Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Why we can’t cheat death by uploading our brains to the internet

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

It sounded like such a great idea, right?

Robert J. Marks: Well, actually, that’s very interesting because I think there’s a presupposition on Musk’s part that we are indeed algorithmic. That we can actually be represented by an algorithm, by a computer code… There’s good foundations and algorithmic information theory and computer science, which suggest that there are indeed non-algorithmic phenomena and there’s a strong evidence that the qualities such as creativity and understanding and qualia, are above and beyond the capabilities of algorithms and computability.

Can we really cheat death?” at Mind Matters News

Better read this before you buy your ticket to transhumanism. .

Comments
AaronS1978 Excellent point. This is also a major flaw in many sci-fi stories. Not only is consciousness not computable for theoretical reasons, but even if it were, the essential core of the self would only be copied into the AI system with the human self still trapped in the dying body. The AI copy would then proceed to have its own separate "life". The value to the human person of doing this is questionable - maybe just knowing that the copy will go on would be reassuring to some. Not to me. And actually it would be worse than this; the process of scanning for all the detailed cellular neural information of the transhumanist's brain would probably actually be destructive, and cut short his life. Worth it for what? Finally, the good old "Hard Problem" of philosophy of mind fundamentally prevents computer processing of any kind from generating consciousness, because the attributes of consciousness including the qualia of perception are basically, existentially different from and of a higher order than any physical neural processes and data processing implemented in computers.doubter
June 28, 2020
June
06
Jun
28
28
2020
02:42 AM
2
02
42
AM
PDT
I don’t even understand why they even think that’s possible to begin with Let’s assume that strict hard materialism is how it works Explain to me how one’s brain which is generating the conscious experience Is the same has making a computer have your conscious experience They are two totally different events taking place in space-time with two totally different materials at work They are different particles of matter, with different reactions in the place at the same time There is absolutely no way you can claim that you were immortal or you were cheating death because you made a computer have the same conscious experience you are having Maybe if there was a way to directly transfer that consciousness, NOT COPY IT, but actually transfer it, physically take it from the brain and put it in the computer, then and only then could you possibly claim that you were cheating death Anything else would simply be making a computer mimic you because it’s still not you, because you were still having your own personal conscious experience and that computer is doing its own thingAaronS1978
June 27, 2020
June
06
Jun
27
27
2020
01:50 PM
1
01
50
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply