X-Message-Number: 3672 Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 22:33:39 -0800 From: John K Clark <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Uploading yourself -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (Joseph J. Strout) makes some excellent points : >I suspect that consciousness (or, as I prefer, >"self-awareness") is not something you can fake.[...] "self" is >nothing more than the activity of our wonderfully >complicated nervous system.[...] A simulation of a hydrogen >atom isn't a hydrogen atom, because an atom is a >physical thing. The mind, on the other hand, is immaterial -- >it is a process, a function, and activity.Functions can >(in theory) be reproduced. I agree with all you said up to this point. >Early uploads will be crude, slow The first upload would be crude because it would have the same inefficient, needlessly complicated logical structure that evolution provided; the ultimate in spaghetti code. In spite of this it would not be slow because the hardware would be enormously faster. It wouldn't run a million times faster than we do, a billion would be closer to the mark. >and require large national (or global) budgets to accomplish. The first upload could well require a sizable fraction of world GNP . The second upload would be different because the first one would have had 10,000 years to think of ways to improve the process, 10,000 years in his time, a half hour or so in our time. This is assuming he wants company. >It's well worth pursuing, but I wouldn't hold my breath (or my >cryonics arrangements) waiting for it. I agree. Keith F Lynch wrote: >Anything which can run on a parallel computer can run on a >serial computer. That, of course, is perfectly true , in principle. >The only problem is that the serial computer is likely to be >much slower. "Besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play ? " >> but this is practicality and were talking philosophy here. >>It is well known that philosophy has absolutely nothing >>to do with anything practical. >I can't tell if you're joking here. I am. >How long ago it [ consciousness ] would have been eliminated >depends on how long ago it started. For all you know, it >began last Tuesday during lunch (you don't have any proof >that you were conscious, or even in existence, before then) and >will end at midnight tonight. Very good point . I can't prove it's not true but I'm not going to live my life assuming it is true. I don't claim my genetic drift idea proves anything in a rigorously mathematical sense but I do think it's pretty good evidence that if something acts conscious it is conscious. John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBLxTGpn03wfSpid95AQEadQTvTXkrhdqDZ53egNT6FtqPq2MizOdpLhO3 Yu2N7GMCNkk8qXjBTbbLDiOHsgoA0wsYi+UwIWv3DLMtJnWDQFPsqQwMT0AUjEQU hji2dYkrg97BqZvZMC5Br/Xf+g1I6di/bKNeL2x0dqLVvx55lax49Cm5qlvh8E5i sOoI/v3DoHFQn+1Gq3kbtI3UTmpL0w/K8wbV5v189NwmKVD/gPU= =gYhb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3672