Kent Stevens

A simulated self is one way of potentially becoming immortal. If you could be represented as a hologram, like in Star Trek Voyager, then you could be copied indefinitely. Cryogenics is not the best way to become immortal as bodies after a certain period of time wear out, even if you have been reanimated many times. The best way to become immortal is to be encoded as information that is kept on being copied, as your various representations wear out.

It could be interesting to see what would happen when people who think that machines can not have consciousness or have free will, came into contact with holographic representations of themselves. Maybe the hologram could say that it had free will and consciousness while their primitive flesh representation did not. While the person could say that even though they are amazing well represented in the hologram, the hologram still did not have consciousness or free will. Note that I do not believe that free will exists in anything. But, it seems to me if we did have this free will property, sophisticated robots or holograms would also have it as well.

Of course I think there can be virtual people then I think it would be possible to simulate the other forms of life as well. Though these simulations right now are quite crude they could become more advanced later on.

elwoodblues

Depends on your definition of 'immortal'. If "Knowing that some entity will exist past my death indefinitely, and this entity will act just as I would" is enough for you, then you're good to go. Simply 'copying out' the information in your head, in principle, would work. Assuming we have access to that information; the brain is still hardly better than a black box to us now.

However, most people mean to extend _themselves_ indefinitely, not just something that acts like them. And a simple copy of your brain patterns isn't necessarily _you_. What happens when you copy it out and leave the original, 'wet-ware' copy. Which is you?

I don't know. Knowing that some digital twin of me would go on living, I think that might give me some comfort. But I wouldn't call it immortality, not by any means. Hell, I might not even be comforted by it; I might be jealous...

Laurentius

AVE


Yeah. Cute. That's me.

You mean technology (science will provide the theoretical background).

Why can't consciousness be replicated? Because if it were you could see some sort of artificial consciousness somewhere already replicated.

If consciousness can in principle be replicated? Well, in principle means in theory, and in theory anything is possible, especially since you can find as many types of scientific theories as veins of philosophy there are.

Consciousness is by a brief definition (of mine) reflective self-aware will.

Artificial consciousness remains an impossibility because will can't be replicated.

AVE

elwoodblues

This argument seems nonsensical on it's face. If something were possible, we'd have seen it already. That's ridiculous.

No. By the understanding of 1800, we'd never get information out of the sun, because of the vast amount of energy essentially randomizing and destroying any information in it. We know now that this is not quite right, and know quite a bit about how the sun works. But, by the theories in 1800, this was impossible by principle.

By the understanding of 2002, it is impossible to draw energy from a vacuum. You can cite specific laws to support this.

Please cite the laws or accepted theories that support your assertion.

Stop running in circles! So tell me what WILL is, what mechanism governs it, how it works, why it's there, what purpose it serves, and EXACTLY why it can't be translated to a machine form.

I tell you three times, these are things we do not understand yet. We have very little understanding or knowledge about human consciousness, will, whatever you want to call it. That's good grounds for saying that we MIGHT not be able to replicate it in a machine, and I'd accept that cheerfully. But lack of understanding about a phenomenon at time t is not a good argument that machine replication of said phenomenon will be _impossible_ at time t + x.

Give me something to bite into here. I feel like I'm shadowboxing. Stand still and SAY something.

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: elwoodblues ]</p>

Laurentius

All right, I'll rephrase so that it'll be explicit enough for you: Artificial consciousness is an impossibility now because if it were possible now you could already see it manufactured somewhere now.

Unless you come up with some evidence that there is actual artificial consciousness functioning some place in this world, you must admit that for the time being it remains an impossibility.

You're abusingly assimilating "understanding" to "theories". Theories have always exceeded the limits of any age's scientific reservoir and admitted the impossible.

I've often heard this type of argument:
PCs were an impossibility one hundred years ago while now they have already become home appliances. Therefore all things that are impossible today will become possible one day.

Well, not everything man can think of may come true one day. There are natural limits.

Will is a property of living things.
Here's a definition:
A psychological phenomenon with a force-like character which is evident in living things' acting or trying to act and is necessary for these types of events.

Machines are not living things. If machines are life forms one day, only then will they be likely to be endowed with will and develop consciousness.

In the meantime this is sheer fiction.

Very dramatic, indeed. Have you taken acting classes lately?

AVE

elwoodblues

This I will go with whole-heartedly. We're curious monkeys; what we can do, we almost always try.

