Can minds be uploaded in computers?
The idea runs around of loading minds up in computers. It's a recurring theme in SF culture and thought about the technological possibilities in the future. We can read on Wikipedia:
"Mind uploading, also known as whole brain emulation (WBE), is the theoretical futuristic process of scanning a physical structure of the brain accurately enough to create an emulation of the mental state (including long-term memory and "self") and transferring or copying it to a computer in a digital form."
I wonder if this can be done, even in principle. It presupposes that mind can be extracted, collected, and injected. I think mind is bounded to a living brain, and the living body and world the body walks around in.
Also, a simulation isn't the same as that what's simulated. Even if the causal structures of neurons are visible in the simulation, if you replace my brain by the computer on which its simulated, so my body behaves like me, there would be no mind left. It may seem so by the body's behavior but looks can deceive. In a dream you encounter people that behave as if they have minds but they don't. I can be conscious without showing but showing doesn't imply mind. The brain simulates. So a simulated brain would be a simulated simulation device. And what to think of the impossibility to create a neuron in a lab, let alone 80 billion connected living ones?
So what to think of the conjecture about mind uploading?
"Mind uploading, also known as whole brain emulation (WBE), is the theoretical futuristic process of scanning a physical structure of the brain accurately enough to create an emulation of the mental state (including long-term memory and "self") and transferring or copying it to a computer in a digital form."
I wonder if this can be done, even in principle. It presupposes that mind can be extracted, collected, and injected. I think mind is bounded to a living brain, and the living body and world the body walks around in.
Also, a simulation isn't the same as that what's simulated. Even if the causal structures of neurons are visible in the simulation, if you replace my brain by the computer on which its simulated, so my body behaves like me, there would be no mind left. It may seem so by the body's behavior but looks can deceive. In a dream you encounter people that behave as if they have minds but they don't. I can be conscious without showing but showing doesn't imply mind. The brain simulates. So a simulated brain would be a simulated simulation device. And what to think of the impossibility to create a neuron in a lab, let alone 80 billion connected living ones?
So what to think of the conjecture about mind uploading?
Comments (343)
In the case of the organic-brain one, I guess we continue to assume it's conscious, but what do we assume about the digital-brain one? If it's being simulated on a computer, then you have a situation where if you have enough electronic switches (or Q-bits?) and turn them off and on in a certain way, you have...the subjective experience of a sunset?...the pain of stubbing a toe?...the taste of chocolate ice cream? Can conscious experience be created that way? If I just put enough logic gates together and manipulate them in certain way(s), voila! conscious experience? That seems absurd to me.
I question this.
If I write down all my concepts, ideas, other information in a book, is that book now my mind? Is not the information processor also required to be added to the book, in order to even begin to consider it as a mind?
Extensive development on this type of technology remains undone
There would need to be similar cognitive architectures, brain and machine wise
. What would such a machine look like?
1. As noted, it would have to emulate the brain. Starting from scratch, the emulated brain would have to mimic most if not all neuro-structure and neuro-chemical behavior. It would basically be a computerized copy. This is the copy concept of mind-uploading.
2. The second type of mind uploading is direct brain to machine insertion. In the prequels to the Dune series, there are beings known as Cymeks who are machines with human brains. These implanted brains are in a fluid and connect through various outlets to the machine body.
3. Thirdly, there is machines being put in brains, rather than brains put into machine(see 2) There is multiple patent devices and actually constructed one's that in theory can be implanted in the brain that would replace some specialized brain function. As in the case of the "artificial hippocampus", Elon Musk's neurolink, and some others.
There are metaphysical conundrums with this kind of technology but I will not elicit further obstacles or posit solutions in this comment. Why? I am sure its been done here before.
It cannot be done for the same reason disembodied brains show no mental states. Mental states are a one-to-one ratio to states of the body as a functioning whole.
Chalmer and Deutsch have some pretty weird thoughts on the subject. Fact is that a simulated simulation process like happens in a brain is no real simulation.
Lewin Genidentity -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genidentity
So, no, I highly doubt it.
Thanks for the link!
The information processor is, to my reckoning, generic i.e. nothing about it identifies an individual as distinct from another. If we all think logically, we assume we do, then inputting the same premises will lead to the same conclusion. In other words what distinguishes you from me is the content of our minds.
I read a New Scientist article recently that suggested that if all current technologies in the area are taken into account, the first person to live to between 135 and 170 years is alive today.
I assume that person will be one of the richest. The majority of the planet will be lucky to get close to the traditional threescore and ten.
Notable examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, airplanes, offices, and dining rooms, as well as the fetishization and attempted construction of Western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with sticks for rifles and use military-style insignia and national insignia painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, thereby treating the activities of Western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting the cargo.
________________________
I see similarities between the cargo cults and the absurd, unscientific fantasy of mind-uploading.
Fantastic! All for the sake of cargo?
I can see the similarities. The mind uploaders are the cargo cultivists.
This is error in thinking. No, it could not be done because perception doesn't happen only in the brain -- but through other organs as well. The brain is not a depository of a complete picture or story that one could extract and upload somewhere. Your amputated arm would itch still. The roughness of a surface doesn't reside in the brain, but in the touch -- the fingers bring alive the sensation of roughness, and once you're not touching that surface anymore, the brain won't retain the roughness. We have memory of how a sandpaper feels, true, but that memory would not translate, if you tried to extract roughness through the brain, it would not translate into "roughness".
In what format are they thinking of uploading the mind? .docx? or .exe? .jpg? :wink:
It's a non-starter because it assumes 'substance dualism' which is inconsistent with both the 'principle of causal closure' and 'conservation laws'. I think a more plausible conjecture is a brain transplant into a synthetic body or machine-system.
Très bien, mon ami!
Simple! To add, we may need to transplant our GI tract too. You know, to not lose our gut instincts! :grin:
Causal closure and energy conservation are no problem for mind extraction. If my soul is sucked out of me, my brain and body just move on in darkness. The pre-established harmony will just be broken.
Quoting 180 Proof
.hahastillhere
Well, that's great, but I feel it's advisable to get the opinion of an immortal before we get all busy trying to upload our minds onto all kinds of stuff (the process began in earnest with paper). What if we succeed and someone comes up to us and says "Eternal life...not what you think!"? :chin:
Well, for a start, we can tell him to fuck off :smirk: ...
Quoting 180 Proof
I can't believe that someone in here could ask such a question! :gasp:
Yes Alkis, someone finally did! :smile:
Or did you mean all in here are mindless?
I like the way you took it, because indeed it was a little offensive, although I was not addressing to you, personally and my remark was not a criticism but it came from a real surprise. I see questions like these very often in Quora but this is not a philosophical forum/community: All kinds of people participate in it. That's why I specified "in here". Anyway, I'm sorry if I have offended you.
I will also explain my surprise:
1) People in general try to assign to Artificial Intelligence (including robots), computers, etc. all kinds of qualities, features and abilities of the human mind, including thinking, rationalization, imagination, feeling and emotions, morality and so on. This huge mistake comes from misunderstanding or not really knowing what both the mind and computer are and do.
2) I have I heard about "uploading" the brain or the mind to a computer hundreds of times. It sounds totally ridiculous for someone knows what a mind and a computer are and how they work. So, I believe that if someone originates a discussion regarding this subject, he should know well these things. I mean, esp. in here. Because, outside "in the world", one can hear a lot of nonsense.
It happens that I am an IT person and I also know a lot about the mind and how it works. So, most probably, because of this and also the huge amount of nonsense I have heard on the subject, I use to overreact to considerations, propositions and sometimes allegations, such as the one of this topic ...
To me, it sounds as the most possible scenario,so far, for humans to achieve some kind of "immortality". At consciousness level at least. Don't know if that could be via uploading mind on computers or transplanting brains into machines or whatever.
But in general consciousness has much better chances to remain in a way immortal, rather than body itself. The problem is, how you replicate general body functions that play their role in brain(which is the organ for consciousness) processes also, into a synthetic machine?? Still a lot to be answered.
I don't believe in it either and consider it total nonsense but then why Wiki puts it that way? Mind upload.
You think it's possible to program a mind in a robot body?
hahaha! :lol:
Awesome! :up:
Gibberish is the only language we can apply if we want to describe what is meant by mind transfer or de- and upload. The way Wikipedia describes it is no upload.
But many individuals in the world of Artificial Intelligence, genetic engineering, cybernetics, electronic/quantum/biological computing, physics/chemistry/biology do think that transplanting the human brain into an alternate container to continue an individual consciousness IS plausible.
I agree that extracting an individual consciousness from an organic brain and 'downloading' it is a much harder problem as there is still so much we don't know about the workings of the brain but we will advance in our ability to emulate the brain.
How far do you think we could advance transhumanism in the next 1000000 years of scientific endeavor. If it's true that the first person to live to between 130 and 170 years is alive today then what do you personally think human lifespan may be, 1 million years from now.
I understand you may choose not to speculate but I do choose to speculate such as do many others, including those who Quoting Alkis Piskas
If we do ever achieve consciousness downloads or a human brain contained in a fully cybernetic body or a brain transplanted into a cloned body etc I wonder if all the theists will refuse to take part?
I think it's more likely that they will claim such technologies as 'inspired by god, all part of its cunning plan.' They might insist that the file extension be called
.godwantsitthisway
could be shortened to just
.god
which might stand for genetically organised download.
Okay, I might have taken my attempt at humour too far! :blush:
I got carried away because my career was teaching computing science and you laughed a wee bit at my .hahastillhere joke. :smile:
Good that you don't believe it!
As for Wiki, although I generally trust it for a lot of things, I have found a lot of insufficient, inaccurate and false data, based mainly on ignorance. Note that it, besides proved data, it also contains opinions. So, I couldn't abide to a motto such as "If it is written in Wikipedia, it means it is true".
I don't know what does "mind" mean to you, but the functioning of robots, like computers, is based on electronic circuits. And these circuits work on the basis of rudimentary and logic (AND, OR, XOR, etc.), which are reduced into 0/1 states. This occurs at a "low level". At a higher level, human beings use programming, which can involve quite sophisticated and intelligent algorithms, and this programming --software-- is then "translated" into low level commands for the computer/robot firmware and hardware.
I don't know what kind of individuals are you referring to. Anyway, as I already said, if someone knows well what computers amdna mind are and how they work, cannot even think about such a thing. I have already explained the reason why in detail with facts. (At least, the computer part, which is much easier. I leave it to your reasoning and imagination trying to fit the human mind --with all its complexities, features and abilities-- into a computer chip! :smile:)
On the other hand, one could say that "Nothing is impossible" or "Everything is possible", which are also empty statements and prove nothing. That's why sci-fi exists: to satisfy such imaginative persons! :smile:
(If you had the same knowledge in both fields as I do, you would most probably say the same things.)
That's true you don't and I can't/won't provide their names, contact details and qualifications here.
I know how computers work and no one yet knows fully how the human brain works, including you.
Why do you limit your thinking to downloading a single human consciousness onto what is currently identified/labeled 'a computer chip?' Who suggested that?
That seems rather restricted, unlikely and simplistic contemporary thinking.
We have made astonishing breakthroughs in the past. Do you really think that we never will again?
Do you think human scientific endeavor will simply not achieve a full understanding of how the human brain works and be able to 'replicate it?' Even if we consider a timescale such as a million years of scientific effort?
What do you think you know about human consciousness that proves that downloading an individual human consciousness and storing it outside the vessel of the traditional physical human body with triune brain, is impossible?
How often has sci-fi become sci-fact? I think often enough is the answer.
Probably the label 'computer chip,' will be as technically advanced to the transhumans of 1m years from now, as the label 'sharpened flint,' is to us now.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
No, I wouldn't as I am not you and don't think like you.
I didn't say "fully" --that would be foolish-- I said "well". Huge difference. Try to duplicate what people are writing. It helps using TPF Quote feature to quote exactly the other person's words.
Quoting universeness
I don't. This was just an example.
Quoting universeness
I don't. And it's irrelevant to my point.
Quoting universeness
It has already a very good undestanding of the brain. Very little though about the mind.
