this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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I think SOMA made it pretty clear we're never uploading jack shit, at best we're making a copy for whom it'll feel as if they've been uploaded, but the original remains behind as well.
A lot of people don't realize that a 'cut & paste' is actually a 'copy & delete'.
And guess what 'deleting' is in a consciousness upload?
I mean, if I die instantaneously and painlessly, and conciousness is seemingly continuous for the surviving copy, why would I care?
My conciousness might not continue but I lose consciousness every day. Someone exists who is me and lives their (my) life. I totally understand peoples aversion to death but I also don't see any difference to falling asleep and waking up. You lose consciousness, then a person who's lived your life and is you regains consciousness. Idk
You make a good point. We all might be being copied and deleted in our sleep every night, for all we know.
There'd be no way to know anything even happened to you as long as your memory was copied over to the new address with the rest of you. It would be just a gap in time to us, like a dreamless sleep.
Old post but...if it's just memory, you'd lose ttauma and other ingrained coping mechanisms, no? There's no brain to try and fight back against things. Just memories making you...you...? Or not you, if you oose some of your behaviors?
Most people don't like the idea of a suicide machine.
Yeah, and I completely understand that. Just from a logical perspective though, lets say the process happens after you fall asleep normally at night. If you can't tell it happened, does it matter? I've been really desensitized to the idea of dying through suicidal ideation throughout most of my life (much better now), so I'm able to look at it without the normal emotional aversion to it. If teleportation existed, via this same method, I don't think I'd have qualms about at least trying it. Certainly wouldn't expect other people to but to me I don't think it's that big a deal. I wouldn't do a mind upload scenario, but moreso due to a complete lack of trust in system maintenance and security, and a doubt that true conciousness can be achieved digitally. If it's flesh and blood to flesh and blood though? I'd definitely try
its the transporters all over again.
That's actually not true. When you cut/paste a file on your computer (for most computers), it's much faster than copying the file. Deleting the file is also not instant, so copy and delete should be the slowest of the three operations.
When you cut and paste a file, you're just renaming the file or updating the file database. It's different how that works depending on your file system, but it typically never involves rewriting much of the data of the file.
Edit: Fixed typo.
Only if you copy and paste to the same disk. When copy pasting to a different disk, as any consciousness transfer would entail, it is very much actually copied and actually removed (from the index).
I think you meant ‘when you cut/paste a file’?
Oh yeah I did mean cut/paste, my bad.
It's all good as long as you're always on the better side of the coin flip.
I wonder how you ever could "upload" a consciousness without Ship-of-Theseusing a Brain.
Cyberpunk2077 also has this "upload vs copy" issue, but doesn't actually make you think about it too hard.
That's what I've always thought more or less, to have a chance you would need a method where mental processing starts to be shared in both, then transfers more and more to the inorganic platform till it's 100% and the organic isn't working anymore.
The animated series Pantheon has a scene depicting exactly this, and it's one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
Edit: Here is the scene in question. It's explained he has to be awake during the procedure because the remaining parts of his brain need to continue functioning in tandem with the parts that have already been scanned.
Interesting but I would argue that's actually still a destructive copy process. "Old Man's War" did a good job of what I'm talking about, it was body to clone body but the principal was similar and at the halfway point the person was experiencing existence in both bodies at once, seeing both bodies from the perspective of each other until the transfer completed and they were in the new body and the old slumped over.
That also reminds me of this scene from Invincible where during the copying process their experiences are sort of "blended" making them see from both bodies at once, only here they both live and are separate afterwards.
Edit: is it obvious how much of a sci-fi geek I am lol
You would have to functionally duplicate the exact structure of the brain or its consciousness while having the duplication mechanism destroy the thing it was reading at almost exactly the same time. And even then, that's not really solving the issue.
I don't see an issue with that. A prolonged brain surgery that meticulously replaces each part with a mechanical equivalent in sequence. Could probably remain conscious the whole time.
Yeah, but it's still a Ship of Theseus problem. If you have a ship and replace every single board or plank with a different one, piece by piece, is it still the same ship or a completely different one, albeit an exact replica of the original. It's important because of philosophical ideas around the existence of the soul and authenticity of the individual and a bunch of other thought-experimenty stuff.
I think so long as you maintain consciousness that issue is fairly null in this particular circumstance. There's lots of tolerance for changes in thought while maintaining the same self, see many brain damage victims. So long as there is minimal change in personality, there are lots of other circumstances that have a stronger case for killing one person and having a new person replace them due to change of consciousness, imo, I don't think most people would consider a brain damaged person killed and replaced by a new consciousness, or a drug addiction with radically altered brain chemistry, etc.
Not necessary. Imagine you begin suffering Alzheimer. And the artificial neurons are making a copy of your brain. Once a neuron stops working the backup one replaces it. Your mind, if it worked, could see the new neuron as part of the same brain and work with it seamlessly.
Yeah, like replacing individual braincells with more durable mechanisms. Idk, maybe they would be cellular as well. ..that makes me wonder, maybe it is possible to transfer consciousness even with traditional biological mechanism?
Any sufficiently identical copy of me is me. A copy just means there are more me in the universe.
reproduction 101
That ending screwed with my mind. Existential horror at it's finest!
I was just annoyed at the protagonist for expecting anything else. The exact same thing already happened 2 times to the protagonist (initial copy at beginning of the game, then move to the other suit). Plus it's reinforced in the found notes for good measure. So by the ending, the player knows exactly what's going to happen and so should the protagonist, but somehow he's surprised.
Yeah true. But Catherine said it perfectly at the end. Something like "you still don't get it? What did you expect?". The fact that one of his consciousness remains down in the abyss was kind of frightening. All by himself.
Two actually. The one from the before the suit change is also left there, and Catherine said he will wake up in a day or two. Maybe they can meet up actually.
You didn't kill old suit you? Cruel.
Ahh, but here's the question. Who are you? The you who did the upload, or the you that got uploaded, retaining the memories of everything you did before the upload? Go on, flip that coin.
If you are the version doing the upload, you're staying behind. The other "you" pops into existence feeling as if THEY are the original, so from their perspective, it's as if they won the coin flip.
But the original CANNOT win that coinflip...
But like.. do I care? "I" will survive, even if I'm not the one who does the surviving.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I would. The knowledge that "A" me is out there, somewhere, safe and sound, is uplifting, but it's still quite chilling to realize you are staying wherever the hell you are. At least we die after enough time has passed because our bodies decay.
onthulling
The SOMA protagonist wasn't that lucky...Is it chilling? I was already going to stay where I am, whether I made a copy or not. Sharding off a replica to go on for me would be strictly better than not doing that
I think it's both for me, which I think is what you might be saying as well. I would absolutely push the button to create the copy, or whatever, because I think I would derive satisfaction from creating a life (identical to mine, no less) that was free of the circumstance I was in, which must have been dire. However, I definitely don't consider that instance "me" even if I do consider the copy a legitimate, separate version of "me", so I don't feel that I have perpetuated my own instance, leaving me in whatever fight-or-flight terror I was in to cause the scenario in the first place.
What do you mean he wasn't so lucky, after all he lived out his live in Toronto. That he did a brain scan at some point of his life doesn't matter. Sucks for the robot who thought he was him.
which instance of theseu's ship am I?