X-Message-Number: 7915 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #7889 - #7899 Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 12:50:56 -0800 (PST) Hi guys, again! Well well well, I seem to have stepped into something here! One major problem is that there is just me to explain my ideas, and I have (by count) at least 3 opponents, each with their individual versions. I can hardly answer everyone without 3 times the work. (I noticed this problem when I first began to advocate cryonics, too, years ago --- but its hardly unique to cryonics). So here are a few points: Mr (Dr?) Strout has moved closer to what I was saying, so far as I can see. I don't care what he calls it, but I do think that "uploading" into a computer, and "replacement by different devices" should be clearly distinguishedbecause they are fundamentally different. Mr Lynch claims that I believe that if I differ even a little bit from what I am now I have ceased to be me. Please read my posting again. The problem with chaos is not at the START of the simulation, but the result when it proceeds. It may give a fine version of me when it has just started, but it will grow more and more erroneous (not at all me!) as it goes on. That is why I draw the distinction between STORAGE in a computer and UPLOADING into a computer. How fast with the simulation diverge? Bob Ettinger is right here --- we don't really know, but given that we are simulating every neuron, and that neurons themselves are much more complex than simple switches (and involve more than just the ions Mr. Lynch mentions, too) I would argue that the divergence would happen, in our terms (as real beings watching it happen) very rapidly. For Mr. Perry (Mike) I would say that we're both wading in a very subtle swamp, with lots of questions to deal with. First of all, I did note that I was speaking "For all practical purposes", so that dreams of some computer as large or much larger than the universe itself become irrelevant. Not only that, but the quantum levels in atoms are countable, but still infinite, and do not remain the same under magnetic fields etc. Just to say that we are "digital" means very little unless you really can map the universe into some fixed scheme of numbering. If Mike wants to go ahead and do that, I will wait for him to complete --- especially since we don't really know that even the universe (digital or not!) is finite (think of the physicists proposing many other universes as a way to reconcile GR and quantum theory). Furthermore, my main objection came from the distinction between a map and what was being mapped, not the really whether or not it could be mapped. In practical terms, we see that whenever we try to digitize a scene or an object: we know that our system will automatically lose resolution. A map is inevitably a symbolic representation of the real territory. (I recall a funny sad story of Jorge Luis Borges, of a country which wanted to map itself exactly. And as the map grew more exact it inevitably grew larger, until finally they had their exact map, just as large and covering as much territory as the country itself, --- but the effort to making it and the size of the map were too great, the country collapsed, and now there is no more than a desert with a few scraps of paper blown about in the wind). That our maps are digital is just one way they fail. There are, of course, other ways, which do not really happen in practice. The problem with a simulation of Mike is that it is a symbolic representation of Mike, and has meaning only so far as the symbols used have meaning. Ultimately it is human beings who attach meaning to those symbols. I find it very difficult to believe that any system which does no more than modify symbols can produce awareness IN THE SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS IT IS MODIFYING. Sure, such a system itself is NOT symbolic, and thus might even be aware. Computers do not simulate themselves, they are objects acting in the world. (That one computer might simulate another is irrelevant here). Mr. Lynch also raises the issue of the Turing Test. I do hope he does so with a bit of a smile, because philosophers in the area have ceased to believe that the Turing Test is sufficient. But note one major point: the Turing test requires the computer person only to interact symbolically with its interrogator. It is not asked to fall in love with him, or hate him, or show anger, dismay, and all the other emotions... except symbolically. And when we look behind the curtain, we may see another human being which can do all of those things, or a computer which sits there and can only deal with us symbolically. It's not that we cannot be STORED symbolically, but that we cannot really be RESURRECTED by an entirely symbolic construction. For that matter, it is the person who views a symbolic simulation, rather than the simulation itself, that gives any meaning at all to the computer simulation. I have to go now, but of course would not claim this is the end of the matter. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7915