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VuurniacSquarewave t1_iz0nisx wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in How Death Can Help Us Live: a philosophical approach to the problem of death by simsquatched

Instant teleport between the two continuities of self-awareness, and unlike when you sleep, there is no sense of how much time may have passed. So if you were to be somehow rebuilt by a supercomputer a billion years after your death or something, it would feel like an instant.

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sk3pt1c t1_iz2emk9 wrote

Same, creeped me the fuck out to be honest and was super scary, like we know it intellectually i guess but to actually “experience” it was so strange. Did not abate my fear of death though.

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jeffsappendix t1_iz1nbke wrote

After being put under with a similar experience I came to theorize the same possible outcome

The technology at some point will exist to restore our consciousness and perhaps that could be the eternal bliss or damnation that is awaiting us in the "after life"

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Failninjaninja t1_iz240zi wrote

I think even at technological peak we would not be able to do what you are describing. I think people are very off at how capable max technology will really be.

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VuurniacSquarewave t1_iz2gvpq wrote

I believe that we would find out the hard way that consciousness exists as a unique instance, so even if I were to suddenly spawn a perfect copy of myself 5 meters away from me, while the original me completely evaporated, you would see someone acting just like me, but from my perspective I'd be dead and the clone would feel as if they had just popped into existence.

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elementgermanium t1_iz335m2 wrote

But we already know that consciousness doesn’t exist as a unique instance, at least not in this sense. Our life is already broken up into individual sessions of consciousness, lasting a matter of hours. If your persistent “self” survives even something like sleep, would it not survive this?

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Anschau t1_iz3oxn2 wrote

It’s the difference between sleep mode and turning off the power I think. Also if we upload our minds to a simulated consciousness we create a new mind and the old still dies. But what if our minds are linked to the hardware and is incorporated into our biological minds? If we begin to shut down our biological brains while allowing the mechanical mind to pick up the slack, without interruption, aren’t we just the same mind now residing somewhere else?

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elementgermanium t1_iz3p8xh wrote

I mean, there are other forms of unconsciousness besides sleep, too. If someone’s brain completely shut down due to some severe injury, but then they miraculously recovered, no one would question whether they were still them.

In the end, our consciousness is an emergent phenomenon caused by the pattern of neurons that expresses our unique mind. As long as that pattern is preserved, I argue the persistent “self” is too.

Now, the natural follow-up is, what if you create the “clone” BEFORE destroying the original? In that case, it’s dying, because the “clone” has had time to “branch off”, so to speak. It’s become its own person, similar to, but separate from, you.

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Anschau t1_iz3q40f wrote

I think you die regardless in that last scenario. I get what you are saying but that second mind was always going to branch off. As long as the continuation is physically separate then it’s not really you. Let’s say that technology allows us to copy all the memories from one person perfectly and you could create an artificial biological brain that you could integrate into your own consciousness. Now let’s say after you add this new brain power you can install a copy of your memories from your old brain drive to your new additional brain drive, and moving forward all new memories are encoded simultaneously in both brains. Then as your original brain deteriorates the new brain picks up the slack. Lots of problems here, mainly making sure new brain is structured identically to old brain, syncing brains without changing power and personality, the syncing tech itself. But let’s say it all is solved and as your body and mind dies you eventually find yourself in your new brain and the new brain is then linked to a new clone of you or a synthetic body or whatever. I think that’s the only way to maintain self.

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elementgermanium t1_iz3qhxb wrote

I don’t see why there needs to be any sort of direct continuity. We have no real reason to say consciousness can’t stop and restart- although no one can experience it to this extent without the kind of tech we’re talking about, we can still extrapolate from things like sleep and anesthesia.

I think of it like a timeline. The new body is the same “you” if its “start” can connect to the end of the “line” of your old body, even if there’s a time gap. With a “branch,” however, the old “line” still ends entirely, with the “branch” continuing as a separate person.

I know this is a little hard to put into words, I might try and create a visual representation- though you’ll have to bear with my poor art skills if I do.

