Welcome To Life

http://www.tomscott.com/life/

by ryannielsen • 14 years ago

545 183 14 years ago

tomscott.com

sakai• 14 years ago

Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting. Cool concept nonetheless.

itmag• 14 years ago

Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting.

Pun intended? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)

nazgulnarsil• 14 years ago

how can we preclude 4chan from the utility calculations the AI makes?

sandieman• 14 years ago

What happens if you don't agree to TOS?

DeepDuh2• 14 years ago

Welcome to "Death"/null.

unimpressive• 14 years ago

This. It's all but explicitly stated on the screen. Notice the notice informing you that your "simulated personality" will be terminated upon refusal to accept the TOS.

Not that it matters, clones don't have souls, like twins. [0]

[0] http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#22

drostie2• 14 years ago

Then you get to go to heaven. Which might sound better at first, but you might have to agree to an even stricter TOS to stay there.

arethuza6• 14 years ago

Or a copy of your mind could be put into a virtual hell - a rather disturbing concept from Iain M. Bank's novel Surface Detail:

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

pirateking• 14 years ago

You can wander in purgatory forever as a row in the database, or you can go to Hell, where you will be forced to hack on the codebase for Life - in Brainfuck. Fortunately you may be able to scrape together your wages after a while to purchase your way to a Tier 1 Life. Some find it worth the trouble, just to enjoy the real sky.

billpatrianakos• 14 years ago

Very cool. There were a lot of parallels to a handful of different things. I loved it but if you're looking for so,e feedback I'd suggest maybe a bit more focus on any one subject. If I didn't know better I'd guess this was inspired by Vanilla Sky. But back to focus, I saw references to Vanilla Sky, tiered subscription services, and copyright. While the message of each gets across fine they all don't seem to fit really well. It was kind of awkward.

If this is an after-death experience then it really wouldn't matter if you couldn't remember copyrighted works. But beyond that I don't think copyright holders would care if you remembered their works because you're no longer able to be a customer. Same with the ads. If the service works like it did in Vanilla Sky then advertising is also pointless. Dead people don't buy things again. They pay for the after death experience and that's it.

But otherwise it's cool and interesting. Maybe I'm reading into it too much. Maybe there was no message and it was just a fun joke. Or maybe it wasn't based on vanilla sky. I don't know, I feel bad offering that criticism but while I was watching it that's what popped in my head.

jhuckestein• 14 years ago

This seems to be based on the assumption that you continue consuming content and services in the Life network. That way the advertisements and copyright parts make a lot of sense.

foenix• 14 years ago

Yeah, but I think it's still something to keep in because it calls into question the rationale for 3 "tiers" in the first place. The anti-features involved in making tier 2 and 3 probably have higher costs than the supposed "open" model in tier 1. Also, I would really be keen on having the option of looking at the source code of something that can mess with my conciousness.

drostie2• 14 years ago

The copyright issue that they've raised is actually one of the parts of copyright that I consider mind-blowing. The idea that memory is copying changes a great deal of the discussion -- for example, when the movie industry says "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are getting free copies from the Internet," there is a direct parallel to them saying, "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are remembering." Imagine, they spend all those millions of dollars on new films when they could just spend that as a one-time cost and zap us all with a Forgetting Ray as we leave the theater. Did you feel entitled to keep those memories? Ugh, kids these days, feeling entitled to copy our movie and share it with their friends.

What is not really addressed here, and you're hinting at it, is whether your after-death experience requires working for a living. The premium service mentions a 'subscription' so I assume it does. It's not strictly true that "Dead people don't buy things again." I mean, you might not buy physical clothes again, but you might pay the Life Store for trendy clothing-data that someone has coded for them.

I especially liked the "you can either agree to our Terms of Use or die, your choice."

luminaobscura• 14 years ago

you seem to miss:

- digitized people can create value and earn money (programming, ...)

- digitized people can purchase goods (music, ...)

sikhnerd• 14 years ago

It's tough not to immediately draw the many parallels to what we see happening in society right now and the scary part is that this is so easily conceivable as a realistic future. Well done!

sigkill• 14 years ago

Facebook has almost made everyone have a presence online. Google Glass will make sure we're always online.

arethuza6• 14 years ago

If you find this interesting then I can recommend Greg Egan's novel Permutation City:

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

lordlicorice3• 14 years ago

The "rate limited" option in the video reminds me of slow clubs from that book.

