X-Message-Number: 3941
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #3923 - #3932
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 23:38:05 -0800 (PST)



Hi again.

Since the issue of uploading seems to continue, I'm going to describe a 
sequence of events. I guess you get to decide whether or not to call it
uploading.

Let's suppose, then, that our memories are coded in the physical connections
between our neurons, and that learning involves growth of new connections.
This is actually fairly well established, though not perfectly. It's not
my aim here to prove or disprove it, just to use it.

So here we have a person A who wishes to be moved into another brain B,
for whatever reason. 

First, we do know that our brains have many of the broader connections in 
common. The differences come when we look at a lower scale. Brain B will 
therefore have to be stripped down, with all connections other than those
common ones either destroyed or disconnected. Person A's brain will then
be examined, at successively finer levels of detail, to work out just what
new connections should be grown/created/manufactured/induced etc in brain
B. This can, of course, happen while Person A is unconscious. At the end
of this process, brain B will be a copy of the brain of Person A.

Person A may then have chosen (recall he is unconscious!) to have his old
form destroyed, or perhaps to store it. Given the fine connections discovered,
he may also wish them all to be carefully logged. Let's say he is frozen as
a backup, and the connections are logged and kept with him in some storage
form with a very long lifespan. Brain B then is awakened, in whatever form.

Question: is this an "uploading" in the normal sense used by computer people?
If not, why not. If so, just what is the definition of uploading? It's
clear, here, that some kind of transference of self and personality has 
happened (if you accept, as I do, an informational theory of personality and
self). Given that this Brain B may revive in a very different BODILY form,
clearly the connections in brain B dealing with bodily control and feeling 
will have to change once more: after first moving everything over, Person A
will then have to change to fit his/her new body. Since our brain connections
are us, then to what degree will Person A cease to be the same person? The  
problem here is that we are not disembodied personalities: a lot of our 
habits, ideas, and feelings connect with our body. Would Person A ultimately
cease to be A if he/she transferred (let us say) into a spiderlike body?
(We don't see THROUGH our eyes, we see WITH them; we don't feel THROUGH 
our limbs, we feel with them).

Some people may argue that A might be given a body which, though very 
different, gives him or her the illusion of being the same. This seems a 
losing proposition: if I have 6 arms just how can I effectively use them if

I'm only aware of 2? I thought I WANTED 6 arms and now I find I only have 2 ...


One problem with neural nets which operate by changing the physical 
connectivityof their nodes comes from the fact that as the number of synapses 
increase,
they will (or can) exceed what can be handled by a given piece of computer
hardware (in the present sense of "computer hardware"). Of course, we assume
here that this problem has been solved by devising "hardware" (perhaps we might
call it software, but that word's been taken) which can grow new connections.
That is exactly what Brain B does (even if it's made of different materials,
etc).

To some degree this neural net could be simulated, but its limits and behavior,
especially near those limits, will be very different from Brain B or the 
brain of Person A.  And remember that Person A wants GREATER brain capacity:
so that simulating Brain B rather than providing it will be even more likely 
to bump up against Person A's desires. Will Person A accept a simulation rather
than the real Brain B? (There is no problem with transferring him, of course).
Just how far can this simulation be from Person A for Person A to still feel
that he/she still exists? 

           So happy transference/change/uploading/modification:
			And of course, long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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