Quoting universeness
I know enough to exclude such a possibility. You also know that, only you don't allow yourself discover it because you are based on false assumptions. E.g. that consciousness is of a material nature.
Quoting universeness
Often. But this is is also irrelevant to my point.
Quoting universeness
Certainly not., since you don't have "the same knowledge in both fields as I do".
But again, you missed my point. It was a way of saying, not to be taken literally.
I think I have answered all the questions of your "questionnaire". That was quite long. So, please don't ask me more questions! :smile:
Nice to meet you. Yeah, cause you got the joke, too.
Those are great extensions, btw!
Cause I was thinking of some good ones:
.foolish
.fake
:lol: Careful, we don't want to entice others and incite a 'who can come up with the best file extension or file name with extension for a future downloaded human consciousness competition'
How about:
DonaldTrump.awForFu**Sake
:lol:
I don't wanna get uploaded in that file! The chips might explode!
I bet the whole computer including the chip, would turn bright orange with a yellow top and its first communication would be
"Seriously folks, this is the best, most wonderful chip of all the chips that have ever existed in a Universe full of chips, really folks, its the truth, it really is, all those other chips are just .fake and .foolish chips @L'éléphant"
:lol:
Would be a nice sketch!
The reduction to 0/1 states occurs in our minds, and not in the physics of the machine.
You can see and try to understand these words. That exemplifies "mind". Unlike a computer, your mind is in the physics (biochemistry) of the brain.
Anybody who thinks you could load a mind into a digital computer in the way you suggest doesn't understand how either brains or computers work.
Do you mean that when we switch a light on/off and its result, when we turn a device on/off and its result, etc. occur in our minds only?
Quoting Daemon
I do undestand them. Do you?
Quoting Daemon
Well, show me where imagination, logical thinking, crativity, etc, take place in the brain ...
Quoting Daemon
You missed in that, too. I am a professional programmer and work with computers since 1982!
@Daemon, I can see that you have no idea what either the brain or the mind are. And most probably, you don't know either how a computer --which is the subject in question here-- works.
So, try not to pass your ignorance and delusions onto others. You just make your case worse.
Alkis, Alkis, sorry, but I think we should show Daemon some gratitude! I think he's right that the 0's and 1's in a computer are just patterns of voltages without intrinsic value or direct connection to the world. Computers function differently from the brain. There is no program stored in the brain, operating on the spike potentials and directing them around. The neural network itself guides the potentials and the strengthening between neurons affects the running around of patterns, not a program stored in another part of the brain, like in computers. The brain has a dynamic memory capacity of 10exp(10exp20)! A computer chip, max 10exp25? You can store a number of books on a chip, or whatever kind of information you assign (another difference between brain and computer!) but in the dynamic brain, every neuron can be involved in many different memories. Memory in the brain is not stored like static 1's and 0's.
I would, if he weren't blame others for his ignorance, as I said.
See, there are different ways to make a point, which are totally acceptable. Like yours, for instance.
Quoting Haglund
Well, I already said that I know computers well. I actually work with computers. And of course I know that the brain works digfferently, although I don't have the same experience and knowledge about it; not even close.
And I never said that the brain works on a 0/1 basis like a computer's hardware. But I know that the brain works on an automatic stimulus-response mechanism, which is much more complicated that a 0/1 mechanism. And that it can be programmed to function automatically without thinking. Example when we wash our teeth, we are walking, etc, we don't think how to do that. Because the brain does not think. We --and esp. the mind-- think. This is the difference between brain and mind. They are two different and separate things.
Of course, you seem to know more details about how the brain works, but this doesn't change the situation.
So, to come back to the subject ot the topic and to conclude:
It is ridiculous to think that our minds can be uploaded to computers, since they cannot even be "uploaded" to our brains, which are much more sophisticated systems than computers.
That's the best argument so far, in my humble opinion! I think its an ridiculous statement too. I don't even think computers or robots can be made conscious. Good to know there is someone "on my side"! Especially as that comes from a specialist in IT! :wink: :up:
:pray: for your kind words. And I am :smile: to see people realizing these things ... There are not many, unfortunately ...
I started programming computers with assembly codes and then soon moved onto BBC BASIC.
Late 1970's. I then moved on to writing compilers for a while. After Uni I started to get involved in real computing science. In those days, Programming was often called 'monkey work.'
If your mind is not contained in your brain Alkis then where do you think it resides?
In what way are you using the label 'mind?' Are you using it as a synonymous label for your consciousness or do you have something else......in mind?
Quoting Haglund
The amount of memory that a particular electronic computer system can access is not limited. It's down to the number of processors you use, the amount of parallel processing you can employ and the ability of your low level and high level systems software to coordinate all of the hardware involved and provide an efficient HCI (Human Computer Interface)
The memory capacity of a human brain can easily be accommodated by TODAY's electronic computers.
We cant download the content of a human brain and emulate its workings because we have very limited knowledge of how a human brain functions. Object-oriented programming and heuristic programming are probably small increments on the correct path but as I have already stated, electronic two-state computing is not ever going to be able to download a human consciousness so you are correct in that but few people have ever suggested that it ever could but those who say it could NEVER be done despite the tiny green shoots popping through from developments in quantum and biological computing reminds me of the ancient mindsets who thought that leaving our caves was a bad idea.
A few thousand years from now, you and I will be considered ancients as will your thinking.
In a million years time (or maybe more,) I am sure the biological replicants containing one or more downloaded human consciousness which are traveling all over galactic and perhaps even intergalactic space will 'exchange information,' about the ancients that said this was all impossible.
It's very common for programmers not to understand how computers work. It isn't taught, even on university level computation courses.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
That's a very muddled question, I try to express myself more clearly than that.
To explain what I mean I can draw an analogy with an abacus. The beads on the abacus wire are analogous to the computer's electronic and mechanical components.
The abacus user may say that the bottom line of beads represents units. Here's the analogy with a computer:
This demonstrates what I meant by "The reduction to 0/1 states occurs in our minds, and not in the physics of the machine".
In the case of the abacus, the status of the bottom row of beads as representing units is analogous. It's in our minds, not in the physics of the abacus.
The most probable future scenario will be that people start realizing, after failed attempts to program consciousness, which is bound to non-programmed natural processes, and repeated confrontations with nature, inherent in the western ideal of so-called progress and technological development (which actually is a backwards development, a regress, throwing the natural paradise in the remorseless fire of progress and development) that it's a false ideal leading to a distancing from nature and eventually extinction. And not only of the human species (in which case it could be forgivable somehow) but of the largest part of creation.
The human species has survived over a 100 000 years already and the people back then were not significantly different from those now. The scientific culture is only 3000 years or so in existence. There are many non-scientific modes of being. A lot of them have stopped to exist in the name of "progress". Progress is not only finding new technology, new means of medicin, better rockets, cars, TV's, computers, etc. If that's your idea of progress then it's a very limited one. It's the western idea though. We even define era's by the technique or scientific knowledge of the that era. The atomic age, the computer age, the space age, the steam engine era, the radio- era, etc.
Saying everything will be accomplished and known in the future, as you do, is the easy way out and will lead to a self-fulfilling disaster. Science needs to be put in it's rightful place. As one culture amongst many. It should absolutely not be given political power as it has nowadays. It's fun to do science but it has it's limits and certainly not the answer to all questions.
The point with a collection 1's and 0's in a computer is that the pattern can mean anything.
The dynamic brain capacity is about 10exp(10ex20), a 1 followed by 10exp20 zeroes. Instead of the maximum for computer chips, a 1 followed by about 10exp2, i.e., 100 zeroes, the number of particles in the observable universe.
Draw your conclusion...
Interesting computers might be, especially the quantum ones, they reflect a way of thinking, not a process which reflects, or can reflect, consciousness. Like all technique, for that matter.
What do you mean by 'to program consciousness?'
Quoting Haglund
Perhaps you could give an example of this future 'transhuman' system you are trying to describe here?
Start with a human close to death. What transhuman scenario do you think would not be possible based on your vague description above?
I am all for protecting the Earth and all the flora and fauna on it but I dont think that bans the human race from making technological progress. What it should ban is nefarious b******** who nurture profit, influence and power above all else.
Quoting Haglund
What would you prefer the dark ages? the stone age? the age of kings? the age of empires? the age of stagnation?
Quoting Haglund
The situation you describe above is possible imo but will most likely take the lifespan of the Universe to achieve. I have only ever suggested a future situation when all questions have been answered as a comparator with the god omnis or an emergent panpsychism.
Quoting Haglund
Human brain storage capacity has been estimated by neuroscience at around 2.5 petabytes.
A single solid state drive can be bought for around £50 and can hold 1 terrabyte. 1024 of them is a petabyte. So 2560 current solid state drives connected together would have the same memory storage capacity as a human brain.
To make consciousness appear by programming a computer.
Quoting universeness
I'm not describing a transhuman system. I'm describing the impossibility of these. Transhuman creatures can not be made by man. The emergence of conscious creatures is a slow process taking place in the course of evolution. Its not a programmed process, a process driven by a stored program driving the material in a programmed way. A natural process unraveling, developing, is just different from a programmed process. There is no program executed after start button in the brain is pressed. You can't turn the brain on and off. Well, lots of off buttons actually... But you can't turn it on again...
Quoting universeness
Of course lots of questions can be answered. We can ask nature and she answers. A lot of these answers are given in artificial experiments. Which by the way exactly is the reason I consider science an art! Look at these beautiful experiments done! Einstein-Bose condensates, muon g2 experiments, the discovery of DNA (Watson and Crick didn't mention the female share!), all kinds of models of the unvisible world, the Webb telescope, the upcoming Roman, the parity violation experiment, etcetera, etcetera. An ode to human intelligence and invention. At the same time we know so little of the whole. I mentioned isolated succeses, of which there are plenty, but the natural processes can't be known by definition. The gods are no generally no help in getting to know what they created, but they give a reason science can't provide, and actually, thinking about it, if you know the gods you know the lives they made. And my cosmology is even inspired by them. One big bang is not enough for them.
Quoting universeness
Yes, that's true. But I mean the dynamic memory. The memory in the brain is not a static one, like on chips. By the Bekenstein limit, every volume of space can only contain a maximum of information. But the brain can harbor as many processes as there are in the universe. Implicitely. You can engrave zillions of patterns in it and each neuron is involved in all of them.
And still, your future view is a nice one. Fusion energy, space travel, new worlds to discover. Living 300 years, no diseases, new inventions, hyper computers, new technologies, new synthesizer drugs to experiment with the mind, clean cars, etcetera, you name it. But can we do that at the expense of nature. Isn't it better to cultivate the inner world, instead of stuffing up the world outside with our inventions? To be happy with paradise as it is, instead of trying to establish an artificial impoverished copy version?
God is dead but the gods live!
:up:
Quoting Haglund
Tell them, Haglund.
That is a very simple sentence and does not reflect the complexity involved. Its as simplistic and vague and meaningless as god made Adam from the dust and then breathed life into him (no halitosis involved I hope).
Quoting Haglund
So I take it that you think a human, alive today, that is 100% dependent on a heart pacemaker for their 'alive' status could not be labeled 'transhuman,' I think that is NOT an unreasonable label to apply in my opinion in such a case. They are at least more than the 'traditional' human.
Quoting Haglund
So how does genetic engineering fit in with your view above? Is genetic engineering not a case of 'editing the program.' If we can edit existing 'natural programs' and we know the code of the human genome, I would not be so sure, if I were you, that given enough time and scientists in the field, that we will never be able to write our own emulations of 'natural programming.
Quoting Haglund
I don't anthropomorphise nature in this way.
Quoting Haglund
Science is not an art, such statements are just fanciful.
Quoting Haglund
Yet we know the full human gnome! and we have cloned sheep and cattle and have genetically modified crops. We could not have such technologies if your statement above was accurate. You cant edit a process you don't know!
Quoting Haglund
Again you role-play with the god posit.
Quoting Haglund
You can overwrite the contents of electronic storage devices. ROM chips are static memory RAM chips are dynamic. The concept that a single neuron can be involved in more than one memory does not mean it can be involved in an infinite number of memories or else a brain would only need one neuron.
