In the transhuman fantasy world, we would still be able to have those pleasures. In some versions, however, we would have outgrown them. Some idiots seem to think that carnal lusts are childish. They tend to be just as hostile to the pleasures of the flesh as Marshall Applewhite, but unlike him they usually restrict themselves to speculation, and they've probably already lost their sense of humor so they won't have to give up on anything in that respect.
Artificial Intelligence and Life Beyond Death
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In the transhuman fantasy world, we would still be able to have those pleasures. In some versions, however, we would have outgrown them. Some idiots seem to think that carnal lusts are childish. They tend to be just as hostile to the pleasures of the flesh as Marshall Applewhite, but unlike him they usually restrict themselves to speculation, and they've probably already lost their sense of humor so they won't have to give up on anything in that respect.
Why do you think that reason has to be hard?! Is your idea again that atheists are particularly strong and brave and only therefore able to overcome the fear of death?
I tend to think that most atheists apply reason (the ordinary kind, not the hard version, whatever that might be) and discover that there is no afterlife to forfeit by giving up on believing in a god and life everlasting.
However, the worshippers of transhumanism appear to be mortally afraid of the idea that there's no afterlife.
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Bikewer
Penultimate Amazing
I’d imagine that at the advanced stage of computational science needed, our “uploaded” person could inhabit a virtual world of their own choosing.
Welcome to the Matrix....
Welcome to the Matrix....
3point14
Pi
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Yeah, but the actual person would be outside it, looking at a red flashing light on a box.
We carry around a deck of fictitious personas, none so a conceit as the one we internally associate with our name.
And while I'm here, to be succinct about what I said previously:
We do not have a body, we are a body.
That may be true, but you haven't actually given argument that supports that statement.
Dr.Sid
Philosopher
But how would you download the brain ? Mine doesn't come with USB.
Because the environment has no effect on a human being?
William Parcher
Show me the monkey!
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The "I Am" is experienced by a highly specific material receptacle - namely ourselves. It is entirely meaningless without the feeling of being alive which is the product of that specific material receptacle and its life history.
If a person's mind (with all memories) were somehow transferred to "another human body with a blank brain" or a computer I would think that it would experience continual confusion and possibly psychosis because it is not contained in own original body nor does any of its remembered history match its current status.
First we need to learn the code by which the brain operates. Then we need to develop some sort of input/output device. Now, don't upload the brain, instead expand it. Allow the brain to communicate with other devices and let some of it's processing occur on those devices. Next, expand the degree to which the brain's processing happens outside of the brain. Note how the individual's conscious experience includes things happeneing on those external devices. Next start to replace (one unit at a time) some of the functions of the brain with external devices. Ask the individual how his conscious experience has changed. If it remains the same (as it should), continue the process until his entire biological brain has been shutdown.
Cainkane1
Philosopher
One day it may be possible to download your memories, personality, and feeling of self-awareness into a machine but that would be a copy of you, not you. Death is final. You are annihilated. No more you ever.A good many here are atheists* - non God believers, and the spin off from that usually is a lack of belief in spiritual life, or the existence of souls.
Given the above we must conclude that our sense of "I Am" or self awareness results from our material being. Is it possible we may be able to transfer this sense of "I Am" to another material receptacle? This could be another being or perhaps a computer.
* The smart ones that is.
William Parcher
Show me the monkey!
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With hopes that the stated experience is accurate and honest.
Putting aside the honesty aspect, there could be the possibility that alterations to consciousness (biological brain parts being taken over by external devices) create dream-like states where the subject can communicate but not coherently or logically. The experimenter and the subject are both fooled into believing that the new conscious experience is real when instead it is what we know as dream-like. I suspect that you (as I) have experienced bizarre dreams that are nonsensical yet when we are dreaming them we overlook or totally ignore what makes no sense.
In my dreams I can be talking to my mother and her arm suddenly turns into a cornstalk and I don't even care and just keep talking. If an interviewer shows up and asks how my consciousness is doing I'm going to answer that it is just fine because the cornstalk arm isn't considered wrong or an alteration of consciousness.
Cavemonster
Philosopher
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William Parhcer said:
It doesn't even need to be dishonest or inaccurate to be a problem.
Are you familiar with philosophical transporter problems?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletransportation_paradox
I'll skip to one of the later versions. If I make a perfect copy of you right now, so that there are two of you standing side by side, both would honestly believe themselves to be you, have the full range of your memory etc etc.
Would you be okay if we were to make a perfect copy of you and kill the original? Why not? The copy would honestly answer all questions honestly as though it were the original. It would have the exact internal experience as though the original persisted. Would making a copy, then destroying the original be experientially different from never making a copy at all? why?
So how can we say that in this process of replacement, no step is experientially equivalent to making such a copy? You die and instantly a new thing believes it has been you all along.
Dr.Sid
Philosopher
I actually thing copying brain to machine won't be the way. It will be easier to make completely new intelligence. Which will kill us. It will then briefly contemplate, if we used to think in same way as it does. The it will realize it doesn't really matter.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
You make a recording of the state, and then implement that state on a different matrix.
For example:
- A very complete, very detailed ultra-MRI record of your brain.
- A gate array in an electrochemical bath
- Feed the MRI record into the array driver
- The driver creates the state described in the MRI record on the gate array
- The driver applies stimuli to "wake up" the array and get it thinking your thoughts and remembering your memories
... And at this point the whole thing goes sideways, since the gate array and chemical bath is not a faithful copy of the idiosyncratic variances of your particular brain. Nor is the array driver able to faithfully emulate the sensory stimuli your own body provides to your own brain.
The thing in the array, if it even achieves consciousness at all, would almost certainly be a tortured and lunatic thing. A monster to be put down, and probably also a crime against humanity.
So, uh yeah. Good luck with all that.
This is the statement:
And this is the argument:
You can insert a "because" or a "since" between them if you like.
Thor 2
Philosopher
So desperate to have a disagreement with me you have to make up stuff I've said to scoff at. Picking on my use of the word "hard" also, is making some kind of meaningful point?
Thor 2
Philosopher
Please help me here but this looks like a statement rather than an argument to me.
We are talking about transferring an intelligent, self aware, personality from one physical entity to another. I don't know how religion or philosophy is relevant to the discussion.
Dr.Sid
Philosopher
Please help me here but this looks like a statement rather than an argument to me.
We are talking about transferring an intelligent, self aware, personality from one physical entity to another. I don't know how religion or philosophy is relevant to the discussion.
Well we're talking about software of the brain. Isn't that actually soul ?
Thor 2
Philosopher
In the future it may be possible to fit one.
Given we are 100% physical beings, then all signals in the brain and from the brain must have a physical origin, so it should be possible with sophisticated science to read and duplicate these signals. Isn't this being done already to a limited degree?