this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Maintaining continuity of consciousness is the only thing that would make me feel comfortable with converting myself to a machine intelligence.
I hate to break it to you, but our meat brains don't even have continuity of consciousness. We become unconscious all the time. The only real constant is the "hardware" our consciousness emerges from, but even that is always changing.
Except our brains are still functioning. If they didn't keep functioning, we'd be brain dead. The point is that there's a common thread that connects every waking moment together.
I don't get the down votes. Did y'all forget about sleep? No one vividly dreams every night all night long. Often it's the fade to black going to sleep then the sudden awakening.
You do not die every night.
Obviously not, but what is the functional difference? If you can't tell it's happening, does it actually matter?
Yes, yes it matters a lot. If you die you do not wake up again.
Sorry, should have been more specific. If you died in your sleep every night and came back to life in the morning, and you couldn't tell it was happening, would it matter?
It's not a question with a right answer, I just want to hear your thoughts about it
I'm that case no it wouldn't matter. It would make us all feel much better about the possibility of life after the body dies though.
What if a copy of you woke up in the morning? So you could see your dead body from yesterday, but consciousness would seem as continuous to you as normal--you went to sleep yesterday and effectively woke up today, just in a different body? Would it bother you knowing you weren't technically the same you as yesterday, even if it seemed like it to you?
Probably because I'd never want to sleep again. That would be a horrific way to find out you only have as long as you can stay awake.
How would you know?
How do you know you're not a copy of yesterday's you? If a clone has your memories and you're not around anymore, then what's the difference?
You'd have to experience death for the clone to continue being the only copy.
Yeah. In the example above the original is dead, and a clone with all of your memories up until the point of death is generated.
In that case, there is continuity of concussions, at least as far as anyone can tell, least of all the clone.
Don't try to get philosophical about this. There is a hard difference between copying a brain and actually transferring consciousness.
Er? It's a philosophical conversation since, you know, brain uploading is not a thing.
If you don't want to engage in philosophy, you're in the wrong place.
You're mixing up speculative and philosophical.
That's not what he means and you know it.
What does maintaining continuity of consciousness look like to you? As in you are able to talk to your copy? And continue to live your normal life outside while your digital self lives their digital life?
Or are you saying you want the transition to digital to be seamless, where your digital self remembers laying in a chair, a quick pin-prick, and then they're in the digital realm?
Keep in mind, we have zero understanding of how you'd get the meat consciousness to transition into the digital consciousness - it's likely not even possible. The two options for copying are keep both alive or terminate the original somewhere before bringing the digital one online. There's many ways to do both, but those are the two.