Superposition exists in science but that does not mean that the Universe is only made up of one fundamental unit in an infinity of superpositions and states.
Quoting Haglund
No, but we can achieve a better future in harmony with that which you label 'nature.'
Quoting Haglund
A = dead and A= alive ???
It reflects what is tried to be done. Consciously, explicitly designing a program according to which a flow of current or no current is forced to behave, which is different from the processes in a brain attached to a body walking around in a world and resonating with that world, a process which developed freely, unforced by a program.
Quoting universeness
With transhuman I don't mean people with pacemakers. I mean life made by man and superseding man.
Quoting universeness
DNA contains no program. Only the code or proteins the organism uses.
Quoting universeness
Me neither. But if we ask her in math she'll answer in math, or whatever language we ask.
Quoting universeness
Yes, but we don't know if the DNA has or hasn't been influenced by the organisms themselves or accidentally. It's just a DOGMA that DNA mutates by chance.
Quoting universeness
Science is an art.
Quoting universeness
Again, it's no role play. That's what you want it to be. Where is the evidence?
Quoting universeness
Yes. The God as you envision is dead. That omni super powerful moral superior being. The gods, on the other hand, live.
Your play.
Yes you can overwrite. But then the other memory is gone. Memories in the brain work differently. By connection strengths. One bit in a memory chip is involved in one memory only. One neuron in the brain is involved in innumerous many memories. One bit can be involved in more memories too, but they are unrelated, serial.
You type as if you understand the full workings of the human brain and no one currently does.
Quoting Haglund
People with pacemakers is a beginning. You are just saying you don't think a transhuman that equals and even supersedes the capabilities of today's individual human beings is or ever will be possible.
I think you are wrong. I have found your arguments against to be very unconvincing. I am sure you will say the same of my arguments. We can continue the dance but I think progress is highly unlikely.
It doesn't have to be, you can save it in backup archival, external electronic memory if you want to.
You can make as many backup copies as you like before you overwrite. Electronic memory can in fact be eidetic.
Human memory is also overwritten, with no backups possible. Eidetic/photographic memory in humans is not scientifically proven. Every tested case has failed.
I know how memory works. By reading, introspection, etc. you can get to know a lot! I just had an example. I forgot a word and was looking for it. On a page with text, the word popped up. It was written low on the page. Before I consciously read it. An example how the unconsciousness works.
If a memory forms, the width of neurotransmitter channels in synapses changes. Repeat something 100 times and that pattern is engraved in the strengths between neurons. The same neuron can be involved in more memories. At the same time.
So when you recognize something... click!... the scene "falls" in the trace.
Yes, that's true. But then you shift the problem to the backup chip.
Well, I saw a kid flying in a helicopter over a town. When back on the ground he drew the the helicopter sight in minitious detail.
:up:
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel-and-adventure/2017/11/incredible-british-artist-can-draw-whole-city-memory
It's said that he draws cityscapes after a brief glance, accurate down to the number of windows in buildings. Has that case failed?
Yeah :roll: and if you were thinking of a song and it suddenly comes on the radio then that's the gods, servicing your consciousness or perhaps not.
Quoting Haglund
What problem?
Quoting Haglund
Not impressed, If he flew over a thousand towns, over a thousand days and could then draw the one he saw based on my random number choice between 1 and 1000 then I might be more impressed as long as it was scientifically controlled and he was not secretly accessing a photo taken on the day.
Quoting Daemon
Equally not impressed for the same reason as above.
To answer with a little more detail. This is not evidence of an eidetic/photographic memory.
Perhaps he has a snapshot capability at best. Espionage agents are put through training to be able to recall a description of up to 30 random items scattered out on a table from a box for 20 or 30 seconds only. Some people can get very very good at honing some impressive recall skills or mathematical skill.
Some autistic individuals also demonstrate 'focussed,' brain ability.
So yes the artist you cite would fail a test for eidetic memory.
My point is that it is not evidence of an eidetic memory. I don't accept that it's evidence of photographic memory either as the two terms are traditionally synonymous. Someone with a photographic memory has to have full detailed recall of every 'snapshot' their eyes have taken in since the day they were born.
If they don't then they have something less than a photographic memory. They have a memory that can very quickly store the detail of a single, eye-inputted snapshot. You can train your brain to do that or you may indeed have a 'focussed,' ability but it is a quite limited ability that is not that impressive if you ask me. It's akin to advanced acrobatics or physical or mental olympic level ability.
Genius or individual unusual ability is just so, it is always unwise to suggest it should be projected into the supernatural. The natural is super enough we don't need the BS projections.
Why?
What I mean is, that it was on the bottom of my visual field already when it popped up. So my brain saw it.
Quoting universeness
The details all fitted.
I knew someone with such a memory. During my study, once in a while I studied together with a girl. You only had to show her a page for a small time and she could tell you what's on it. But apart from that, memory of a computer is a very different one. The brain reconstructs scenes without them being stored. That's the difference. There is no direct image of a scene stored. You reconstruct and that's the memory.
It a matter of the context in which you use the terms. No human can recall all sensory input they have received since birth. That's the fact that I am content with. Any ability short of that is interesting but meh!
A way distant, future transhuman system may have such ability.
the two terms are calmly and very briefly dealt with by a new scientist article at: https://www.newscientist.com/definition/photographic-memory/#:~:text=Photographic%20memory%20is%20the%20ability%20to%20recall%20a,people%20do%20have%20better%20visual%20memory%20than%20others.?msclkid=8004b108c18d11ec9c8257ece85ee5a3
All of your life is engraved in your brain. The brain memory capacity is near infinite (not to be taken literally...).
That system is bound by the number of particles in the universe. The brain contains a whole life of memory. What more do you need? You can use a computer for external static memory.
So you have good peripheral vision, you were not 'unconscious,' perhaps your 'awareness,' functionality was not paying adequate attention to the results of processing the sensory input from your eyes.
Always read the small print! Especially in adverts!
Quoting Haglund
Yeah, was it as detailed as a photograph would be? were the textures the same was every glint the same as in the photograph? Getting the number of windows correct is not that impressive. Are you sure he had no familiarity with the area? If you know how many windows are on one floor and you know how many floors the building has then.....or yeah he might have good instantaneous recall but ask him to do the painting a month or even a week later.
So what? It's understanding that counts. Not if you can into detail remember. What you put into a computer's memory is just a static view from a certain angle.
As detailed as you see it.
I have met similar people. How big was the page, how much writing was on it? etc.
And even if she could memorise a standard sized book page of text quickly, could she still recal it an hour, day, week, year later and if she could then is that the end of the party trick? can she do it with two pages, a chapter, the whole book?
Quoting Haglund
Does that include your time asleep?
The point is, I didn't see it consciously.
No. Dreams are not remembered easily. They are just replays of memories, fantasies, etc. Even gods talking to you... Sometimes though you remember every night you dream. Sometimes no at all. Luckily maybe...
Understanding is not objective it is subjective. An observer may see a particle's properties based on their reference frame and another observer will report a completely different set of results based on their reference frame. They may not even detect the particle.
Quoting Haglund
Each observer reports a different emphasis for the exact same visual scene. Ask a policemen who asks honest observers, 'so what happened here then?'
A whole page in a physics book. By reconstruction. That's not how a computer memory works. That being said, her understanding of physics was great also. Which need not be the case if you can just replicate formulae.
And a computer chip?
So do you now withdraw your suggestion that 'all of your life is engraved on your brain?'
Okay. Your awake life.
Two transhumans would hopefully be as diverse in observation as humans are.
Its hard to know for sure UNTIL THEY EXIST.
I take it you are typing about a memory chip as opposed to a processor chip when you type 'computer chip.' A computer memory chip today is an electronic storage device, nothing more.
Comparing how an electronic memory chip stores data and how a human brain stores memories is a trivial comparison. We know all about the former and very little about the latter.
Such a comparison is of little value to future musings regarding transhumanism.
Which makes the comparison very non-trivial. In assigning a number to brain capacity, the usual definitions of information are used. But you can't use that as the brain memory functions differently. How did Wiki got that number of a pentabyte (bit) information? By counting static units.
But your sensor system did, it just took a while for your processors to confirm the data input.
Some people don't always say ouch or scream out, the instant they get stabbed. The shock value can interrupt the pain delivery messages.
Exactly. So the fact that computer memory exceeds an artificial number of brain capacity is useless.
Yes. But unconsciously. It made me remember the name. Only when reading the page I saw it mentioned below. So I was informed unconsciously.
2.5 petabytes is a guesstimate based on input from neuroscientists.
People ask hard questions, others do their best to answer them.
Your comparison of future transhumanism with today's electronic, two-state, mostly still serial computer system remains absolutely trivial.
Yes, but it's still all computer generators have. All computing is done with 0 and 1. Even quantum computing. And whatever it's based on it stays computing by program, which ain't going on in the brain. Even not when you think up a program.
No because it provides a current guesstimated answer to the trivial question 'can the memory capacity of a computer equal that of a human brain?' that people will ask no matter how trivial you say it currently is.
It's a far superior guestimated response to a difficult question compared to:
Difficult question: What is the origin story of the universe?
Guestimated answer: Gods
Yet you dismiss transhumanism based on such an elementary current technological level in computing science and you ignore the tiny green shoots of quantum and biological computing.
Biological computing is doing leading-edge research on being able to identify two or more states which happen within proteins that are stable and reliable enough to represent data states. If they find them, then the biological computer can begin to have traction. Proteins are not the only candidates.
Consider a time when elements of electronic/quantum/biological computing are merged with genetic engineering. Today's computing science is an amoeba in comparison.
Quoting universeness
The origin of the current universe is simple. Together with a mirror universe it inflated into existence on a higher dimensional (4d actually being 7d) wormhole. One on each side. This has happened since the dawn of time and will happen in the future many times. The gods were very wise!
Again you delegate your vain hope into the future. Once upon a time in a future far far away. We dont know if we dont try, true. But we can contemplate the future to be on possibility. You assign way too much creation power to humans. We can't even create one neuron in a lab!
It will pale in comparison with a natural brain. Where is the computing or program in a brain?
You offer me nothing new to discuss. You just reheat and repackage trivia.
How can it be useful if a brain memory is not based on static information as in the static maximum information content in a volume of space, the maximum content being the number of planckian areas on that surface? That number holds for memory chips but not for brains.
I'm not disputing the wonderful new developments in computing. It's the idea that by computing consciousness can be created that's a fantasy.
My point is that what was once considered absolutely impossible, is emerging in today's world. Across the board, this is true. So while we may not be able to conceptualize (or even agree on) the potential ability for computers to capture, hold, move and evolve human minds right now, the future looks bright for these kinds of technologies.
This is especially true of transhuman technologies, which include whole brain emulation; as well as other high tech goals, such as super-longevity, super-wellness and super-intelligence. These innovations are the tools for our human transcendence.
It has nothing to do possible or impossible. You're still not getting the point. To this day, what have been made possible by science have always been grounded in material reality. The DNA structure was once unimaginable. But now we do have the structure. But only because it is grounded in physicality.
You just repackage the same points again and again. The brain contains static data at any time instant. static just means unchanged (yet). Based on that you can estimate brain capacity at 2.5 petabytes.
You attempt to conflate that with the proposal that a neuron can be involved with more than one memory.
and you 'throw in,' static memory media as another distraction and try to use that as evidence that the contents of computer memory cannot be changed. Computer memory IS NOT BASED ON STATIC INFORMATION. SDD's are dynamic. RAM is dynamic the full name of RAM is DRAMM (Dynamic Random Access Memory Module) an SDD and RAM space are the two main memory workhorses inside home computers. There are permanent programs such as the bios (basic input/output system) and the bootstrap loader etc held in ROM (read only memory) this is static memory in the same way that the brain used a static process on how it fires a neuron or communicates with your visual input sensor (eyes). The instructions involved are static.
Quoting Haglund
Creating a new consciousness or self-aware android is not fantasy as it is projected from real empirical evidence, unlike your polytheism.
