X-Message-Number: 16 From: Kevin Q. Brown Subject: downloaders Date: 9 Sep 1988 The July 1988 issue of The Immortalist contained an article on downloaders by Robert Ettinger. He aimed to show that "it is not obvious even that an inorganic artifact could live at all, in the sense of having consciousness and feeling". His main argument, to my mind, was that the downloaded information describing a person will not have the same properties as the human body representation of the person; "if you want a compass to steer by, you need iron (or other magnetic material) and not [a] paper [description of a magnet]". He considered this issue important because "many downloading devotees are led down the primrose path away from real immortalism and cryonics". His article drew two long replies in defense of downloading, a newspaper article about Hans Moravec's projections for downloading, plus a few short comments in the August 1988 issue of The Immortalist. I also had a reply to Ettinger (that was quite different from any of the other replies), but did not write it fast enough for inclusion in the August issue. (Perhaps it will make the September issue.) I have appended my response below. Unfortunately for you, I have not also included Ettinger's original article (since I have not obtained permission to reproduce it). Hopefully, I have provided sufficient context that my reply will make sense. Any comments? - Kevin Q. Brown ...{att|clyde|cuae2}!ho4cad!kqb ------------------------- The July 1988 issue of The Immortalist included an article on downloaders by R.C.W. Ettinger ("The Turing Tape & Clockwork People"). I agree that downloaders that eschew cryonics face a tremendous and unnecessary risk, but only because the technology for downloading does not exist. Ettinger, however, expresses concern that downloading may not ever work. I offer two reasons for being more optimistic: (1) downloaders will have an excellent fall-back position and (2) the difficulty in imagining how a downloaded person could be conscious may be due to intuitive but incorrect notions about our consciousness. (1) You Can Always Go Back to the Meat Machine Ettinger is quite confident that, with the aid of "Drexler machines", cryonically suspended people can someday be revived. But these machines can only put atoms in the right places, and certainly position and type of atom can be represented quite succinctly (in electronic form) as information. Thus, downloading, once it is achieved, should not entail any loss in information. Now upload that information into a (cloned) human body. What you get back is the functioning, conscious human being. The downloader has thus not lost anything since he has the fall-back position of uploading back into a human body. (2) To Be is to Be Confused (About What You Are) Can other media, besides human bodies, be conscious? The downloader says "Yes, if the information processing is isomorphic". (And, of course, a sufficiently powerful computer can run a simulation isomorphic to any given physical process.) When Ettinger dismissed this with his exhortation "You certainly can't claim that a paper tape (even when it is moving) is alive or conscious!" he has unfortunately missed the point. He later suggests that meat machines may have some "unique quality" or "potentialities" that do not exist anywhere outside the organic brain. Although Ettinger may find it astounding, my only complaint with the Turing Machine representation (besides the awkward way it does computation) is that Turing Machines are normally defined as stand-alone systems whereas a human obviously has a lot of interactions between himself and his environment. The paper tape is not conscious, but the system of interactions with the paper tape (and environment) may well be. The point is the information processing that occurs, not the implementation used to achieve it. Why is this nonintuitive when one considers the notion of consciousness? We are all subject to blind spots and illusions in our perceptual systems and our brains very cleverly attempt to mask them. The blind spot in our visual system, for example, is rarely noticed (when we are not intentionally looking for it) because our brains cleverly construct what "ought" to be there. Our perception of consciousness may likewise be cleverly constructed to not reveal its true mechanism. Just as we believe we see continuous motion in a movie, rather than a sequence of still frames, we believe we are continually conscious, rather than, possibly, only intermittently conscious. (That we should perceive our consciousness as continuous makes sense because whenever we are sufficiently conscious to think about our consciousness, we are conscious!) We perceive ourselves as a single entity, a single consciousness, yet we are really composed of many consciousnesses (a "Society of Mind"). (Some branches of psychological therapy, such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, make use of our multiple consciousnesses.) We normally think of consciousness as being of only one kind, the everyday "self-conscious" kind of consciousness, but many kinds of consciousness exist, some of which do not even include an awareness of a separate "self". (For example, when in a state of intense absorption in an activity, only the activity itself is in our awareness, not our "self" doing the activity.) Also, we have a sensation of "free will" but no good notion what it is free of. (Perhaps it is free only of an awareness of the mechanisms of our will.) I thus suggest that what makes consciousness seem mysterious to us (rather than purely mechanical) is a fundamental deception in the way that we are programmed to perceive it. And furthermore, any system (electronic, mechanical, organic) similarly organized will perceive consciousness as we do. No "unique qualities" or extra "potentialities" are required; simple deception will do. Of course, being human and therefore fundamentally deceived myself, this is quite a nonintuitive notion, although intellectually it is a neat idea. Therefore, do not expect a few words from me to suddenly catapult you from the consciousness-is-mysterious-and-beyond-ordinary-matter paradigm to the information paradigm. Changing one's worldview reaches too deeply into one's personality to change that easily. Surely you have explained the rational basis for cryonics to people who can easily follow the logic, yet still not believe it. Changing from the "dead is dead" paradigm to the "deanimation is still alive" paradigm requires a considerable adjustment and invokes corresponding resistance that a mere, logical argument may be unable to resolve. My recommendation is to keep in mind this notion that "consciousness seems mysterious and non-mechanical because of programmed deception". Turn it over in your mind every once in a while. Improve it. Let it sink in. Someday it will make perfect sense. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16