For people who haven't read it, in the novel there are virtual parties called slow clubs where poor consciousnesses go to meet. Everyone agrees to limit themselves to the processing speed of the slowest (poorest) person there, so that people who can only afford the occasional spare clock cycle can have meaningful human contact.

arethuza6• 14 years ago

One idea that I found quite haunting from Permutation City is that idea that you could set up a higher level controller for your running Copy mind that would periodically chose a new obsessive interest and then provide you with a rich environment to support your obsession.

As someone who is prone to rather obsessive interests (as I suspect many are on HN) I'm increasingly conscious of that fact that I can't directly control what I find interesting.

oskarth3• 14 years ago

Lets just hope the use of "traffic accident" as a euphemism doesn't increase in order to end a trial prematurely. I would prefer to use my trial version for as long as possible (or would I really? Look at all those nice plugins!).

Some (rather lame) lingo for the coming pay model of life:

Cheapskate, you're such a trialler

You haven't really lived until you lived with Life TM.

He hasn't upgraded in a long, long time

Do this for me and I'll make you live forever

You gotta commit suicide at least once, the rush beats base jumping hands down, and the white tunnel effect is pure bliss - and it's legal

Well you know, I could sponsor your life subscription if that would help the situation

vsviridov• 14 years ago

Kinda reminded me of Pleix's E-Baby, circa 2003 - http://pleix.net/filter/film/E-Baby

fabricode• 14 years ago

The true nightmare begins when it says...

    Please log in with your Facebook id and password

its_so_on• 14 years ago

This is a side point, but to me, it was amazing how well the video captured the usability frustration of our time.

Every time during watching the video that we're jarred out of the 'future', with an unexpected Rejected, first are offered an option but can only choose one with others greyed out, etc, it feels so much like the awful experience we all have using just about anything today.

I mean, even down to the error BEEP jarring you out of the faux-pleasant music. Maybe the video creator didn't have this in mind at all, but just wanted to make it seem 'realistic' - but they got the usability nightmare we live in spot-on!

VMG• 14 years ago

This is a little silly.

Simulated life will obey very different economics than normal life.

People should check out Robin Hanson's blog for more info: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/em-econ-101-talk.html

qrlawified• 14 years ago

I wonder how different the product would look depending on who was making this. I.e. Apple vs Google...

ilaksh• 14 years ago

Very entertaining and interesting concept.

BUT.. are people really so pessimistic about technology and the future that the main thing that comes to mind when they think of digital immortality is.. this?

Your virtual body can be anything you want. You can't die as long as your digital code is backed up somewhere.

If you can't see the bright side of that stuff, there is some kind of psychological issue.

jerf• 14 years ago

It has both effectively infinite possibility for goodness and infinite possibility for badness. Your virtual body can be anything you want... as long as you control the execution parameters. This is not guaranteed! What if $YOUR_LEAST_FAVORITE_COMPANY is the one in control? Or worse? Even the option of suicide can be removed from you. If Hell does not exist, there is a non-zero chance Man will make it for himself.

Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.

JonnieCache2• 14 years ago

>Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.

One might argue that these technologies are so advanced that they will not be developed until the current resource scarcities which govern our lives have been removed, and as such we wouldn't be subject to the same degrading economic pressures.

This makes some sense to me, but maybe I've just been watching too much Star Trek.

satori99• 14 years ago

Iain M Banks most recent Culture novel, Surface Detail, dealt with the idea of Digital Heavens, and of course Digital Hell's. They are run by religious high technology civilizations.

A virtual hell is a nasty place where sinners are copied into post death, for eternity. Sometimes young sinners are given day trips there to straighten them out, before death.

He talk a little about it in this wired interview: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1

frobozz• 14 years ago

The ability to see a bad side, and the inability to see the bright side are two different things.

Of course digital immortality is inestimably cool. There are so many amazing and obvious positives that we can even imagine on this side of the singularity.

However, if we only think of the positives, without considering the negatives, then we run the risk of stumbling blindly into a dystopia created by the few who did think of the negatives (and how to profit from them), or by optimists who failed to plan for a suboptimal outcome.