The concept of extending human lifespan by placing the human brain in a new 'container' (such as a cloned or cybernetic body) after death or just before and the very distant future concept of 'downloading a human consciousness/wetware,' into a hardware emulation/replication of the human brain will never be possible unless we gain a full understanding of the workings of the human brain. If that is achieved then it will become possible to replicate it.
You think like a person of your time as do others, you lack the pioneer spirit. Thankfully for the sake of the survival and progress of the human race, many humans do and will boldly go into the future while others regress back toward the caves or stagnate where they are.
Well said! :clap:
The future projections of transhumanism are grounded in material reality. Your comment on DNA is valid but there were many before DNA and RNA were discovered, who stated that it was folly to try to understand the fundamental structure of the human genome and that it would never and could never be done, as only god can know such things. How is that viewpoint any different from those who claim that we can never know the full workings of the human brain or how consciousness is created and therefore be able to replicate it.
In my opinion, the majority of science dissenters do harbor theistic, theosophist or metaphysical belief tendencies.
Having typed that, I do also recognise that such 'generalisations,' are flawed but I don't feel compelled to delete the sentence for now.
Of course the brain contains every instant of time an information content. Like I said, it contains a maximum of the the number of Planck areas on the body, if we look at the whole body-brain integrated structure. That's about maximum 10exp66 bits, if we crammed the mass of a black hole with a Schwarzschild area comparable to the body's area, in the volume occupied by the body. Which obviously isn't reached. And neither is it in a computer. You should use each preon for a zero or one for that.
But that number is not what counts for consciousness or true intelligence. It's the way the matter is organized. In a computer the currents are pushed along by an external program running at clock speed. Every tick of the clock, a pattern of voltages is pushed to the next configuration on a linea recta grid on the micro chip. A zillion times per second. And you may have a zillion 1 or 0 voltages, changing a zillion times per second because an external program pushes them along, this is not what happens in a brain.
The brain is an unprogrammed freely unfolding process on the lighting shaped neural network, which has a history containing the whole universe. The computer has no start at the big bang, like bodies and brains, but it's start is a certain way of thinking (programmatic) and the human hand.
Show me where the program in the brain is located.
Nonsense. It's a fantasy which it will always stay. Can we construct a brain in a lab? No. The gods are far more real.
What's the empirical evidence? A piece of mechanical construct, operating at a hyperspeedy clock, wearing the mask of a japanese girl, artificially giving programmed advice or answering questions? Fake consciousness... What's the obsession with technology? Why not being satisfied with natural evolved consciousness? The only consciousness. AS... artificial stupidity....
This is completely inaccurate! When you use terms like 'push' or 'external program,' you have to be very clear about the context. External to what? the clock line? the control bus? the processor? RAM space? the computer?
How does your understanding of clock pulse relate to a home computer system which has a core of 8 processors? How exactly does a serial list of instructions 'push' bits along?
You should familiarise yourself with the exact detailed step-by-step stages involved in low-level computer operations such as the fetch execute cycle. Get to know what the clock pulse is actually used for.
Learn about the functions of the SPR's (specific purpose registers) and GPR's (general purpose registers). Learn about the Address bus, the data bus and the discrete lines of the control bus. Then you may begin to understand what's involved rather than just typing comments based on the random snap shots you are sourcing on the internet.
Who confirmed this viewpoint to you? god(s)?
Well, it seems pretty obvious to me if we cant even construct a neuron, then it’s pretty clear that we can't construct 80 billion interconnected of them at work in a body. With an on and off switch!
A computer uses an external voltage to push the electrons along. This voltage is programmed to push and pull. The spike potentials in the brain run autonomously. They follow the fractal shapes of the neurons, without an external voltage pulling them in a programmed way.
Well here's a start:
https://www.brainfacts.org/Brain-Anatomy-and-Function/Cells-and-Circuits/2019/Build-a-Neuron-011819?msclkid=c0d93ab2c21c11ecac9c0c1f832899b4
Here is another more serious attempt for undergrads:
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cnso_chemphys_facarticles/38/#:~:text=We%20developed%20a%20hands-on%20laboratory%20exercise%20for%20undergraduate,resemble%20neuron%20components%20and%20are%20easy%20to%20construct.?msclkid=55c122eac21d11eca5b4624d6e547ff0
Here is an actual claim for Scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute:
https://news.cision.com/karolinska-institutet/r/artifical-neuron-mimicks-function-of-human-cells,c9796303
I refer you to my previous response!
That's no neuron! Not even a start. Only a simulation of potentials.
Quoting universeness
Where I read: "Basic Neuron Model Electrical Equivalent Circuit"
That is, no neuron. Only a programmed simulation of neuron potentials. No spike potentials actually running like on a real living neuron.
Quoting universeness
Again. In the article: "Artifical neuron mimicks function of human cells".
No real neuron.
If it walks like a.....squawks like a ......and talks like a......then it is a neuron.
If a ..... peeps like a neuron then it's a neuron? The phone sounds like my wife sometimes...
Quoting universeness
Chalmers wrote if you replace a neuron by a device coupled to the neurons the neuron was coupled to, and if that device stimulated the neurons it is coupled to in the same way the neuron does (when stimulated by coupled neurons), there will be no difference for the brain function. But think about it. This won't work.
Do your qualifications and years of experience in the field of neuroscience and biological engineering convince you of this or is it just your opinion, your educated guesswork based on your reading in the general area? My expertise is Computing Science, not neuroscience etc. If you were highly qualified in the relevant areas then your opinion on this topic might carry more weight. Your negative opinion regarding future transhumanism is no more, than one vote against, from a relative layman in the area.
My positive vote, for the possibility of future advanced transhumanism, has a similar weight to yours on the neuroscience side and more weight than yours on the computing science side.
I think that ends this thread for me. Thanks for the exchange.
If you mean by qualified a piece of paper showing I have a degree in bioengineering or neuroscience, no. But I have seen, read, and thought about it. I don't know about the intricacies of computer science. I had an oral examination on the subject. I thought that was rather strange for a physics study. It was compulsory stuff! When the professor asked me "who" did do a certain job (it was the operating system, if I remember correctly, and probably the reason I passed was me asking him uncomfortable questions...), I knew for sure. Are they serious?
Until now, computers and robots haven't impressed me. You can glue a face on a robot but the robot is always faking you being conscious.
It's pictured very nicely in SF fantasies. Like in Ex Machina. But you just can't program consciousness or switch it on or off. It has to evolve naturally. The only things machines excell in: speed and quantity, loads of information pushed programmed along on a linea recta micro grid. It's like replacing a wildly flowing river, over jagged, fractal, chaotic terrain, by a system of vertical and horizontal tubes through which the river water is pumped programmed and piece-wise on the rhythm of a hyperclock.
Enjoy your fantasies! Thanks for the exchange! :smile:
Correction. It's not the human brain that's being uploaded, per OP. It's the mind. Not the same.
Don't leave just yet. You'd lower the overall IQ of this thread if you did. :joke:
So has every member of this Forum I reckon.
Quoting Haglund
Try to combat your negativity.
That's another exchange! I don't hold with any posit that the human 'mind,' exists beyond the human brain. Are you a dualist?
Quoting L'éléphant
Thanks for your nice comment. It's nice to be nice and you seem like a nice person.
Don't think so. I have rather detailed knowledge of the workings of the brain. It's a huge analogue, life simulator of the world, capable of grabbing every part of it and actively constructing reality.
Quoting universeness
What negativity? I told you to enjoy your fantasies! Ain't that positive?
You have not demonstrated such detailed knowledge so far. You just called the human brain a 'life simulator.' Is your brain a simulator? is it an emulator? Or is it real?
Quoting Haglund
Your negativity regarding science and the future of our species. Don't stagnate within your polytheist fantasies. Either you pass responsibility for your own life to gods or you claim it as your own and stop scapegoating them. What happens in your life is under natural controls not supernatural controls.
Be all you can be! Stop walking back towards the caves.
The brain is a simulator. Every moment of your waking life, from the moment in the embryo (whose particles directly stem from the big bang, contrary to the particles of a computer) to now, the world is projected in it. By your body moving. At the same time that massively parallel projection is given shape by massively parallel free streams of patterned spike potentials (ion currents flowing from the outside of the axon inwardly and propagating (unlike the potentials in computers letting electrons flow through wires, i.e., pulling or pushing). The brain streams never stop. In your sleep they cause dreams. There are constant feedbacks between the outside, inside, and the body, the actual you. Memory, i.e., learning, is engraved by strengthening connections (widening gaps).
Quoting universeness
Negativity towards science? I lovit! I even consider it art. Back to the caves? Why should we?
Look what we made. A device with a face programmed to act as if...
So is your life a simulation? If human brains can only produce simulations then human experience is a logical simulation, according to your logic. Is your brain the source of YOUR polytheism? are YOUR gods therefore part of YOUR simulation?
No. That's the wrong conclusion. My life is not a simulation. The brain simulates the world.
The simulation of the gods refer to real gods.
So YOU are real but YOUR world is a simulation?
Quoting Haglund
So YOUR gods are real and simulated?
Now you project a logic onto me I didn't use. Why should life be a logical simulation? What's my logic used to conclude that?
The logic that YOU claim YOUR brain simulator, simulates!
Yes. I am real. What you mean by "YOUR" world? Quoting universeness
Yes. They are simulated in my brain. For YOU, they are fantasies, simulations of nothing.
Ain't that so then? Is my claim false?
But its no LOGICAL simulation, as you claim I said.
YOU are real but your brain is a simulator. Give me an example of YOUR brain simulator in action during a typical awake period when you experience the physical world. I think you conflate the word simulator with the brain being a thought generator.
Quoting Haglund
Quoting Haglund
Your typings here seem to indicate a lack of conviction on your part.
Is your brain offering you illogical simulations then?
Shall we now drop the unhelpful use of the word simulation? and I can then ask:
Is your brain generating illogical thoughts/dreams when it comes to gods?
Well, you said I talk about a logical simulation. But the simulation is about the world. Not about logic. What you mean by a logical simulation?
Quoting universeness
My brain offers me simulations about all there is in the world. That can be logic or gods, fantasies for you, with no counterpart in the world.
Quoting Haglund
I assume you consider your own thoughts to be based on logic. Your brain generates those thoughts. You have labeled your brain a simulator. I take it that you consider its simulations logical. If you don't then you must be suggesting that the simulator function of your brain is only for your night or day dreaming and has nothing to do with the REAL physical world around you. It's commonly called your imagination. I am sure you agree it's important to adequately distinguish between imagination/simulation and reality. If you are suggesting that YOUR brain simulations directly relate to YOUR conception of the real world then that is a whole different ball game.
I think human imagination is a very powerful and useful force but I never consider its simulations as having much in common with reality.
That's the wrong assumption. Why should it be based on logic? Why should it be based on logic in a world that's not logic, except in isolated pockets?
Quoting universeness
Again, wrong take.
Quoting universeness
Again, wrong conclusion. I don't suggest that at all and might even consider my dreams as the most logical simulation. If I dream about gods it can be a logical dream, a logical means. Imagination is, well, imagination.
Quoting universeness
I agree. You gotta know what's real or not. I had a psychosis once. I wanted to drink water from exhaust pipes of cars...
My brain simulations directly relate to my conception of the real world indeed. What's a different ball game then?
How can that be the case. The simulations in a sense create the world. Not it's material, but our perception.
Quoting Haglund
I think you have just given a very honest and frank example of a 'different ball game.'
A person has their own pathway through life and their own experiences that have contributed to their own personal viewpoints. Schisms of any kind can affect individuals in a myriad of ways.
I am NOT suggesting IN ANY WAY that a particular way of thinking is the only way to travel.
I am just suggesting that extremity of experience can result in thought conflicts that I have never personally experienced. I don't label my brain a simulator and think that it is a very inaccurate label to use in the context you have used it.
In my opinion, I am real, you are real, the Universe is real, we are capable of dream states, there are no gods and advanced transhumanism is and will continue to advance and 'downloading' a human consciousness in the very very distant future will be possible. Again, thanks for the exchange.