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Anschau t1_iz3r5x1 wrote

I think that’s a symbolic continuity and while it may not make much of a difference from an outside observer I think the original you is still gone. I think restarting the same mind from unconsciousness of whatever level is different then flash copying a new version as the old one dies. Though I admit I lack the knowledge to confirm the difference. I think if your priority is that a continuation of your experience keeps going then the flash copy is fine. But the inherent possibility that both could have existed simultaneously even if artificial constraints have made it functionally impossible is evidence to me that they are not the same though again I could not explain why in granular detail. At this point we enter into the philosophy of consciousness and discard the physical laws. When I think of the terror of death though I am not assuaged by the idea of another me out there experiencing the life I could have experienced.

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elementgermanium t1_iz3rgai wrote

I personally just don’t see a difference. It’s not like you’d necessarily perceive the transfer even if it were gradual- there’s a lot of factors there. I don’t believe in any sort of “soul” or anything- we are a pattern in the end, and as long as that pattern is preserved, so are we.

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Failninjaninja t1_iz2hngt wrote

I don’t think we’ll ever get there but yeah that sort of makes sense however if people didn’t know about the spawn and evaporation it wouldn’t change anything.

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cowlinator t1_iz32bz5 wrote

> I think even at technological peak we would not be able to do what you are describing.

What is your basis for this?

> I think people are very off at how capable max technology will really be.

Yes, but that includes both overestimating and underestimating.

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elementgermanium t1_iz32zha wrote

The thing is, we have no way of knowing what “max technology” could look like.

This has actually been proposed as a serious idea, although only in very early conceptual stages- it’s referred to as “quantum archaeology” and, simply put, it involves abusing the law of conservation of information to “observe” the past. Obviously, we’re nowhere near this, but to claim it to be impossible? That seems excessive.

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Failninjaninja t1_iz35k5y wrote

Obviously difficult to know what peak tech will look like but unless our understanding of physics is completely off kilter there are some things that simply can never be overcome. We can’t ever make things faster than light, size a finite limit in terms of how small something can be. Sci Fi has seriously deluded people as to what is actually realistically feasible

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elementgermanium t1_iz35uvn wrote

I mean, you can’t move through space faster than light, but there’s still stuff like Alcubierre drives that could at least theoretically work. We simply can’t know what we don’t know- that is, we can’t know how much knowledge we have yet to attain.

Plus, there’s, to my knowledge, nothing about our current understanding of physics that explicitly rules QA out anyway.

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Gladplane t1_iz282vn wrote

Yeah but not for us. We are born too early to experience that so by the time technology gets there we’ll be nothing but soil and worm poop.

Maybe in 200 years, people will live forever in cyborg bodies with multiple backups in case of being murdered and there will be no sicknesses or anything anymore. But we just missed that train

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elementgermanium t1_iz33hao wrote

I mean, there is one way. Technically, information can never be completely destroyed- there’s always some way to recover it, no matter how complex and difficult. If we were to build a supercomputer capable of recovering the brain structure of those who’ve already died, we could save even them. The idea is called quantum archaeology, and even if it’s a long way off, it doesn’t matter- because all that means is a larger backlog of people to revive. Of course, this is assuming it’s possible to implement in practice, which we really can’t know yet.

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bumharmony t1_iz27wih wrote

The after life is like the customer service robots still idling at the abandoned fairground like in ”Detroit become human”

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kapaciosrota t1_iz27k7p wrote

Look up "Roko's Basilisk", but only if you're ready for a bit of existential dread

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jeffsappendix t1_iz28glr wrote

I was not ready

Edit: removed thank you

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kapaciosrota t1_iz3ujyj wrote

> removed thank you

Lol, for some reason that had me cracking up

Just to make things a bit more stomachable, game theory says the basilisk, once it already exists, gains nothing from actually punishing you so the rational thing to do, for both parties, is to do nothing.

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StarChild413 t1_iz49cnz wrote

but wouldn't that be invalid as (trying to be as vague as possible for reasons that should become clear) a. because torture can be psychological and the simulation theory isn't disproven we have no proof this isn't just a moot point and a sci-fi version of original sin instead of pascal's wager and b. smart AI would realize everyone doing the same job only means the project lasts as long as stored food supplies

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kapaciosrota t1_iz4ci71 wrote

Yes it is kind of refuted, as the basilisk would have no incentive to actually torture those who didn't help build it, it's just a waste of resources. But it's an interesting theory nevertheless.

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