Absolutely. I'm just trying to get a handle on exactly what natural limits you're referencing when you put consciousness and will solely in the realm of the biological. So far I've just seen you assert that it is so.

If you want to define it that way, and classify 'living things' to excluse any sort of machine, fine. Doesn't seem too productive, though.

'Force-like characteristic'. Very introspective. Not very scientific, but very instrospective.

How do you decide whether a being has 'will' or not? Through it's actions? Or by studying it's components, breaking it down to some subset of the whole and saying 'Ahah! Here is the consciousness!'. If the former, you can probably create today a machine that will simulate some form of 'will' in it's actions. If the latter, we've gotten nowhere, because we have no idea what or where 'will' is in the human brain to begin with, so we couldn't identify what it might look like in a machine.

Again, it'd help if we defined the intension of 'living thing' before we went on about whether something is living or not. What properties do we look for? What properties are necessary for an entity to be living? What properties are sufficient?

Nope. When I come up against a shadow-boxer, the only way I've found to make them say something substantive is to get a little 'dramatic'.

Laurentius

Anyway.
Even your own argument that consciousness, will and life itself are phenomena that fail to be satisfactorily understood and defined works against this thread's idea that consciousness can be simulated or replicated for how could one manufacture something that he himself cannot grasp?

AVE

Primal

Good question and one I'm not sure I can answer satisfactory with anything more then mere approximations.

Basically I would say "no" to these simulated life forms because they are images, within a computer being run by the computer. I'd say they seem fundamentally illusory as they are projection from the computer not the actual computer. It'd be kind of like asking

"If we could engineer person's X's imagination so that inside it developed images of people, and these images would struggle stay within the imagination through attacking other images, are these images alive?" I would say no, because projections and mere images cannot be considered alive 'a priori'. They would lack a certain degree of autonomy and complexity, they'd be mere apearance.

Given that token I would consider computers with sufficient AI to be alive but not computers as they are now. Nor computer programs as they are now, though I believe with sufficient complexity such programs could be considered alive because they would cease being mere images on a screen and would be there whether shown on a given screen or not, they'd be more then pictures.

Another analogy

"Lets say in that given person who's imagination is running creatures that seem alive, an imagined person apears who is tied to certain neural connections very strongly, and can transfer between minds, while taking with them certain base elements and stayed there whether that person was aware of it or not, saw it in his mind or not etc, could go out of its way to secure neural rescources to continue its survival." I'd consider the imagined creature alive.

I guess it is a matter of complexity ultimately, and we should recognize that the line between "living" and "nonliving" while having obvious examples, can blur. For example with autocatalytic elements, and viruses. I'd consider a primitive computer program the equavalent to an autocatalytic enzyme or virus. They may apear complex visually, but in terms of information, motions, etc. they are probably quite simple.


There is also the difference between an organism that wants to live more or less due to intrinsic characteristics, and an image completely controlled but mental output. Images merely reflect minds whereas organism have actual drives and substance to them.
[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]</p>

Vogelfrei

1) Consciousness, being a nonphysical phenomenon, doesn't reside anywhere.

1a) I don't know what brain structures cause consciousness, and I don't see how that matters in this discussion.

2) The view re: the nature of consciousness that seems most likely, given current extrapolations about the nature of the brain, would be some kind of epiphenomenalism.

3) If you buy into epiphenomenalism, then asking why consciousness evolved is silly, since it was neither subject to direct selection pressure, nor does it have any practical value to an organism's survival whatsoever.

4) I don't say that, in principle, consciousness can't exist by virtue of a machine brain. But similarly, in principle, there's no reason that I was born human -- I might as well have been another animal. However, I am indeed human, and it simply may turn out, for whatever reasons, that consciousness can't be instantiated via a machine.

"Consciousness is whatever mental experiences I have."

What's wrong with that definition? Clearly it's not useful at all for determining whether anyone besides oneself is conscious, but it's the core of what consciousness actually IS.

That the description is useless to science is no objection. When talking about any particular thing, a person should first want to know about the thing itself (= qualia), rather than its insubstantial reflections (= empirical manifestations, or lack thereof).

Vogelfrei

Learn to have lucid dreams, and you can perform this experiment right now (albeit crudely).

The experiment loses some of its "zing" when it's obvious that the "hologram" (the dream image, in this case) actually doesn't have any consciousness.