A valuable opinion! An admirable goal. Let's see what happens. Fact is that you and I are real and live in two different but not mutually exclusive realities. Maybe one day the transhumans shake hands with gods, lemme tellya! :cheer: :starstruck: :pray:
I don't think a mind can be "uploaded" in a way that after a copy of your mind is "created" you would be experiencing things from a computer or whatever after the copy is made (unless there is some kind of link between the two).
However if your only looking for a backup or copy of who you are to be around after you die than it is plausible that some kind of combination of advance MRI technology combined with 3D printers or other similar technology could do create a machine or something that could emulate the same thoughts/feelings/etc. that would be similar to as if you were still around.
I'm sure in the far future some scientist will work on that sort of things and start building machine that will be able to so something along those lines. BTW what kind of device do you really have in mind?
Let's take a look at the definition"
"Mind uploading, also known as whole brain emulation (WBE), is the theoretical futuristic process of scanning a physical structure of the brain accurately enough to create an emulation of the mental state (including long-term memory and "self") and transferring or copying it to a computer in a digital form."
So, a physical structure of the brain is scanned accurately. Whatever "a" physical structure means. This is used to create an emulation of the mental state, including long-term memory and self. Whatever is meant by that. This emulation is transferred or copied to a computer. Whatever meant by that.
I can't grasp this description. Its an incoherent, confused, definition, throwing around arbitrary concepts to give the impression the mind is litterally extracted (scanned), put in a bottle (emulated), and injected (transferred or copied). I'm baffled.
Yes, I am. First things first -- materialism holds water, a lot of water. Perception won't be complete without body and mind. But the causality that happens with body organs perceiving, say, a color, or hearing a loud bang, come to us in a completely stripped down data. It's the mind that interprets what we perceive. Earlier I said, roughness can only be experience using our organs for sensing textures. Though it reaches our mind, we can't extract "roughness" from our mind.
Correction: brain transfer ...
If those who vote against it are a majority then their representatives in authority must vote against also and then scientific endeavours in the direction of genetic engineering, transhumanism and artificial intelligence must stop until the majority can be convinced by further discussion from those who
support human progression.
This is just a small side question, for my own internal databases. Do you think dualism is on the rise, stagnant or on the wane or does the number of others who hold a similar viewpoint to you, not matter to you, when it comes to dualism?
Quoting L'éléphant
Ok, surely the brain is the only body organ that 'perceives' a colour. The eyes being the input devices for colour and not responsible for interpreting colour. There is a good discussion at:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/making-sense-of-how-the-blind-see-color/?msclkid=5291660ac47711eca0bf8eba392bd778
On how colour or a rainbow might be described to or perceived by a person who has been totally blind from birth. They compare it with how a fully sighted person might perceive a quark when they first encounter such words. It seems to me that if the mind or any aspect of its functionality, exists externally to the brain then this external aspect seems incapable to effectively give colour perception to the blind. Sound perception seems to be more possible for the profoundly deaf through distinguishing between vibrations via touch but all interpretation here isstill within the brain alone.
Quoting L'éléphant
Do you think 'roughness,' could be distinguished by a cybernetic hand, now, or in the future?
Do we not 'extract' roughness from our mind by 'pattern matching,' it with smoothness.
I would describe roughness as bumpy bits and indented bits and smooth bits that you can feel when you touch the area with your skin organ. Would you describe 'roughness' (as applied to physical surfaces,) differently?
I always ask a dualist if they are willing to give me their personal view of a physical location(s) for where they think the part of their (or all of their) mind exists outside of their brain.
In the past, I have had answers such as, In the heart, in the body, in superpositions, in gods database, with god, in an omniconsiousness. Do you hold with any of these?
That's a fair approach! I'm not convinced though that what you see as progression is actual progression.
I don't think it perceives. It rather constructs. Or resonates. The construction is a continuous process which isn't set in motion with an on and of switch. It's no programmed process. with "start" and "stop". Or "if", "if not", "iff", "and", "nand", "or", "nor", or "gondor".
I know you are not convinced that transhumanism is a progression and I don't agree with you or understand your logic or your viewpoint. If science and authority do not have the mandate of those they represent then they cannot be allowed to try to progress towards increased transhumanism But anyone voting against would have to argue against giving human beings more choice over their own termination. Our individual survival is currently at the mercy of illness, accident, attack and old age. I would welcome increased protection against all of these. Transhumanism could achieve such further protection and is in my opinion one of the best possibilities we have. You would prefer that we stay at the mercy of some or all of the 4 threats I mentioned? why?
Because I don't see it as a threat. Of course it's not nice to get sick and time will show itself in the body and brain. I think this aging can be fought against from within. If you change your telomeres it will do. If telomeres stay the same length you wont age. Telomeres stay the same in cancer cells, which don't age. But try to replace your genes with new from outside... No way. Only from the inside. And besides, life starts again after dead, in a new universe!
are you suggesting the brain does not/cannot perceive?
Perceive seems a perfectly good label to me and seems like a sufficient umbrella term under which words like 'constructs,' 'resonates,' etc could happily shelter.
Current electronic logic gates are no more than a method of representing conditional outcomes.
The way in which the human brain deals with propositional logic is not fully understood.
As I have already stated, your comparison is a conflated one that has little relevance to my future projections of transhumanism.
I have stated this to you many times yet you still insist on comparing the workings of electronic computing systems with my distant future predictions of transhumanism. Even though I have clearly stated that my projections are based on my current readings on genetic engineering and technologies such as CRISPR, quantum computing and biological computing. Despite this, you insist on tubthumping about the current limitations of electronic computing. why?
I think a perception is a construction.
Quoting universeness
That's because the brain doesn't deal with it. Only thoughts
Quoting universeness
I don't mind if you belief in some far away future fantasy. But you can't prove them right. There is no evidence apart from a device with a human mask answering preprogrammed questions fooling us as if there is actually someone behind the face. So basically I try to demask people who believe in such future possibilities.
Good luck searching for that nonexistent mask. Keep feeling for it! At the end of all your efforts, you will be left with hands covered in face skin particulates from those 'who believe in such future possibilities.'
It doesn't matter to me the number of others who hold similar view. I don't check statistics like that. But maybe it's fair to say that science or scientism has always been the anathema as to why dualism might be treated with a lot more skepticism. Extra-physical claims such as those having to do with the mind are almost to be avoided if we are to remain the technology that we are already, right?. I mean trillionaires building their own spacecraft to go to space. Body or head transplant that totally ignores the mind -- this is the ultra-physical. Like, who cares about the mystery of the mind if we could transport ourselves across the universe.
Quoting universeness
If we really could extract textures from our mind, then couldn't we just pass on this trait to our offspring and let them experience roughness without setting foot outside? Why, until now, the children could not have all the sensations that the parents had experienced and stored in their brains? Why do babies need to be trained in all aspects of their existence in order to become a normal human being, let alone survive?
Quoting universeness
There is no location of the mind, there is, however, a location of the brain. Now, obviously we can't crack open every human's skull to see if the brain is there. But for the many autopsies and studies done on humans, we know that the experts had identified the brain as that mass inside the skull of humans.
That's why it's always an error to compare thinking with computing. In computers, everything has a location. There is no "mind" in computers. Only humans, and some animals possess the mind.
Astute observation! There is no program to be found in the brain. Neither in nature.
Fair enough.
Quoting L'éléphant
Ok I see what you mean by 'extract textures from our minds.' You mean to extract the actual experience and pass it to someone else. But I don't see how this marries with the duelist viewpoint.
Surely abilities such as telepathy would have to be convincingly demonstrated to provide evidence that brain thoughts could be externally manifested due to the duelist reality of the human 'mind.'
Quoting L'éléphant
Is this not evidence against any claim that the mind can exist/manifest outside of the brain?
We can only teach our children by word of mouth or physical demonstration or by the written word or visual aids etc. If the mind exists outwith the brain then where is the empirical evidence?
Is dualism then merely faith-based?
Quoting L'éléphant
Easy words to type but I think such concepts are much harder to convince other people of.
Like theism, it's fine if such is just a harmless product of your own personal woo but I very much advocate that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I hope my comparison of dualism with woo does not offend. I can only offer my honest opinion or else I am being fake.
Quoting L'éléphant
Not yet!
Again, reference to a faraway future without any impact. I could argue just as well that gods show themselves in the future.
Quoting universeness
There are locations of the mind. Not stationary ones though. It depends on the experience. And mostly, you have to include both body and physical world. The brain is a means to resonate with the world. It constantly simulates it, while you walk through and look around, listen, and feel the breeze and hot sand, looking for female beauty on the beach.
Quoting universeness
Like the woo woof of a faraway future in which minds can be uploaded. Let alone a human mind, as it's tied to brains, no matter what the dogma tells you.
:starstruck:
As long as people can't create rainwurms in a lab, forget mind upload! :cool:
My projections of future transhumanism are based on current technological progress. Your unconvincing claims that you are a genuine polytheist has been reduced to 'they dont exist in our Universe' and 'I only argue in support of them because you argue against them.' You also try to randomly throw in the word dogma as an attempt to hold up a 'shiny,' to distract.
You simply enjoy playing devils advocate. It's a position I am very familiar with. I have witnessed many other people engage in such roleplay in the past.
As I have stated to you before, I think you are just 'pissed' at the science community for your own reasons but I also accept that you are free to feel how you feel and 'dis' them all you want, even to the extent of playing the role of a polythesist.
I know you will say I am totally wrong but I think I am spot on.
Based on that I can only say that transhumans will be a regression from humanity. Not even a fruitfly can be created, not even a single cell! Not hard to guess then it's a dead end, however far away in the future you project your fairy tales.
Quoting universeness
Like I said, my claims are not to convince. I leave that to Jehova witnesses and the priests and missionaries. Of course I argue in favor. The proof I can't give, apart from us and the universe being there. Science can't explain it. I have a theory describing the universe from an infinite past to future, so... Oh yes, the gods will probably show themselves in the future!
:rofl: :down: :down: :down: :down:
Look who's tubthumbing now...
I don't mind that you get up again. YOU have to live in the skin YOU are in.
Yes, that's true. We all have to I guess. I'm happy with the body and skin that I am. What more can we say?
:up:
It's strange, mr. Universe. I have seen Carl Sagan pop up many times this week. I heard him mentioned in "The Big Bang Theory", in a breakfast show last week, in another program, and just saw him again! Weird!
:lol: What can I respond with that does not invoke the supernatural?
I can only hope that the coincidences you kindly mention and your own personal knowledge of the great man are coming to the front of your own consciousness.
The reason and rationality you employ in your scientific endeavours are manifesting as little gnaws at your psyche, due to coincidental 'pop up's of Carl Sagan's name.
Imho, your 'reason' is suggesting you pay more attention to Carl's viewpoints on the human condition and your own knowledge of him is encouraging you to realise that you don't need your fictitious gods which you yourself state, do not even exist in the same Universe as you do. You have a good analytical mind and you insult it with woo woo from your Freudian ID.
I apologise for using this 'door of opportunity,' you kindly opened to make this appeal to you.
You can always claim that it is your reason, rationality and analytical skill that results in your god conclusions but if that's true then I would personally consider you one of the lost people.
I am sure you see me in a similar way in that case. The Universe continues regardless. I guess it's up to others to add to the numbers we identify with or choose yet another of the many alternate paths available.
On Saturday, I meet up again with a group of around 9 friends. Four of whom are religious education teachers with different theistic personal beliefs but we have more in common regarding what's important in life than we have differences in our atheist/theist/theosophist positions.
Sometimes our disagreements can be heated but we remain friends and we have given each other food for thought on occasion. I would honestly say I have given them more cause to question their personal theism than they have ever given me cause to question my atheism but I doubt they would agree with me.
Btw, All 9 of them would 'round on you,' if you said you found 16-year-old female children physically desirable. You would not be invited back.
Nice try, but still, without the gods would be meaningless for me. All interesting things in live, like physics (which is nothing but investigating the matter they created), art (painting, photography, the labor with the treetrunks, writing, math, etc.), woman (eventhough I have one big love), sports, every form of culture, etc., yes, life itself, would be without meaning or reason. I know the gods because I know the world we live in, and the creatures in it. Even an anarchist can be religious! I think Sagan being talked about here makes you see more, indeed.