From another point of view, fiction about a perfect utopia is boring. You need some imperfection in order to provide the requisite tension to make a story.

sodiumphosphate5• 14 years ago

I'm pessimistic about this type of technology because it isn't "you" that we are talking about; it's a copy of you; you still get to die, and I don't think that knowing a copy of your mind exists will be of any real comfort.

ericb7• 14 years ago

Exactly. It baffles me that even very smart people can't see this bug. If it can theoretically exist separately while you are alive, it can't be you.

For example, if You and Digital You (tm) were alive at the same time, I could put you in one room, and Digital You in another, and smash Digital You without You having any idea. You could live your whole life not knowing if Digital You was "alive."

Whatever your definition of me is, it seems like me dying should have an effect on me.

keyle• 14 years ago

I think you just have a script for a tv show or even a movie. Right there.

TamDenholm• 14 years ago

Great video, i find it amusing but also quite depressing at the same time. I would be utterly unsurprised if the original premise was possible, this is what would happen.

delinka• 14 years ago

"Your personal brand preferences may be altered to align with those of our sponsors." What marketer wouldn't want the ability to do exactly this?

ericb7• 14 years ago

I'm not excited about this future. Whatever is uploaded isn't me, it is merely like me--a copy. Anything that is theoretically capable of running while I'm still alive is just a copy--it isn't me.

JonnieCache2• 14 years ago

What makes you so sure of that? What is the important difference between the copy and you, assuming that they behave identically?

How much "like" you would a copy have to be before it caused you ontological distress?

ericb7• 14 years ago

It isn't about degree of similarity.

If I don't have access to their mental state, they are not me. I think I am like an instance of an object, and my identity is related to my path through space and time. To be me, they'd have to be standing where I stand, and have stood where I stood.

A 100% copy of the mona lisa is still not the mona lisa--it lacks the history.

dmbass• 14 years ago

The "copy" becomes the "real" you because it has extended life. Both you and the "copy" consider yourselves to be the "real one" (or maybe you accept the coexistence), but you are going to die and the copies will live forever.

You think: "That copy isn't me, ericb!" * dies *

Copy thinks: "Great! I, ericb, just got a new lease on life!"

ericb7• 14 years ago

That is great for the copy, but not helpful for me. Death of my consciousness can't inflict a new identity on the copy. The copy is a copy--he's awesome, just like me, but not me because I am dead.

ajdecon2• 14 years ago

True, but in that case, the motivation for having a copy in the first place gets a lot lower.

It isn't immortality. At most it's another version you create so your friends and family don't have to give you up. Which I can see being pretty motivating... but on the other hand, I can see the friends and family being totally unwilling to have a meaningful relationship with a second, slightly-diverged person after the first one died. And then the copy would be lonely. :-(

udp• 14 years ago

This doubles up as a great explanation of how fork(2) works.

arethuza6• 14 years ago

How do you know that it's the same "you" that wakes up every morning that went to sleep the night before?

sodiumphosphate5• 14 years ago

While it does make for some entertaining fiction, and may provide some benefits to the living, I do not believe that 'uploading' is a desirable experience.

In fact, I don't believe that one can experience it at all. Imagine the procedure (for a conscious person): your brain is connected to a computer interface and a copy of your mind is taken. Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to die.

Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made.

I much prefer the idea of human metamorphosis. I want to inject nanorobots into my body which will transform it gradually, cell by cell into an improved synthetic one. In this way, immortality and superhumanity can be achieved without loss of continuity. I imagine the experience would be one of waking up a little better (stronger, smarter, etc.) every morning until the cells are all upgraded.

I don't read enough these days because of chronic eyestrain, but if you are aware of anything dealing with this concept of human metamorphosis, fiction or otherwise, I would appreciate a link. It's something I would like to read about (if it's even been dealt with), someday when I have time (and don't have a headache).

indiecore3• 14 years ago

I disagree. Your individual consciousness will diverge of course (you are just a meat machine) but your computer copy will continue on and your ideas, ideals, and personality would continue.

Writing this I just had a major existential crisis because I realized that at the exact point of divergence there is a point where 'you' are both alive and dead at the same time, Schrodinger's Tomb.

