Uploaded thoughts. (Part 1?) (was: FAQ - What is uploading?)

--- In wta-talk@y..., "John Leppik" <jleppik@k...> wrote:
> I would love to see some specific scenarios.
>
> John
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Slawomir Paliwoda
>
> Nobody offered specific scenarios. I could, but I won't unless
asked
> to do so.

Alright, except "scenario" is not the best word here. "Speculation"
fits better, and as with all speculations, they are personal. My
position on the subject and the issues associated with uploading is
based on a few fundamental assumptions on which I form my thinking.
The most important one of them involves the issue of identity
preservation during the uploading process.

Ray Kurzweil illustrates this problem by offering a scenario where
the original Ray (Ray1) is uploaded during his sleep, which results
in a creation of an exact copy of his mind (Ray2) in the computer.
When Ray1 wakes up, he is informed that there exists Ray2 who swears
that he is the original Ray, who attempts to prove it by giving
specific facts from Kurzweil's life. Now, here's a question: Does
Ray2 represent a successful experiment in Ray1's
identity/consciousness preservation? Are the two the same person?

My answer is no, because two Rays would be forced to coexist, and
their perception and experiences would be different and diverging
with passing time. They would be almost exactly the same in every
detail, but they would not form the same entity. For example, Ray1's
mind cannot process Ray2's sensory data. The link has been broken. In
fact there was no link at all. Both have separate minds, and separate
copies of their consciousness. Uploading performed in this way would
merely create a new being, who, I might add, would deserve the same
legal status as the original from whom he/she was derived. Perfect
twin, but not the same person. As a consequence, if we were to kill
Ray1, we would kill real Ray Kurzweil i.e. his subjective experience
would be a "feeling of death".

There also exists a different way of performing uploading where all
neurons are gradually replaced by new ones. In this procedure, no
extra copies are made (otherwise, a new copy would be forced to
coexist with the original one, which would result in a creation of a
new being). The idea is that our minds are just a pattern independent
of the substrates on which it might run. As an example and informal
proof of this, Kurzweil describes an ongoing and natural process in
which individual atoms that make up our brains are continuously
replaced by different atoms. The process is analogous to a river
where the water flow follows the same pattern while the water that
makes up the flow is continuously replaced by new sections of water.
The concluding statement is that our pattern which produces
consciousness is independent of the physical substrate of our minds.

Kurzweil, however, goes on to equate "uploading where a new copy is
made" with "gradual uploading", saying that both approaches do not
preserve identity.

I believe this is wrong. The second approach does appear to preserve
identity and consciousness, since it seems that our identity is not
affected during the process in which our atoms are being continuously
replaced by other atoms of the same kind. Why the practical
consequences of this natural process could be extended, and applied
to a procedure seemingly as alien, and theoretical as uploading
depends on one subtle observation, namely, that our minds replace
their substrates all the time by the units of the same kind (and
atoms replaced by other atoms just implement this rule). The atoms do
not posses intrinsic "magical" properties that a mind and identity
depend upon, therefore the phrase "identity is preserved when a
mind's substrate is replaced by the atoms of the same kind" could be
replaced by "identity is preserved when a mind's substrate is
replaced by the perfect equivalents of the mind's functional units".

There are few things here that need to be emphasized. Identity
remains intact in the process where the mind's existing substrate is
only gradually replaced by the exact functional equivalents of the
substrate units. How big should those units be to prevent identity
crisis depends on the level of functionality we are able to
reproduce. If we are able to create functional equivalent of a given
neuron, it shouldn't matter how it is implemented as long as it
performs exactly like the original one. If the mind can be subjected
to a process such as the one described above, my belief is that this
kind of uploading would preserve person's identity/consciousness.

These are at least the assumptions that form the basis of my further
thinking on the subject.

Slawek.
Received on Wed Oct 16 20:21:28 2002