepped pyramid. I was suddenly gripped by remorse and I hurried away from the beach to find my wife. As I approached the road, before the hills, I saw a bus departing. It had only one passenger ? my wife.

A few details: There was no soldier at the temple; there were no black clouds; people didn't run from the beach. These 'symbols' were consistent with the emotions experienced in the actual event.

OK, there was a happy ending to the story, but there?s no need to go on.

Those are the facts. Make of them what you will. I have no axe to grind - other than to establish scientific 'truth' which, as any scientist knows, is always limited.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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