Concerning sweet sixteen, when still in town, I lived next to a girl school. Girls between 13 and 18, maybe. Some real cute ones between them. One of them wrote her name on the front door to make an appointment. It was obvious what she wanted... I invited her up and we had a nice time, without actually doing the deed. I couldn't imagine doing as I was grown up and she wasn't. But I liked her beauty! I know what Krauss would have done... (will he find out I write this, when about 20 people, in the whole world, are logged in on this forum). So why would they throw me out of the group? What's wrong with liking the beauty of a sweet sixteen?
You are digging your own pit.
Because I like beauty? Don't you like female beauty? :starstruck:
At the moment people can't even imagine that because at the moment we are still a very primitive being compared to when the neural link is built in. One day it will be the most natural thing in the world that people will no longer die and that everything and everyone is connected. I think this will be the case in a decade or two.
I agree with you in principle but I think your time frame is off by many thousands of years.
What current 'neural link,' tech are you suggesting will be able to directly connect a human brain and a computer system within the next 10 or 20 years?
Yeah. I am rarely a fan of important technology pursued and controlled by billionaires.
Musk has made a lot of claims about neuralink that have little evidence to back them up.
The system was rated quite low in an MIT technology review report.
Professor Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University, commented that he didn't "think there was anything revolutionary in Neuralink's pig implant presentation" but that the wireless features were "nice".
The monkey playing 'pong' demonstration was claimed to have been achieved 20 years ago in 2002.
The only difference was neuralink is a wireless interface.
Musk loves publicity stunts. I think he has sunk about 200 million into neuralink, which is pennies for him if you compare it with the $44 billion he just paid for twitter.
He initially employed 10 neuroscientists on the project and 8 have since left.
Don't get me wrong, I wish and hope I am wrong and the linking of a human brain to an artificial neural net, which allows a 'meaningful, useful and direct,' human computer interface/interaction between the two, is a lot closer in time than I currently think it is. But I see little evidence based on any current system or projected system for the next 20 years. I still think the first human to live thousands of years is technically, thousands of years away.
You might find this site interesting:
https://transhumanity.net/becoming-the-first-transhuman-a-call-for-the-right-stuff/?msclkid=12a4cb63c64e11ec95a8555796f6ce24
I am most impressed by the projections for nanobot tech over the next few decades. I think this may well provide real life extension possibilities and it is why I take seriously a New Scientist article I read a few months ago which stated that current evidence suggests that the first human to live to an age of somewhere between 135 and 180, is alive today.
The study by Ingo Piepers has proven using mathematical formulas that WW3 and the sixth mass extinction will start at the latest in 2022 and will last 16 years. This is in line with the plans of the WEF. Climate scientists also predict that a climate catastrophe will soon occur.
Why I think eternal life is near is because the third world war and a mass extinction has also been predicted by all religions on earth. They also predict that anyone who survives WW3 will never die or get sick. So when WW3 starts this year, we also know that God exists and that the prophecies in the bible will probably also come true.
That could be true, because most progress is made during a war. And if WW3 and a climate collapse happen at the same time, the advancement of technology will be so immense that eternal life is the only way to survive. Certain nanotechnologies will probably allow us to extend our life expectancy to 180 years. But in those 180 years that we will live, we will start to think differently and we will most likely be able to extend our lives again.
This is of course all just speculation. There is no proof whatsoever that I am right. But if you follow the news a little bit, then you know that WW3 and a climate collapse could happen soon. And if that happens, it means that technology progress will have to take an immense leap to ensure the future of humanity.
Sounds great! I hope we will prevail and enter the era after.
Interesting! Do you know Pieper's mathematical approach?
You can say that! Let's hope the nukes are dropped!
Just imagine! To live forever in the network! Peacefully flying into ever greater realms of knowledge...
And not for the lack of trying. Some things aren't programmable. Dualism got it right The brain you can copy as it is physical. But the mind cannot be captured in a module or whatever medium it is you're thinking of.
1. The way a mind thinks (thinking style). Reminds me of Kung Fu and the numerous fighting styles in it.
2. What a mind thinks about (mental content).
Thinking style can be learned, passed on from one mind to another. Mental contents too can be.
So, yeah, minds can be uploaded onto other minds and hence onto computers.
Thanks! Thanks to the incredible speed of progress in the computing sciences and miniaturization to the atomic level, we shouldn't be surprised that in our lifetime immortality might be finally reached! I envision a salvation army of nano-bots injected in our bloodstream, every single one of them entering our cells, making adjustments to our telomeres, so they won't shorten each time a cell divides, immunizìsing the body against aging. A youth vaccine! Once immortality is reached, we can replace brain structures that are no longer needed, like the emotative areas involved in procreation, male/female distinctive structures, and other distracting functions that undermine the knowledge gathering in our scientific quest. Useless functions like involved in the arts, people judgment and discrimination can be replaced by cognitive implants (or internal atomic memory, though our linkage to the net can provide us with a massive amount of data, which grows daily by the contribution of other immortals, who can simply upload results to the net in the blink of an eye. Eyes that can be modulated, like other sensory equipment, to be able, in combination with the new cognitive implants, access domains of reality currently inaccessible to our limited machinery. We might see new colors, hear unheard things, maybe even experience infinity and omnipresence! The journey only has started!
I've done a little research on it and I think the great war will start in October. It's going to look like we're going to die out. But that's not true. I think early next year the antichrist will be revealed and he will convince humanity to accept these technologies. I could of course be wrong about the time. But one thing is certain. Very strange things are going to happen in the coming years.
The WEF also wants to build these technologies into the people, but I think their goal is wrong. They want to make humanity their personal slaves.
I wrote a long blog about it. If you like to read, I invite you to study it.
Your poor attempt at mockery of transhumanism is obvious and transparent.
Are you a theist?
Your musings are a bit too esoteric and irrational for me.
Perhaps you are simply a theist who is slightly mad.
I would normally just ignore postings such as yours and Hillary but you are spoiling what was a fairly interesting thread
Where do you read I'm a theist? I didn't mention God once. Don't you agree the future has huge potential? Don't you write about nano-bots? The can be programmed to enter our cells savely and make adjustments! The future looks bright! I don't hope a WW3 happens, but we'll live!
Do you think that future life extension and more protection against suffering etc will cause humans to become less territorial, less aggressive towards others?
Well if you are just here to troll then you would roleplay, wouldn't you.
I think you are doing exactly that, roleplay.
Tough question! I've heard this said more often than I could care to count but don't animals attack only when provoked? In other words, aggression maybe a good thing, part of our wilderness survival toolkit.
What I would suggest however is to channel that aggression into more benign activities (part of the ability model of EQ) like sports, board games like chess, you get the idea!
[quote=George Orwell]Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.[/quote]
I just read some of your material based on the link you provide in your profile:
http://paxmundi667.com
I recommend that members read some of this before exchanging with you.
I myself never had the chance to go to school and learn anything from anyone. I had to figure everything out myself. So I'm here to learn something. I grew up with freedom of opinion. If that's not accepted here, then I won't comment anymore. I will leave you alone. I'll live my life the way I want to.
I'm a atheist. God is a fantasy. I'm just curious why you think I'm a theist? What in what I wrote makes you think that?
I think your future views are great! :smile:
The antichrist is to much for me though. I'm an atheist like you once was.
Animals will attack to kill for food/resources or to protect their territory or their young or to gain status within their ranks or if they feel threatened or cornered.
All behaviours that humans will recognise and we can see these behaviours still practiced by humans all over the planet but humans also use the word 'animal,' as an insult, especially towards those who we think act from these base, Darwinian instincts without any attempt to counter them with our ability to be more discerning and 'civilised.'
If humans can take their basic needs for granted and are mentally stable and can be offered purpose in their lives then they become much more affable in my opinion.
Future transhumanism may help in allowing humans to be more affable.
I don't think future transhumanism means that humans have to become something like 'the Stepford wives' or the human-like replicants that have been dramatised/projected in some of the more depressing or threatening sci-fi stories. Theism would like us all to be terrified of transhumanism so that many are forced back to there religions.
@Vincent talks about worldpeace! What's wrong with that? He has a future vision where man has left his evolutionary superfluous baggage and has replaced it by the miracles of technique. It's an optimistic vision. Except maybe the WW3.
Theistic trolls use the roleplay tactic often.
I see no point in exchanging viewpoints with you. I don't trust your intentions. I think you are a troll.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for transhumanism but I feel you're expanding its scope in a way unintended by its proponents - into modifying our nature which is being done as we speak via incarceration and executions which amount to expulsion from the gene pool. In short, we're doing to ourselves what we've been doing to dogs over the past 30k years or so. While the intentions maybe honorable, the road to hell is paved with good intentions says an old adage. It may backfire is what I mean.
All that is speculation of course. The future is wrapped in an impenetrable fog.
And who says you are not the troll? I just write how the world and humans might look one day. With the aid of technology. I can't see how this would be an attempt to undermine transhumanism. I think it would be great to be transhuman and think I might encounter them in my lifetime. In a limited sense they are already here. We have hear implants and nano-bots are awaiting. If we can extend life with them, we can get wiser and develop even smarter machines. Which could develop smarter ware again. The omega point is a realistic future.
:clap:
And what would these intentions be? Promoting theism? You have a strange way of thinking. Says probably more about you then about me.
Sounds like an equal starting point for all of us then.
Si, we're back to square one! Snakes & Ladders. I always get eaten by the longest snake!
I think some scientists do develop new tech without thinking too much about its ramifications but not that many (I hope). Why would a human who has learned to control their Darwinian inherited basic instincts, be a 'modification,' even if that improved control is assisted or encouraged by transhuman tech?
It could backfire, absolutely but all progress involves risk, yes?
I think your clarion call of caution is very important and I amplify it but not towards fear and rejection of new tech but towards the need for detailed analysis and debate of the issues involved.
We must be very careful where and on what we tread. We cannot just 'expel from the gene pool,' based on a misguided view of 'human perfection,' or design humans like we have designed dogs.
I know there are many complications and difficulties involved but do you think the potential rewards are worth the risks?
I don't know your back story Agent Smith but based on some of your postings, you are quite harsh on yourself. You don't need to put yourself down, there are plenty of nasties out there who get great pleasure out of doing that for you. You should take great pleasure every time you defeat them by not putting yourself down. Humility yes, genuine self-deprecation no f****** way!!!!!!!
Well , if what you type here is true then that's fine. I am merely a member of TPF and I am more science-based than philosophy based so I am an interloper myself on this site. I would say this is a site for 'free-thinking,' but it also gets its fair share of cranks. I was simply probing to find out.
Please continue to post your views, you will perhaps gain a lot from the responses you receive.
Please do continue to live your life the way you want to as long as it doesn't prevent others from doing the same.
Let's just say that I know there's always a bigger fish out there somewhere. Perhaps I compare myself to Socrates or Einstein or Gödel, basically someone with an IQ that's orders of magnitude greater than mine. My self-effacing manner is but an acknowledgement of genius (read Buddhas, sensu lato) past, present and future. :smile:
Quoting universeness
Yep, that's something I wanted to touch upon, it slipped my mind. Isn't it better to control one's passion "apps" than to delete them altogether? Isn't a man who wanted to kill but didn't better than the man (the Buddha?) who never has murderous intentions? I dunno, the jury's still out!
:smile: Ok.
Quoting Agent Smith
Imo, yes to the first question and I am conflicted as to my answer to the second one. I would rather reword the question. I would not miss an 'app' such as one that invoked 'murderous intent' but I would pehaps still need one that could invoke 'the intent to kill.' I think I might need an intent to kill someone that threatens my life or the life of other innocents. It would be better if I choose not to because I could rely on the 'law' and 'justice,' but I think I would still need 'the ability to kill.' I may not need it however if every other human lost the ability to murder.
I will do that. Thank you
I'm with you in the general scepticism about the feasibility just on sheer complexity. And it doesn't end with the "electronics" of 10 billion neurons as the functions are also moderated by chemicals and the constant input of the senses.
