Continuity and Identity (or, Are the Biocons Right?)

Sat, 2015-05-09 00:04

#2

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Kojak wrote:Where do you

Kojak wrote:
Where do you stand on this? If you lived in the world of Eclipse Phase, would you be comfortable with uploading, egocasting, or other technologies that break your personal existential continuity?

I wouldn't want to break continuity if I could avoid it, because that nagging, lingering doubt would always be there - that doubt of "if I break continuity, will "I", this me, wake up again, or I will be null, and someone else who's just like me, including having had these doubts, wake up in my stead?" Uploading whilst maintaining continuity, however, yes. And if the choice is break continuity and reinstantiate, or be killed for good and not reinstantiate at all, I'm definitely taking the chance that "I'll" wake up. And hell, even if I don't, that other fucker who wakes up? He'll have false confirmation that it will be him that wakes up, and so he won't be as hesitant the second time. Or the third.

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Sat, 2015-05-09 00:04

#3

UnitOmega

To me, the intrinsic self is

To me, the intrinsic self is information. It is all the data of your life up to the most current instance of You. The You that is data is constantly changing, moving, shifting. You learn new things, experience new things, You are in constant motion. Resleeving or uploading is simply a more rapid and artificial form of the process that exists in you already. Since all You are is a particular series of information arranged in this way, moving this data to a new instance shouldn't damage You. New information will be added and yes, You may change, but up until that point, everything is the same. No functional difference means there's basically no difference at all. Just as any two copies of a book are functionally identical. Now, if you're recovering from backup (not a stack), then yes, an instance of you has died, and now a new, separate instance survives. It is still partially You, but it no longer comprises the entirety of You, and thus is separate. Forking is similar. Once you separate and begin processing different information and experiences, the Fork diverges and begins to become functionally separate.

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Sat, 2015-05-09 00:52

#4

jKaiser

Study of the Consciousness: the cure for sleeping too much

I've been trying to type up an explanation for my views for a while now and kept talking in circles. I guess I'm still formulating how I see consciousness, but given the fact that our brains are constantly changing and undergoing regenesis, and really, we're just electrochemical signals running through specific hardware, I've rather come to see myself as a series of instances anyway. "I" am a pattern. Maintaining continuity would allow for that pattern to continue, and so "I" would continue. Forking...well, both forks would be continuations of that pattern, and assuming they're rejoined, that just adds a few new details to the pattern. Which one has my consciousness? Fuck if I know. And once either merging or definitive splitting has taken place, it kinda becomes a nonissue because then it's either a memory or another person. As to whether or not the "me" that existed at the beginning of the process is the same as the one in the new morph...frankly, I have no assurance that the me that's typing this is the same me as any other point in my life. Or, really, no way of satisfactorily defining "me" on the physical level, since every part of me that I can be sure exists does so temporarily and can ultimately be broken down into distinct parts. So it's sort of a moot question, but I'd hope that "I" carry over. Same with cortical stack recovery. It depends on how exactly stacks work, but if there's any electrical activity within a cortical stack, I'd personally count that as the continuation of the self. Reverting from a backup is basically suffering amnesia, which I've gotten over in the past. It's unsettling to think of another "you," but...I guess in the end, pragmatism comes out on top.

Sat, 2015-05-09 01:17

#5

Kojak

My friend made the point last

My friend made the point last night that you could, at least from a personal perspective, make the same argument about anesthesia: it causes a loss of continuity, and yet nobody here questions they're the same person when they wake up from surgery. But how might someone from the 17th century feel about that? Perhaps I am that man, relative to the world of Eclipse Phase.

—

"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Sat, 2015-05-09 01:20

#6

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

For me, I think the biggest

For me, I think the biggest thing to be frightened about with resleeving is the idea that "you" die - that the "you" that is reading this winks out of existence, is snuffed out, becomes as kaput as if someone had taken a double-barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot to your brain. The entire loss of consciousness, cessation of continuance. That in other words, you die. But then, when you think about that some more... If that does, in fact, turn out to be the case, then you're no worse off than if someone had scrambled your eggs ballisticly. If that is NOT the case, then you've cheated the Reaper, and you continue, even if you did catch a terminal case of high-velocity lead poisoning. So it's worth the gamble, you know? After all, if your first time is resleeving after sudden traumatic termination of life, you can only win or break even if you resleeve, there is no losing the way there would be if you uploaded and wiped your old mind in the process.