I agree with you in that I think a gradual change is less crisis inducing even though it equals out to the same thing. I think that I'd get a brain backup anyway, just in case.

arethuza6• 14 years ago

Greg Egan's short story Closer has people implanted with a device, a "jewel", that learns to mimic the behaviour of their brain - to the point where people actually choose to switch from their biological brain controlling their body to their jewel....

http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&se...

gojomo• 14 years ago

Egan's story 'Learning to Be Me', available in the same collection as 'Closer' (Axiomatic), is also an exploration of this idea with relevance to sodiumphosphate's fear.

tejaswiy• 14 years ago

> Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made.

Why? Can you explain more? I would believe that you can be a fully functioning human living in a simulated reality if we ever managed to fully simulate the human brain..

However, since our brain modules are so messily coupled I don't know if we can easily "delete" memories and not impact anything else.

indiecore3• 14 years ago

Unless you accept dualism (that there is some 'you' separate from the wetware in your head) you are always going to have this problem. A copy of 'you' would only sync with 'you' for an infinitesimal amount of time before you both diverged. The two 'yous' both have valid claim to everything before the Split but afterwards you are effectively two different people.

Rhapso3• 14 years ago

this goes back to the ages old problem of, "In Star Trek, the transporter killed you every time" We have this almost social idea of Body Continuity. As long as there is the same body the entire time you are still you and still "alive". A scarier truth is that all it takes is a decent change to how you brain is structured (bullet, railroad spike, fork through the skull) and you can very suddenly for all intents and purposes be a different person, with the same or similar memories but essentially different patterns of behavior. Metamorphosis may not save you, it might kill the person you were just as if you made a copy and burned the original. Further down the rabbit hole, just how different is your brain now from and instant ago, and your brain versus your brain with the addition of a few ball bearings or other random matter. The person you were an instant ago is just as dead as the original who gets destroyed and you are the copy.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

One example from history (railroad spike through the head in 1848); https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Phineas_Gage

bmahmood2• 14 years ago

Ray Kurzweil has a nice point on this, calling human consciousness an "evolving pattern of information that persists through time."

entropyneur• 14 years ago

This was my favorite subject for a while and I arrived to a similar idea of transformation, except without nanobots: the computer becomes a continuation of your brain and then your biological brain is gradually killed cell-by-cell.

However, the idea that you still get to die after backup is based on an assumptions that I don't find neither obvious nor true: that the stream of consciousness is fully continuous and never stops. I've recently seen a documentary about a guy who was declared brain dead and yet recovered into being himself again. So it might still be possible to "upload" a dead brain in which case your experience is that of a resurrection which doesn't sound so bad.

oskarth3• 14 years ago

I agree that human metamorphosis is extremely interesting, but this line I really don't get:

> Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made.

I don't understand how you can put out a statement like that, like it's taken for granted or something. It's far from granted, and I've never heard of something remotely approaching a proof for this type of assertion. To my mind it's the same kind of reasoning which proved we would never fly, nor go to space.

It's an open problem. Please keep it that way until we know more.

We don't have the proper tools to understand consciousness in a scientific way yet (consider the extremely limitations of EEG and MRI) For those interested in this philosophical question, there's an area called Philosophy of Mind [0] which deals with this and related questions.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

sodiumphosphate5• 14 years ago

Granted that consciousness is not fully understood, can we not agree that it is entirely manifest in the brain? I mean, you don't believe that human consciousness somehow survives the body after brain death, do you?

Even if the cloned memories could be streamed from your brain into a running simulation, allowing a memory of crossing the threshold from the physical world to the digital one to be created in the simulation, the 'patient' will not have this experience. The patient will still have to experience death.

Going further, let's imagine that we want it really, really badly. Let's destroy each neuron immediately after taking it's state and pushing it into the stream, so that the whole process of uploading and death are completely synchronized and nothing of the patient's consciousness remains afterward.

I'm sorry, but I still do not think that the patient will experience being uploaded into a computer. It will only experience having it's brain fried until death. For the clone, the memory might just be glorious, like some Hollywood special effect sequence, but personally I find this wholly unsatisfying.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, either. I'm only saying that I suspect some people may have the wrong perspective about it. If you sign up for this procedure, you are not signing up for immortality, but merely to donate a copy of your memories to whomever is running the simulation.

You would be like an organ donor, but instead of saving a life, you'd be feeding your mind to the new Zombie Second Life.

It would not benefit you, but it might benefit someone else.