But being not practical doesn't mean not possible. The practicability question may be solved by some shortcuts where clusters of neurons are replaced by much simpler but functionally equivalent emulations. If that ever happens it comes down to the age old question of monism versus dualism and the question if we can ever test it. I predict that the dualists will not accept a functioning uploaded mind as proof. They'll cite the Chinese Room and ask if that mind has "real consciousness™".
Back when I was in college, we learned of what could be described as an emergency response plan for people an animals. It was taught to us as fight or flight response and it seems that was only two-thirds of the story in a manner of speaking - there's also freeze, the full complement of our emergency response plan being enumerated as fight or flight or freeze response. The freeze component is taken to an extrema in possums known for "rolling over and playing dead" which kinda vindicates my earlier claim that animals only attack when provoked (when they perceive a threat).
Could a deer be an existential threat to a tiger? Worth pondering upon!
Random musings.
@universeness seems to be playing a very refined cos play here. Peddling atheism and transhumanism while actually advocating for God. It's a well-known theistic tactic to accuse others of doing that, thereby strengthening the atheist cover.
Is your blog a preaching for God?
In my blog it is explained that god exists, but that we do not need it to have it right. A world without worship is much better and that is all explained in a very simple way on my blog. If we abolish god worship then eternal life is very easy to obtain. In fact, I've been thinking about a decade or two. You should read it from start to finish. Perhaps then you would no longer deny the existence of god.
Quoting Hillary
To this:
Quoting Hillary
:roll:
Now who's a 'little bit paranoid?'
have you looked at any of the small forays into biological computing?
Do you think this future tech could deal with the complexity issue you raised?
Biological computing is, for example, currently trying to identify a process within proteins, which is reliable/stable/controllable enough to emulate at least the two binary states (0,1) within electronic computer systems.
I think the 'playing possum' scenario became highlighted in importance to humans because it has been employed so many times by so many soldiers during battles in history. It's a good human survival tactic if you can hold your breath long enough and emulate a human dead body when being directly prodded/kicked by the enemy.
I don't know if possums learned to do this by observing early Australian humans or the ancient humans learned it from them, perhaps we both learned such behaviours due to a strong survival instinct.
Playing possum is not so useful if you are a deer being attacked by a tiger. Play possum there and the tiger will start to eat you whilst you are still alive. :scream:
I think deer are only ever going to threaten the existence of tigers if there are no more deer.
Just my counter, rather random musings.
Would this not be gods born of naturalism rather than the supernatural?
If we become omniscient in the vastly distant future because we have answered all questions would we then be god? This is the eventual projection of some panpsychist viewpoints. We have had a few recent threads on that topic.
I just repeated your claim that it is me using theist tactics. Who says it's not you using theist tactics? Why you accused me of it? Where did I give you the impression I believe in God?
The new developments in biological computing, quantum computing, and CRISPR, offer a strong cocktail trio for extending life beyond humans and within humanity itself.
It's my guess you had some bad experiences with religion. So your paranoia might just be a defend mechanism. Which is understandable.
I don't know if there's anything beyond all that. I don't know if there is a creator of the universe. But I'm sure there's something or someone watching us and maybe controlling us.
Briefly. The technology is much too young to anticipate if it will become useful in the process of "uploading".
Again, too early to say. I'm not even sure if silicone is the way to go. Technology and biology are at a race for life extension and adaptation to, for example, long space flight. Maybe neither will win and general AIs will take over such tasks were you want to have a conscious and intelligent entity.
My guess is that we will see advances in all those fields over the next decades.
You make a lot of 'inaccurate' jumps. I accused you of sophistry, of being disingenuous.
I ASKED you if you were a theist. Disgruntled theists often dress up in the clothing of sophistry.
Trolls roleplay, it's what they do to satisfy their own internal needs to be deceitful.
In reality, most of them are as easy to understand and see through, as Trump supporters.
I am responding to some of the ridiculous things you have typed so far such as:
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
These are either very fringe opinions based on a very skewed logic or you are just making stuff up to see what response you get.
I agree.
Quoting Hillary
No I havent had bad experiences with religion unless you identify their ridiculous posits as 'bad.' If you do then use that label if you wish. Your 'paranoia' accusation is toothless and baseless. You made the ridiculous typings I mentioned not me. You have demonstrated typical troll behaviour not me.
If it types like a troll, it's normally a troll.
We can continue to exchange on my suspicion of your intent if you insist but I dont think you will make any headway. Better if you just attempt to offer more honest and balanced dialogue regarding the OP. Rather than continue your current move towards 'methinks he/she doth protest too much!'
This sounds suspicious.There is a definite theistic smell surrounding this statement. Is this an attempt to become like God, whose existence you secretly affirm here? God being the universe?
Quoting universeness
You wrote I did theistic role playing! And said I'm a troll because of that! Who started here?
That's ok I can try to explain myself beter.
When you use the label god, what abilities do you think a god must have? The omnis?
Do you think only one god can exist or many?
You typed about a super-intelligent advanced alien race, why would you use the label god for such a race merely because they can do stuff we cant do YET.
Quoting universeness
You do it again! Yes, of course I'm interested what response I get. Aren't you?
No, my statement was a simple projection of panpsychism/cosmopsychism, I did not declare myself a panpsychist, cosmopsychist or theist. I am an atheist and supporter of physics not metaphysics.
I think that we need to focus on how super the natural is and stop the BS about the non-existent supernatural.
Quoting Hillary
You did by typing the inane sentences I quoted from you.
Yes I am, but not based on attempts to bait people by stealth as I suspect you do.
Bait people? What for? I just state what I think is the case and what will happen in the future. What would be my motives. People telling me that what I tell is ridiculous? Sorry, but that's not my intention!
I just answered the question. What's suspicious about that? What would be my hidden intentions? I just don't get it. Yes, probably this is part of the scam too... and this too... Jesus!
One day in billions of years, all planets and societies in our universe may be considered god. Then the game starts again. Then all the gods (societies) scattered throughout our universe will merge into a kind of super god. And it will go on like this until 'I don't know'.
I know how that sounds, but that's just my opinion.
:up:
Yeah, it is still in its infancy.
Quoting ArmChairPhilosopher
What do you mean by silicone? As currently used in electronic computing?
I have not heard of silicone mentioned much within biological computing.
I vaguely remember an article in New Scientist magazine a few years ago that talked about a merging between silicone-based electronic components and protein/DNA-based biological components but there wasn't much in it. Do you know of some other research I don't know about?
Quoting ArmChairPhilosopher
Yeah but I think serious progress will take longer than a few decades. I base this just on the average human lifespan available now. We haven't achieved much beyond the old biblical claim for an average human lifespan as threescore and ten.
That's your reveal not mine.
You wrote:
"Yes I am, but not based on attempts to BAIT people by stealth as I suspect you do"
Damned! You should have become a poet! :up:
If as you suggest, humans CAN achieve these goals you suggest then why do you need this other god reference or this continuation of gods.
I find that many theists in particular and many people, in general, cannot go through life without having some overall answer for the final fate of the human race and the Universe. They have to have a 'grounding,' an anchor a tether to the eternal. I think this comes purely from primal fear that we inherited from our time in the wilds. Thinking about infinity has driven many minds mad. I don't think we have to be so obsessed with the eternal. We just don't need the god label. It's regressive to me.
I prefer 'to boldly go where we have never gone before......,' let the useless god label die along with the BS biblical prophecies.
and I don't even know it!
It is more a reference to the term "going into silicone" for uploading as used in cyberpunk novels. So, yes it means electronic computing but not necessarily traditional hardware.
Quoting universeness
Ray Kurzweil has an eerily accurate track record of technological predictions. His prediction for the first general intelligence is 2028, the first super intelligence around 2050 and the singularity around 2080. And I'm inclined to believe him as I was surprised by Watson and alpha GO.
This is just not the case, the Earth formed from an accretion disc of natural materials, how is that nothing? You need to go back to just before the big bang if you want to even introduce the concept of nothing. Even then it may be pointless to do so as the theory of the multiverse, the oscillating
Universe/the Penrose bounce etc, etc can take us towards the eternal and even then we don't need
god. A small mindless spark to start the cycle and then wink out of existence forever would suffice.
I invite you to read my blog until the end. You will want to drop out at many moments because it is worded fairly simply. But if you read to the end and make the effort to understand it, you would understand me. You shouldn't read it in one sitting, of course (it's quite long). But if you have questions for me, you can usually find my opinion in my blog.
This was meant for Vincent... I doubt there hides a poet in you... Though they generally are paranoid!
By nothing I mean life forms. There is still a lot to learn of course.
You seem to have a low opinion of your own species. Were the dinosaurs a better species than us?
They didn't build cities and damage the climate and war with each other (well they did a bit...) as much as you claim we do. You ignore all of mankind's achievements.
Why did they go extinct? they were dominant on the Earth for a lot longer than we have been.
It's not my fault that you also have a bad aim to add to your dodgy intentions.
Then where came that spark from? What parallel worlds and bounces are you speaking of? And it clear it's all just alien-produced? If quantum computing has grown up we might be able to contemplate our makers. After nano-bots have made us immortal and quantum computing AI merges with our brain or even replaces it, we might be able to contemplate our makers.
The remnants of the dinosaur era have now turned into oil which we now use as an energy source. That energy source (oil) has united us to who we are today. But that same source of energy has also brought us to the abyss. It is time to leave humanity behind and mutate into a being that is one across the planet.
All part of the cos play you perform. Well, being a troll makes you see trolls everywhere. I get it now. Calling me a troll before you can be called one. Ingenious!
the whole living age for man
The moment that distinguishes humanity from the animal kingdom.
Yes! And technology will help us in reaching transhuman status!
WW3
Indeed :up:
Well, I hope you are correct and I am wrong. Around 2080 eh, I am 57 so that would make me 115.
I hope you can survive till then. I am pretty sure, I'm f*****, but if I am still here and it's all happening as you suggest then I will nip back onto this thread to tell you YOU WERE CORRECT or I will just connect to you transhuman to transhuman and in a contrived Mr Spock voice, I will "confirm the accuracy of your prediction."
Well, you haven't set the bar very high so far have you?
I am not surprised you don't understand the term ingenious either.
I don't care, it has no significance, it's a mindless spark.
I'm 59 but ancestors from both parents sides have reached about 100 in a time when the average life expectancy was half of what it's now. So I expect to live to about 200.
:rofl: Dont worry, WW3 remains highly unlikely due to M.A.D.
If a full or significant nuclear exchange happens then the resultant climate change will make us extinct so there will be no WW4. Life on Earth probably will survive but not human or transhuman life.
:smile: You lucky sod!
Well, this is a philosophy forum, not a computer science one. I could talk about Bloch spheres but that wouldn't be very enlightening for the philosophical discussion.
Yeah, I think we have exchanged many times before! :naughty:
Yes we survive that. I mean humanity, probably not an individual like you or me. Pretend you believe it and think further.
Ha! Already here WW3 is immanent! Word War10.
I think so too! :naughty:
:brow:
:naughty: Ninja quark!
Why would I pretend to believe something?
If I did that then I could hardly accuse anyone else of pretense!
I assume your first language is not English and this may be why I misunderstand some of your points.
Lost in translation is a common issue.
Pleased to meet you, hoped you guessed my name! :naughty:
Pretend you believe in god. That's how I discovered it too. But to pretend you have to have a bit of a psychotic mind. Don't get it wrong. I'm not a psychopath or anything. But proving the existence of god is a complex matter and requires a separate way of thinking.
Remember this one:
More than one!
I was reading your entries in your own post titled worldpeace.
I very much agree with your political comments regarding 'no currency' and no ownership ( at least I would disallow private ownership of land). Global economic parity or at least a situation where no human alive has to struggle for their basic needs, their education or their medical care from cradle to grave is a very honorable and necessary goal for our species to have.
We just need the majority of the population of the planet to demand this from the tiny minority who are currently in control. If they won't comply then we WILL most likely have to make them or go extinct trying.
A reasonable future view! Let's hope Putin and the west dont go MAD. Jezus, that guy Putin sounds like he actually wanna use nukes!
@universeness and me already have had the pleasure of meeting. We have a MAD relation! Without the D!