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Sat, 2015-05-09 01:29

#7

jKaiser

Makes me wonder just how

Makes me wonder just how volatile the philosophy boards are in the EP era. I dunno. Personally, I've been trying to wrap my head around as much quantum mechanics theory as I can in the hopes of getting some sort of coherent belief about continuation post-death. Matter/energy can never be destroyed, so on the most literal sense what "we" are is never truly annihilated on this side of the veil. Which implies...something? Stellar consciousness? "Life" as a disembodied waveform? I dunno. We understand so little about consciousness at the moment, so I find I kinda have to fill the gaps with something even if it's just hopeful thinking. Rather lovecraftian if you think of it, actually. Find a gap in our understanding that's so fundamental, the mind recoils.

Sat, 2015-05-09 01:32

#8

Kojak

I agree it's a somewhat

I agree it's a somewhat different conundrum with regards to being reinstantiated from a backup (although the idea of a perfect simulacrum of me running around out there after I'm dead is a little creepy to me). And I agree with your formulation that it's more of a "Hey, what have I really got to lose?" situation if you were going to die no matter what. I guess it's more the whole notion of egocasting that gets to me. Effectively committing suicide in order to shorten travel times seems like a poor bargain, to put it charitably.

—

"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Sat, 2015-05-09 01:40

#9

TranshumanMarina TranshumanMarina's picture

Myself, I am a bit on the

Myself, I am a bit on the fence. I mean, I think it is, in essence, Death of you, but continuation of a perfect copy.. a perfect copy that may well be you transfered, Just like if you dragged and dropped a file from one location to other. I mean, If you took a moment to move say, a personal file, or a game or whatever, Would it be literally the same data? no, It would be a copy that is exactly the same in all respects, being both functionally, practically, and even observably the same. That being said, I would ironically be -more- ok with backups then ego casting or resleeving. continuity may be messed up, but at least Im my own heir because something happened, rather then the convenience of getting across the solar system, which would feel.. I dont know, Wasteful. Psudo-notreally-killing myself to get from point A to Point B feels Like an exorcise in philosophy I would rather not grapple with, even if ultimately its no different then my body rebuilding itself piece by piece over time naturally.

—

During the fall, humanity received a grim reminder, We lived in fear of the T.I.T.A.N.S and were disgraced to live in these cages we called Habitats.

Sat, 2015-05-09 02:07

#10

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I was a little on the fence

I was a little on the fence about this, and then I went under general anesthesia for the first time. I basically lost an hour and a half, that seems a lot like Lack to me. Between that and my views on consciousness (which are pretty close to this) I'm pretty comfortable with losing continuity or similar. You die, and then you undie some time later when the instance starts running again. That narrative center of gravity changes pretty suddenly, just as it does when something else in our lives changes suddenly.

Sat, 2015-05-09 02:12

#11

jKaiser

I'm re-reading the rules for

I'm re-reading the rules for egocasting trying to figure out if continuity is maintained or not. It's a little vaguely worded in the corebook, sounding almost like it IS basically sending you as a backup file. Presumably there are bouys throughout the system to aid in egocasting and general communication, since those are so critical to modern life and you can't afford to let interrupted Line of Sight or a CME. So I wonder if those relays might not be mini-processor loci, acting like a distributed egobridge to enable the same kind of transitional emulation during the egocast that you have during normal morph-morph resleeving. That would cut down on a lot of the issues (and let the hypercapitalists do the equivalent of working on their laptops during a long flight), and explain the sheer costs involved. Otherwise, yeah, you're essentially hitting "pause" on your consciousness, making a backup, and transmitting that...which is again, hitting the copy/instance quandry, of course. But there's just no way around the information != physical matter, and unless we figure out how to replicate the actual process of the brain in such a way as to allow some...kind of distributed neurological...egocasting...thing (Brainstretching?), we are one way or another bound to becoming digital ghosts at some point. Makes me wonder if there's any money to be made with a brainbox courier service.

Sat, 2015-05-09 02:23

#12

UnitOmega

Continuity in the upload

Continuity in the upload/resleeve process can occur via wi-fi or quantum farcasting, but in the book it has a set range of 10,000 km, which is sadly, very short in terms of Space. Mostly this is if you're switching bodies in the same location, or perhaps interpolity. But if you had a giant... brain... mesh... thing... network, with a node every 10,000 KM, you might be able to jump sections. It'd be hella disorienting though, basically giving your sensorium lightspeed lag.