As for me, I'm a selfish, arrogant bastard with a desire for physical immortality and superhuman capabilities.

nsxwolf2• 14 years ago

I do know that if you made a bunch of copies of me right now, I wouldn't expect to walk around seeing a superimposed image of my original self in Chicago, a copy walking around in New York, etc. I'd be totally disconnected from my copies, and that is reasonable proof to me that I should not expect to ever have a continuity of experience through a backup copy after my own death.

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

What is fascinating is how strongly and without proof many people believe the argument that "Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body". If anything, this fixation seems like both an interesting study of the blind-spots of human mental process and as evidence that the situation is, in fact, rather unlikely.

This particular, uh, delusion, seems similar to the recurrent theme that an "intelligent" enough computer would/could "develop self-conscious" (whatever that is) and start "thinking for itself". Here, we have strong ideas about the properties of "self-consciousness", without, as you say, having a ghost of an idea of what it is.

pbw7• 14 years ago

> Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to die.

You get to do both. The concept of "you" changes once there is a copy, see the Ship of Theseus [1]. Each post-you entity has a legitimate claim to being pre-you. The copy woke up that morning, ate your breakfeast, went to the uploading clinic, and went to sleep as a digital being. The copy has perfect continuity. The biological you on the other hand stayed biological and will die.

A gradual replacement doesn't change the fundamentals, the biological you has to die. The gradual replacement just makes for an unusual twilight, its mind commingled with an arising digital being.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

sodiumphosphate5• 14 years ago

I think that the experience of continuity is what makes these things entirely different.

It is the experience of continuity that satisfies my hard-wired desire for self-preservation.

sovok• 14 years ago

> I want to inject nanorobots into my body which will transform it gradually, cell by cell into an improved synthetic one. In this way, immortality and superhumanity can be achieved without loss of continuity.

Just last night I thought about this and went to sleep in despair :>

If someone scans my brain, builds an artificial copy, instantly cuts out my brain and inserts the new one, I clearly die (because I got my brain/me cut out) and my copy lives on. From the outside, I'm the same, but the first me died.

So instead, I get my neurons replaced with artificial ones, one at a time. If I drink a few beers, brain cells die but I'm still conscious. So gradually replacing my neurons one by one should be no problem; there clearly is no loss of continuity, I'm still me.

But what's the difference? Let's assume one neuron is replaced every second. No problem, nice and gradual. What if it's one every millisecond, every picosecond? Should make no difference, because it's still one by one. But, the faster you do it, the more it approaches "instant". And instantly replacing all my brain cells is the same as replacing my whole brain. Thus, I'm dead and my copy lives on...

lmm• 14 years ago

>If someone scans my brain, builds an artificial copy, instantly cuts out my brain and inserts the new one, I clearly die (because I got my brain/me cut out) and my copy lives on. From the outside, I'm the same, but the first me died.

If you look at the physics the right way, your brain is cut out and a copy inserted billions of times a second already.

ajdecon2• 14 years ago

Let's assume one neuron is replaced every second. No problem, nice and gradual. What if it's one every millisecond, every picosecond? Should make no difference, because it's still one by one.

It should make a difference how long it takes, though.

Assume that consciousness is a physical process. If new neurons take part in this process after the old ones die (so that we have continuity as part of normal "healing"), there must be some time scale over which those neurons become an effective part of the consciousness process.

At minimum, if consciousness is a "network effect", this would be on the order of the latency of inter-neuronal communications. If the cells are doing some processing which forms part of consciousness, the time scale would increase.

To throw out some wild numbers: neuronal latency seems to vary, but I found a number for visual-cortical neurons of about 80 ms. (http://redwood.berkeley.edu/bruno/npb261b/whitney-reading/kr...) And you can't replace more than a few cells at a time (I wonder what fraction?) if you want to avoid impairing consciousness during the process.

(This also doesn't include whatever the time is to make an effective copy of a given neuron and it's state; we're assuming instant perfect copying.)

GreenNight2• 14 years ago

You have an old car, and you want to renew it. If you buy it brand new and toss the old one, you are destroying the old one. If you keep changing pieces of it, testing them to see they work, and keep going until you have replaced the whole car, it's still the old car, just brand new.