I would buy it. :razz:
Quoting Hillary
I agree but do the ones around him wanna die too? and their families and everyone important to them.
That's what Mutually Assured Destruction entails but they could end up causing it by accident, because of their stupid brinksmanship. They play with fire and everyone gets burned. If we came into existence by accident maybe it's ironic that we may go out of existence by accident.
If we do avoid destruction via Putin's perilous petulance then perhaps we will all finally understand that autocracies cannot be allowed, ANYWHERE on the planet!
I am convinced that abolishing money is 'the' solution. That will of course create a lot of chaos in the beginning. But in the long run, that will be the solution to all our problems. And if a WW3 is soon to start, then 'money' will no longer have any value. So the money has been abolished anyway. Money is the biggest barrier there is and when it disappears, anything is possible. But people are used to using 'money' and can't live without it. So there will have to arise a leader who will lead us to a money-free world.
If we had the same mother, she really would have been a terror!
Her life would be f***ed! :lol:
"Quark, have you seen Uni?" "Yes mum, he sat crying in the washing machine, so I closed the door. The program must be done now. I put it on 90 degrees, to be sure..."
Thanks for the invite but I have typed my fingers raw regarding my political beliefs.
I can only offer this forum repeats on things I have typed before regarding politics.
It's better if new voices like yours are aired, delivering a similar message.
I would prefer it without the rather bizarre connections you make with the god label etc but
as I said. The points you make maybe just 'fogged in translation.'
You suggest 'god' exists and then connect it with 'an advanced alien race,' and then you suggest we could become gods and then you say you hate gods and then......
I like and understand your politics as you describe them but I think your worldview and your view of impending doom and an almost instant phoenix style rebirth into a glorious transhuman future etc, is unlikely, to say the least.
I am convinced that WW3 can start any moment and we will then 'mutate' to transhuman etc
No no more 'leaders'. We all need to cooperate. OF the people! BY the people and FOR the people.
Not the rule of the few over the majority. No leaders of any significant power. Power rests with the people. Layered representative elected groups with powerful checks and balances. No total government control over the military. No autocracies/plutocracies/aristocracies/cults of personality/cults of religion/cults of celebrity and yes no currencies.
Humanism all the way. No nurturing of profits only the nurture of people and the flora, fauna and ecology of the Earth.
You should read my blog. I think there will be a leader emerging soon. This leader will stand up for the people and let the people decide. And will guide them to this freedom
I agree.
Quoting Vincent
Yeah it could, if all the Russians are happy to die over little Ukraine (no insult to Ukraine intended) and if that is the case then we all f****** deserve it. So don't let fear fester, remain hopeful that there are enough sane people around all the nefarious ones in power to prevent M.A.D.
Your last comment of "we will then 'mutate' to transhuman" does leave me with the feeling that you may well be slightly mad!!
He's right though! For sure the radioactivity will induce mutations!
I did read most of it. You don't want my opinion on it as It would most likely offend you.
Your words are similar to those biblical words about a coming Messiah.
It's total BS in my opinion and seems so disjointed with the political viewpoints you have stated.
I don't mean to be mean to you but If I don't tell you what I really think of some of your viewpoints then I would be a fake!
:halo: Yes I am mad. How else can I support another world war. You have to be a little crazy to stand up for humanity. But that doesn't mean I'm a "bad" person. I'm good to everyone. Or almost everyone. I'm just trying to warn as many people as possible that the "end" is near. And that the 'end' is just a new beginning in a different form
The internet version of the old sandwich board with 'the end is nigh,' painted on it. :roll:
Oh well, at least you, @Hillary and I can each wear some interesting hats and join Alice at the Tea party before the boom boom.
You don't have to say your opinion, but you are allowed to. I'm just used to being called an idiot or a mental patient or something. I know there are a lot of untruths in it, but I'm not giving up.
I am sure some folks felt the same way as you do now during the Cuban missile crisis.
Keep believing in the sanity of the human race not its capability to be a little or even a lot, insane.
Still... There are about 10 000 active nuclear warheads scattered over the world. Whatever MAD entails, the laws of chance are such that they will one day be employed. And I'm sure so-called patriots won't hesitate to use them. WTF do you and I or Vincent have to do with the power quarrels of a few?
We all need to communicate with each other more!
Many people feel lost, in the same way you probably do at times.
Perhaps a site like this one can help.
More people should start a thread about the philosophy of the human struggle for mental stability.
Mental struggles SHOULD NOT AND MUST NOT be a voodoo subject that we are all ashamed to talk about or be honest about. Most of the philosophers are painted as slightly mad.
I do believe that shared problems are reduced problems.
Threads like 'was Nietzche actually mad,' may let people discuss their own personal struggles.
Very few people are actual idiots they have just not received much help or care in their lives.
Religion could actually play a role here. I we teach the children nature is a divine gift, a divine creation, they think twice before engaging against it. Not with hell threatening but just because it is a gift.
Oh, we just have to accept labels such as 'unfortunate innocent bystander,' or 'victim' etc.
But we don't have to be as passive as the majority of the population are. If you can become more of an activist you should. That's what this current crisis is showing all of us.
If you ignore what's happening elsewhere and to others then it won't be so long until the boom boom knock on every door on the planet.
How close do we have to get before we learn? If we lean too far we will fall over the precipice.
And if that happens then in truth, none of us were innocent bystanders because we all let it happen.
The Russian people should be in complete revolution right now.
Nice try :naughty:
We need to show more respect to children. Nurture their imagination and their playful fantasies, yes, but never suggest such fantasies are fact!
I am a thinker in search of the truth. I never went to school and didn't learn to be realistic. I'm not the smartest either. I'm a little mad, always has been. But that doesn't mean I'm telling the truth. Or at least what I think is the truth. But because everyone calls me mad or unfit, I feel a little losing control of myself.
I have a feeling we're going to have a really bad time. And by that I mean everyone on Earth. And if you follow the evidence, I might be right. I normally like to be right, but in this case it shouldn't be. But if what I think is really going to happen is going to happen, then we're all in big trouble.
For a thinker, this is the same as two years of solitary confinement in prison.
If you are 'trapped,' then you need to make changes. Not necessarily big changes.
Small incremental changes. Just to gently nudge yourself towards a happier life.
Even volunteer work to help others can be very very rewarding.
letting your fears fester is exactly like an unattended pressure build-up.
It will explode.
Since I retired I have taken up many hobbies. I have no wife or children but I live a very fulfilled life.
You say you have a limited school-based education. What about studying a subject that interests you the most? Studying it from scratch, would that not be a way forward?
:rofl: I had to go back to p8 of this thread to find out what we were discussing Agent Smith.
I assume this is your response to my response regarding 'playing possum.'
The fact that our viewpoints often diverge is a great relief for the Universe I think.
I was watching the boxset I have of Star Trek 'Enterprise,' last night and the medical doctor character called flox asked the Vulcan Tpol to remind him of that famous Vulcan maxim regarding diversity.
She said 'Infinite diversity in Infinite combinations.' I have always liked those words. I prefer to replace the word infinite with vast as I don't think infinite exists in reality.
So yes, I agree not only can the world accommodate our diverse/diverging viewpoints, it needs them as these are evidence of true individual consciousness. It's for others to decide what they most agree with and hence we can arrive at reasoned, debated, rational, majority decisions, before action is taken.
Yeah, I know it rarely works out that way! But as long as at least two humans remain in existence, we will forever try I suspect.
I wish it were all subjective.
3, w, m, ?.
I find your use of little bits of French, a fairly large amount of Latin and the odd bit of 'random code?'
intriguing. Random to me of course, I assume it has significant meaning once understood
or revealed. :smile:
Ok, I'll bite, why Tik Tok?
Short & sweet lectures. Just the kind of education that fits in my schedule.
The whole point being of course if your "Universe", and the means investigating it, is a fantasy just as well. If people wanna base their lives on a "Universe" fantasy while trying to get to know all infinite aspects of it, thereby forcing Nature into all kinds of unnatural postures its up to them just as much as it up to the people if they wanna life life based on a God fantasy and gaining knowledge of Nature as it is, with no nightmare dreams of omnipotency or eternal life, and children should be offered all views in growing up, because if not, your society is closed and unfree, and we see what chaos that has caused in the modern day and since science and technology were introduced in old Greece the world has become not a better place but a worse place, that just can't be denied, which makes me conclude that cience and "the Universe" is just one myth amongst many and Mill already told us that in the freemarket of ideas the exclusion of many in the favor of the One is bad.
In one sentence! So is it not upto the children to decide instead of us telling them what is fact?
Between the "should be" and "how it is" there lays the unbridgeable gap of reality.
:halo: You are being evasive Agent Smith but perhaps you want to maintain the mystery.
The questions remain! Why French phrases in particular, why so much Latin and why the odd inclusion of sometimes seemingly random maths symbols. I suspect it's probably just that you know a lot of French and Latin and possibly maths as well but its fun to ask for confirmation anyway. I also respect the individual need to maintain mystique. c'est la vie, vive la différence, Non est bonum.
? ? + ?! = ?
I suggest you read this back to yourself and rewrite it. I read it twice and gained little idea of the main point you are trying to make. The last sentence about children suggests you want to 'TELL THEM what is fact yet you insist earlier that "children should be offered all views in growing up, because if not, your society is closed and unfree.' Surely you see the contradiction.
I was expecting you! "It's already eleven. Where's brother Uni? Fuck! Didn't mum open the washing machine?"
I dont agree with 'unbridgeable.'
Damned, it's not one sentence but Ill try again.
The whole point being of course is that your "Universe", and the means investigating it, is a fantasy just as well, and if people wanna base their lives on a "Universe" fantasy while trying to get to know all infinite aspects of it, thereby forcing Nature into all kinds of unnatural postures its up to them just as much as it up to the people if they wanna life life based on a God fantasy and gaining knowledge of Nature as it is, with no nightmare dreams of omnipotency or eternal life, and children should be offered all views in growing up, because if not, your society is closed and unfree, and we see what chaos that has caused in the modern day and since science and technology were introduced in old Greece the world has become not a better place but a worse place, that just can't be denied, which makes me conclude that cience and "the Universe" is just one myth amongst many and Mill already told us that in the freemarket of ideas the exclusion of many in the favor of the One is bad.[/quote]
That gap only is closed when we all think alike.
I was working in my lab, building the first atheist transhuman. Our imagined mother was killed by an atheist/theist hydra monster sent by the imagined Hypnos and Thanatos, many centuries ago and you know that so I don't know why you would bring this up again! :cry: :broken:
Quoting Hillary
Good point! A not too many. It is up to the children
Quoting universeness
:lol:
Good lord...
Let's try with just your first sentence here! What evidence are you basing this statement on?
No, we don't all need to think alike, that sounds like automatons. We just have to obtain a majority agreement and then be willing to act. Groups of Russians should currently be in armed revolt at the moment. I think it would be horrific for them but I think many of their police and soldiers would soon join an uprising. They did it before, unfortunately they put a complete dipshit in power (Boris Yeltsin.)
They need to rise up again and destroy Putin.
Hah! he is f****** useless, nothing good about him. I would be successful in my lab work if I had better computer chips! Electronic computing systems are just not up to it. You don't know where I could get some futuristic bio chips from do you?
Did that dumb British honours system make that nonexistent pratt a Lord?? :chin:
I agree they should do that. And suppose they did. And a new authority settles. What then? Power corrupts, mr. Universe!
Quoting universeness
"The Universe" as you call it, stands on equal footing with "the gods". "The Universe" (note that you write it with a Capital U as in God with capital G), is a fantasy. You can see it, touch it, measure it, interfere with it, rearrange it, fly into, or whatever, but that's not the only measure of truth. Maybe these are signs of something being Unreal and a distraction from the truth. I believe in the universe too, as you know, but still consider it a story like the gods. They are equally real to me. One doesn't exclude the other. Now there might not be much difference between a heaven with eternal divine life and an eternal universe with the same life coming into existence after every bang. The difference is though that a dead universe is not intelligent enough to create itself. That's what cosmologists want you to believe so they can sublimize their theoretical musings. The basic ingredients logically have to be created by gods.