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Sat, 2015-05-09 03:19

#13

Lazarus

MHO

So like quite a few other people here I'm not quite sold on the idea that a copy of me is 'really' me. If I digitized my mind and then had a copy of that mind placed into another body then that's just a copy that's running around. Part of my litmus for that is the fact that don't actually have to leave my old body behind to do any of this, other than for reasons of convention. I could sit down in an ego bridge, have it read my brain, and put a copy of me in a new morph, then both of us could get up and walk away. If the second 'me' were to then wander out into traffic and get squished would I really feel like 'I' had died? I don't think so, so I can only say that that other person wasn't really 'me'. Oddly though, I do see how if I did die and then someone were to digitize my brain with an ego bridge the new copy would feel absolutely as 'real' to itself as I do. I can see that the new me would probably have some existential quandaries for a while as it tried to deal with the fact that it was a copy and not the original, but I think that the new me would also reach a stage where it just decided that there was no point in worrying about all of that and would just go on with its life. So killing myself so that I could quickly get to the other side of the solar system doesn't seem like an option to me. However, I think I could live with having my brain read by an ego bridge, having that data shot across the solar system while my body was kept in a state of suspended animation, and then re-integrating the new data when it comes back. I mean, that's just like using a telepresence or something, right? I didn't die. I just controlled another body for a while. Instead of using a radio to remotely control it I used a more complex method of creating a copy of my personality which went off and made all the decisions, then came back and was downloaded into my brain. Every decision the copy makes is what I would have made and because I've got no memories of that time in my 'real' body I won't feel like I'm watching something someone else did, but at the same time I will still be 'me'. I won't have ever died.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Sat, 2015-05-09 03:21

#14

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

With a big enough QE comms

With a big enough QE comms rig it should be possible have infinite range egocasts without loss of continuity, but that's a purely theoretical thing as I don't think the EP setting as a whole has enough QE bandwidth to do that.

Sat, 2015-05-09 09:21

#15

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:With

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
With a big enough QE comms rig it should be possible have infinite range egocasts without loss of continuity, but that's a purely theoretical thing as I don't think the EP setting as a whole has enough QE bandwidth to do that.

If you could invent a method of QE comms that [b]don't[/b] burn through a finite reservoir, you could have this. You'd also have an invention that would revolutionize the setting.

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Sat, 2015-05-09 11:24

#16

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

I worry about continuity

I worry about continuity before I go to sleep. How do we know that we aren't daily experiencing the death and "transporter problem."?

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Sat, 2015-05-09 15:00

#17

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

uwtartarus wrote:I worry

uwtartarus wrote:
I worry about continuity before I go to sleep. How do we know that we aren't daily experiencing the death and "transporter problem."?

Well, if you feel that way, then there's no real reason [b]not[/b] to go ahead and upload, resleeve, etc, at will. Also, I wonder how in the hell you can get any sleep at all? A heavy sedative habit? Going until you physically crash?

—

Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name. [url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url] [url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]

Sat, 2015-05-09 15:17

#18

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

For my games, egocasting

For my games, egocasting maintains continuity, since in the EP setting they've already made the assumption that your mind is separable from your body. "Quantum farcasting" has the word quantum in it (which is the sci fi equivalent of "a wizard did it", I know) so I, in my laziness and complete disinterest of hardcore science, figure that your ego, which is effectively just data, is shot across space and ends up somewhere else. But backups? Nope, not the same conciousness. If Bob A becomes an exsurgent and a backup of Bob is activated, Bob B is an entirely different person by all accounts. Or even scarier, if Bob A is presumed dead but finds his way back to Mars six months later and finds that a backup of him was instanced due to his insurance, what are they gonna do now? "Sorry Bob B, looks like Bob A is alive after all. Gonna have to put you back on ice."

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Sat, 2015-05-09 16:13

#19

jKaiser

Out of curiosity, if you

Out of curiosity, if you follow that logic, is someone who suffers severe retrograde amnesia a different person than the one who experienced the lost memories? Or if we develop the technology to bring someone back after braindeath by restarting the brain (actual feasibility being ignored for sake of argument), is that the same person, or another instance running on the same meatware?