There's not much difference at the end, except that you can consider that the second way of doing things will let you still use the old car, only it'll be new.

tocomment• 14 years ago

Probably a dumb question; have you tried reading glasses?

scotty793• 14 years ago

Watch "The Prestige".

scotty793• 14 years ago

It's hard to die but it must be easier when you know that you are not gone.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

"Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it"

I take it you would find it very hard to meet your copy, then? If for some reason your copy goes live and you don't die, I bet you two would get into a fight :-).

As it is now, if I'm alive and I meet my exact copy, he'd agree to die ("just do it quickly") until I really die.

And then the copy would become me - it's that simple. Maybe later it'd be possible to download myself into a body again, in which case I would retain all the knowledge that I acquired inside the virtual world.

boboblong• 14 years ago

Um, that would be murder. Furthermore, it wouldn't even be necessary: just go your separate ways, and when you die and "become" your (second) copy--this time, you time it correctly--you will still live on, even though you have a clone out there.

el_presidente• 14 years ago

Your body is transforming at this very moment through mitosis. Gradually, cell by cell and depending on what kind of activity you are performing you are becoming stronger, smarter, weaker or dumber. Regarding consciousness, my personal belief is that there is no continuity and it's more like the frame rate of a video or sample rate of a song.

You could read about the Buddhist concept of impermanence and the five aggregates of being which sounds similar to the idea of a metamorphosis, only not just human but everything changing all the time.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

An interesting thought, there is a difference between gradually replacing your cells with mechanical/electrical equivalents, and copying your consciousness to a machine.

How? Well, think of replacing a hard drive under a running process. Compare that to migrating a VM to another machine. In one, the process is truly continuous, it just begins using new hardware; in the other, the process is cloned and the original process killed.

D_Alex• 14 years ago

Greg Egan has quite a few amazing stories dealing with the transition process. "Transition Dreams" is the one I remember, it is a bit dark.

I cant find a free link, but here is a paid e-book, $0.59: http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b876/Transition-Dreams/Gre...

nikatwork• 14 years ago

if you are aware of anything dealing with this concept of human metamorphosis, fiction or otherwise, I would appreciate a link.

This free Cory Doctorow piece could float your boat: "0wnz0red - Programmers who hack their own bodies don't need exercise and never get sick" http://www.salon.com/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/singleton/

Dysiode• 14 years ago

I'm wholly relieved that someone else thinks this way too ( still aware of the fact that most thoughts aren't unique). I never came to the conclusion of metamorphosis, however.

Just felt a need to express my experience of camaraderie on the subject.

nu23• 14 years ago

In your metamorphosis example, is the finished project essentially be a robot? Would you have the same problem when a software agent is transferred from one computer to another?

Assume a negative answer. Then, the interesting implicit belief, is that there is something special about body composition. Whereas in physical law, there is nothing unique in principle about the body. So, the laws would have to be wrong or incomplete(fail to include consciousness) in an important way.

amalag• 14 years ago

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.

The change of body is like changing your clothes. Does anyone really think conscoiusness is limited by matter?

SudarshanP• 14 years ago

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2603&#...

"Here lies humanity... Do not resucitate"

tomrod• 14 years ago

This is cool. And terrifying.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

Hmm, if this was possible, I'd rather rig up an autonomous backup machine that I would periodically backup to and which would start automatically if I miss a scheduled backup (which would mean I'm dead). It would be like using hosted vs self-hosted, buying CTO or pre-built computers.

gren• 14 years ago

Brilliant!

nova5• 14 years ago

There is a lot of the classical discussion on personal identity here.

The argument about a copy being "identical to me but it's not me" is a very natural and intuitive reaction, but it's probably wrong. A very illuminating explanation is http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms and related posts.

I'll try a personal approach: imagine a country with no computers, no photocopiers, no presses, and a very strict law that forbids making copies of books which is indoctrinated from birth. There is only one copy of each literary creation, guarded in the National Library.

We can imagine that the people of that country have a very hard time to distinguish between "The Lord of the Rings" in an abstract sense and material object #1434 stored in the second floor, section Fantasy. For them LOTR is just that set of paper and ink. Even if someone secretly made a copy, letter by letter, it will be "just a copy", not the "true" LOTR. That's quite obvious to them.

