X-Message-Number: 33424 From: Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 13:14:03 -0500 (EST) Subject: Jeff Davis on uploading Thanks, Jeff, for an opportunity to clarify your errors. First, it was not up to a reasonable standard to bring in non sequiturs and attribute opinions to me that you know I don't have. When you are responding to me, why drag in stuff about "soul?" You know, or ought to know, that I am a materialist and reductionist. Much of what you wrote is in this vein--just irrelevant. You say I demeaned your view by saying "simulation" instead of "emulation" and that by saying "simulation I implied importance to speed and fidelity. I have repeatedly said that it is not a question of speed or fidelity, but of the very nature of the alleged uploading--that you are describing and not creating or copying. Jeff makes an issue of static vs. dynamic things and their descriptions. There is no relevant difference. A drawing of Mickey Mouse (or of a real person) is a description, and a movie with Mickey Mouse (or a person) is also a description. Jeff writes: "uploading is feasible, for the simple reason that anything done with ordinary --as in "non-magical" -- matter, can be done with different matter, if that different matter can be configured to equal or exceed the performance of the original substrate." Duplication of function is not the issue. We are talking about description, not copying, which is another long discussion. I could go on, but part of the problem has been that too many points are brought into a single missive, leading to disregard of some. Let's see if the above makes any dent. Robert Ettinger Sometime back, Robert Ettinger provided a list of reasons why uploading was never going to happen. I disagreed then, as I do now. After considering his points, I concluded that the first two, the most important, were not valid, so I breezed over the rest, finished with it, and put the matter aside. I simply did not want to dispute the point with Dr. Ettinger. I put it aside out of respect for the man whom I consider the founder of cryonics. But maybe it wasn't respect, just cowardice, ...or laziness. It seems now that it might be more respectful to challenge his view, if I think he's got it wrong. Well, the upload issue is back again, and with it Dr. E's opposing view. So here's my bit. Gerald Monroe put forth a very concise and orderly statement of how and why uploading should work, with which I agree entirely. I take Dr. Ettinger's main point in rebuttal (point number one (?) in his previous list of ten(?)), paraphrased, as: a simulation is a description, and a description of a thing is not the thing. First, I object to the use of the term "simulation", as it immediately conveys -- to me, at least --a presumption of limited fidelity, in the sense of an "approximation", vis a vis original to simulation. Having used "simulation" to beg the question of upload fidelity, he then amplifies the presumed defective fidelity by using the term "description". A description is a thought-generated abstraction: a notion, generally static, conveyed by the use of symbols: alpha-numeric, graphical, or audible. Clearly a description of a thing is not the thing. This statement is clearly true, but the logic that leading to it -- leading to identifying an upload with a "description -- is presumptive and tautological. It has no validity for me, I can only reject it and start over. The human persona is a dynamic information structure. For comparison purposes, "Huck Finn" is a static information structure. The human persona is mediated by the arrangement of matter we refer to as a human body. "Huck Finn" is mediated by the arrangement of matter we refer to as a book. The "state" of the human persona is always in flux, always changing -- thus the term "dynamic" -- updating its state every thirtieth (approx) of a second in response to the dynamic interplay of internal and external events. "Huck Finn" is static, stays the same, never changes. "Huck Finn" has untold copies in various mediums -- paper, parchment, sheepskin, power point, slides, audio book, synaptic memory, etc -- each of them indisputably "Huck Finn" because each contains an adequately accurate "copy" of the "authentic" information structure. The dynamic information structure which is the human persona has only one instance. Yet that is merely a statement of the circumstances of the moment. Up till now the opportunity to create a "copy" of a human persona has not presented itself. The understanding of the details of the persona, and its "biological substrate", is currently inadequate, as is the technology needed to create an engineered substrate to support the persona and its dynamic activity. How can I or anyone then speak authoritatively to the question, "Is that which is currently infeasible, permanently so, or merely temporarily so?" They can't. Not authoritatively. And it will do no good for someone to say "It's never been done." (Which, by the way, is the argument so often deployed as a challenge to the feasibility of cryonics.) Anything that becomes feasible, has to have a starting point, a first time. Before then -- and so what!?-- it's "never been done". Which takes us to the meat (pun intended) of the matter. I conclude that uploading is feasible, for the simple reason that anything done with ordinary --as in "non-magical" -- matter, can be done with different matter, if that different matter can be configured to equal or exceed the performance of the original substrate. Every indication from the computing revolution -- which ten or fifty or two hundred years from now will likely be "indistinguishable from magic" -- is that the information processing capability of neural tissue will be equaled and then surpassed by the information processing performance of engineered materials. Nothing I said here is the least bit original. So why are we in the cryonics community still discussing it? I suspect that the religion meme, the "soul" meme is the cause. Whenever you follow the logic of materialism you arrive at the conclusion that you are just a pile of stuff. That you are NOT special. Just a chemically active pile of clay. A animate lump of undigested meat. All of human experience, history, philosophy, and culture revolts at this notion. "I'm alive!! I'm alive!! Vigorously, abundantly, gloriously so." Screams the persona. "Just an illusion, fella." Asserts materialism." "Just a meat-borne biochemical accident one minute, and a pile of irrelevant garbage, the next. No god, no soul, no divine spark, no "paragon of animals", no "meaning" anywhere in the universe. Get over it." You know the movie "The Night of the Living Dead", where the dead rise from their graves as zombies and rampage around the countryside, all soul-less in gray, raggedy, spastic, and menacing? Well, here's materialism's truth: You **ARE** the walking undead. You **ARE** the zombies. The notion of soul saves you from this horror, which is why so many go there when challenged by materialism's inevitable implication. That's the bad news. The good news is that once you make peace with the meaninglessness of existence, you have liberated yourself to embrace the future, and not be frightened by it. Best, Jeff Davis Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33424