Sat, 2015-05-09 17:38

#20

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

jKaiser wrote:Out of

jKaiser wrote:
Out of curiosity, if you follow that logic, is someone who suffers severe retrograde amnesia a different person than the one who experienced the lost memories? Or if we develop the technology to bring someone back after braindeath by restarting the brain (actual feasibility being ignored for sake of argument), is that the same person, or another instance running on the same meatware?

For me? They'd be the same person. In the former case, they are the same consciousness, only missing parts of their life. The same for the person brought back from being brain dead. They're both in the exact same body they were before, so they'd still be the same consciousness that existed before, even if they have some features missing. My admittedly extremely unqualified definition of the self is confined to the physical form, particularly in the brain. Perhaps they will find a way to be able to actually digitally transfer one's consciousness to a different location or body, in which case my definition would change. Perhaps there is a currently unidentifiable quantity inside of us somewhere that could be something akin to a a "ghost" that travels with us when we egocast or even restored from backup. Or maybe not. Either way, I can see the parallels of your question and certain themes in Eclipse Phase, and they are certainly questions I'll have to ask my group when we get into this kinda stuff.

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Sat, 2015-05-09 17:39

#21

Zarpaulus

Your consciousness does not

Your consciousness does not "cease" when you sleep or get sedated, it simply is dialed down for a while. Closer to "sleep mode" than a shutdown. Those who say that resleeving would be no different than the cycling of atoms in and out of the body, that process is not all at once. With resleeving you could easily make several forks that would all be conscious at once and have an equal claim to being "you". Gradual uploading I might accept, but even uploading from a stack has the same "many yous" problem.

Sat, 2015-05-09 20:52

#22

jKaiser

Fair point, but even in the

Fair point, but even in the most gradual replacement process, the end result is the same: the original physical form is gone, replaced with a changed copy. I admit I'm partially taking the devil's advocate since I'm still on the fence about a lot of how this thing works...and I'm thinking that the deliberately vague wording of a lot of the writing in the books regarding this is to allow both for gameplay and also to account that in the future we might've made some sort of breakthrough in consciousness that helps people come to terms with it. I dunno, I have a distinct feeling that they'd look on a conversation like this and scoff like we might about someone espousing homeopathy or traditional medicine, "Oh, look at that, they're thinking of it like clones or twins. We really need to get more funding for the schools if they don't even know about the Whatshisbutt Effect."

Sat, 2015-05-09 21:09

#23

Kojak

I feel like if it were the

I feel like if it were the Whathisbutt Effect, to borrow your phrasing, that would be explicitly spelled out in the canon. What the canon *does* emphasize is that despite massive advances in the understanding of consciousness, there is still a ton they don't understand about it. I think the fact that they leave it as a live issue within the setting is intentional, and probably designed to make us ponder exactly these sorts of issues.

—

"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head." - Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop

Sat, 2015-05-09 23:18

#24

SquireNed

I think that there are

I think that there are interesting legal concepts to be explored here. For instance, let's say that a fork of me goes on and runs the Pirate Bay of AF10, gets shut down (violently) by the PC, but resides in a jurisdiction where his ego isn't deleted for that. His last backup is from before he even began to run the platform. Now, of the three of us, who are guilty? Obviously the fork who has been pruned of his mortal coil is guilty, but am I guilty and is his pre-crime backup guilty?

Sat, 2015-05-09 23:35

#25

UnitOmega

Well, at least based on my

Well, at least based on my own understanding of the law (being a Criminal Justice major), in the strictest sense of how the current (US) justice system works, really, only the Fork who actually does the crime should be guilty of it. Crime is considered to have two elements, mens rea and actus reus. Mens rea is the "guilty mind", which is the intent to perform the crime (which is really hard to prove without a confession). Actus Reus is the "guilty act", the actual comission of the crime. If the fork of you is the one actually doing all the actions which are criminal, he's the one liable for the crime, even if they roll to the pre-crime backup and somehow establish mens rea. Now, that's not to say that, perhaps a civil case could be brought up against the backup for future-past damages (You'd probably want to talk to a full blown lawyer about that), but generally, if the backup exists before the crime is comitted, and this can be proven, he shouldn't be liable for it. And if he is, and is charged, the ol' Double Jeopardy clause means You-Prime can't also be charged with the crime. You can't be charged with the same exact crime twice. On the other hand, since the Consortium also doesn't see even Alpha forks as new individuals, treating all source Egos as the same citizen (as far as I know) it might be possible that the You-Prime is found liable for the crimes of your fork. But, at the same angle, it could also be that was an illegal fork who would have been deleted anyway. That's probably an issue for a prosecutor to decide if they feel like taking the Prime-You to court over. They might try and prove conspiracy between you and your fork, for instance.