And in a sense that's a bit our current situation with people (not exactly, because books are static and people aren't). We can't scan people-as-information out of people-as-protein-body and store them as people-as-silicon-body, so we mix the concepts. But it's just confusion due to technological limitations.

So in a sense we DO have souls, but it's a mathematical or information-theoretical soul, not a metaphysical one. It's always bound to a material instantation, but that concrete physical manifestation is not the same as the dynamic, interactive information process a person is.

So if technology advances enough we'll be able to copy a person, and it'll make no sense to ask which of them is really "you". Both are.

jterce• 14 years ago

Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original, you will lose consciousness. You will not wake up.

nova5• 14 years ago

Words fail me.

Imagine I have a magical device with which I can "stop time", or more precisely, stop movement of all particles except mine. In the beginning I am at our right. I stop time, move leisurely to your left and resume time.

What you see is me teleporting from your right to your left. You don't feel "trapped in a body who can't move", because your neurons are also magically frozen. Your consciousness feel continuous, even is you have been "suspended" for a while, because your memories are properly structured. Consciousness is not "something else", it is a property of your memories. (The blog post on lesswrong.com about timeless physics is important to see this point of view, I think, even if you don't buy the theory).

So if my copy is mathematically identical then there is nothing else left. There is no extra consciousness stuff that the "original" has and the "copy" does not.

Sorry, I really can't explain myself better. I'd suggest reading the link provided.

blake80862• 14 years ago

If you copy yourself, you will be creating two originals. They will both "wake up" and be "you".

gmaslov• 14 years ago

Well, I believe this line of thinking leads to the inescapable conclusion that consciousness is only an illusion.

notJim2• 14 years ago

I think I might understand what you're saying.

Let's say we can copy me. As in, we make another me (let's call him me* ) that is physically identical to me in every possible way.

I believe your argument is that I will continue to be me, and me* will essentially be a different person. If I die, that's it. me* lives on, but I am not me* , I am me.

The interesting question, which your parent (in the thread) posits an answer to, is what is the actual difference between me and me* ?

If you believe that humans exist entirely within the physical world (as in, there's no mystical/religious/spiritual element to our existence--we're just matter and energy), then me and me* are no different. Suppose we go back to your idea, that we kill me after creating me* . Since I am purely a physical being, I have no way of distinguishing between me and me* . In particular, if you never told me that I am me* , I would have absolutely no way of distinguishing the difference between me and me* .

Spoom• 14 years ago

Under current laws, wouldn't the way the Terms of Service are presented be considered a contract signed under duress? I mean, they are saying that if you don't sign the contract, they'll kill you, which is kind of the textbook definition of duress.

rbanffy3• 14 years ago

They could counter you are already dead and they are offering you the possibility of "post-mortem health care".

aeturnum• 14 years ago

That doesn't remove the duress. :)

However, before we get to a point where people are being uploaded into a system, we have a lot of legal president to set. The legal rights of the bits that are copied from your consciousness, for one.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

They could argue you are not strictly human, nor a citizen, I'm sure.

BenOfTomorrow• 14 years ago

To be boringly practical: The contract would almost certainly be determined when you first signed up for the service (i.e., when you were still alive).

dennisgorelik2• 14 years ago

Human mind keeps only few key details about "copyrighted works" we observed. These are not enough details stored in order to violate copyright.

sukuriant• 14 years ago

That's why some people can recite whole poems and other people can play songs from memory while singing them too. That's why you know just when to pause when you're singing to a song on the radio and the singer stops, and you know when the pitch changes, and what that particular beat is in the background that you follow.

There's more than enough details to be considered a violation of copyright.

dennisgorelik2• 14 years ago

Only few people remember thole poems and minority of people remember whole songs. In any case, the number of fully copied items would almost always stay below one hundred (not hundred thousands). And even those "copies" would not really be considered a copy by our contemporary judge (circa 2012). These are "backups" at best.

beernutz• 14 years ago

I like the idea i read somewhere about "Spinning off" versions of "you" to go do/learn something, then re-integrating that version of you back into yourself! I still agree with sodiumphosphate however, in that i prefer immortality and dodging the "end" of this mind. I MUCH prefer the idea that nanites can make us better, rather than "uploading" ourselves totally.

This is also why i don't like the idea of a Star Trek style transporter. At what point do you stop being you? I'd much rather stay alive and in one piece thank you. 8)

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