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Sun, 2015-05-10 00:00

#26

Zarpaulus

jKaiser wrote:Fair point, but

jKaiser wrote:
Fair point, but even in the most gradual replacement process, the end result is the same: the original physical form is gone, replaced with a changed copy. I admit I'm partially taking the devil's advocate since I'm still on the fence about a lot of how this thing works...and I'm thinking that the deliberately vague wording of a lot of the writing in the books regarding this is to allow both for gameplay and also to account that in the future we might've made some sort of breakthrough in consciousness that helps people come to terms with it. I dunno, I have a distinct feeling that they'd look on a conversation like this and scoff like we might about someone espousing homeopathy or traditional medicine, "Oh, look at that, they're thinking of it like clones or twins. We really need to get more funding for the schools if they don't even know about the Whatshisbutt Effect."

What do you mean by "end result"? The material and pattern of your brain is not the same as it was this morning. To me, it seems like consciousness is a stream rather than a file you can simply copy and paste from one device to another. Constantly changing, constantly shifting. We say that a river is the same no matter how the waters within flow in and out and the soil of the shores and bed erode and are deposited. We divert a part of it and it forks into two rivers. But if we cut a new river shaped exactly like an existing river was at some time in the past do we say it's the same river that was copied?

Sun, 2015-05-10 18:11

#27

jKaiser

Zarpaulus wrote:What do you

Zarpaulus wrote:
What do you mean by "end result"? The material and pattern of your brain is not the same as it was this morning. To me, it seems like consciousness is a stream rather than a file you can simply copy and paste from one device to another. Constantly changing, constantly shifting. We say that a river is the same no matter how the waters within flow in and out and the soil of the shores and bed erode and are deposited. We divert a part of it and it forks into two rivers. But if we cut a new river shaped exactly like an existing river was at some time in the past do we say it's the same river that was copied?

"One can never step in the same river twice," to reflect on your second point. Which is really my...eh, theory is too strong a word. Ignoring the possibility of a persistent soul-mind sort of thing to define the "self," we're ultimately nothing but physical matter-energy reactions. I've been trying to type up an explanation for how I see this for literally an hour now and am just getting frustrated. As in, about to throw my laptop across the room frustrated. I'll give it more thought and try to narrow down the gists later, maybe. Suffice to say, a lot of it comes from the kind of mental motherfuckery studying too much about things like quantum superposition can lend itself to and wondering what exactly makes my particular smear of particles self aware in the first fucking place.

Sun, 2015-05-10 18:49

#28

Zarpaulus

jKaiser wrote:Zarpaulus wrote

jKaiser wrote:
Zarpaulus wrote:
What do you mean by "end result"? The material and pattern of your brain is not the same as it was this morning. To me, it seems like consciousness is a stream rather than a file you can simply copy and paste from one device to another. Constantly changing, constantly shifting. We say that a river is the same no matter how the waters within flow in and out and the soil of the shores and bed erode and are deposited. We divert a part of it and it forks into two rivers. But if we cut a new river shaped exactly like an existing river was at some time in the past do we say it's the same river that was copied?
"One can never step in the same river twice," to reflect on your second point. Which is really my...eh, theory is too strong a word. Ignoring the possibility of a persistent soul-mind sort of thing to define the "self," we're ultimately nothing but physical matter-energy reactions. I've been trying to type up an explanation for how I see this for literally an hour now and am just getting frustrated. As in, about to throw my laptop across the room frustrated. I'll give it more thought and try to narrow down the gists later, maybe. Suffice to say, a lot of it comes from the kind of mental motherfuckery studying too much about things like quantum superposition can lend itself to and wondering what exactly makes my particular smear of particles self aware in the first fucking place.

Continuity.

Sun, 2015-05-10 20:18

#29

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

For me a big part of the

For me a big part of the question is whether I could accept that who I am is the information stored in my brain instead of the brain itself. I think I could accept that scanning my memories at the resolution needed to retain the immediacy ( I think the proper term is qualia? ) of my experiences which could then run as a simulation of me, may as well BE me. Helping me along with this realization is that I am an avid reader and the idea of simply losing my experiences and knowledge because I died feels wasteful. In a way I'd become a book OF me...which makes you wonder if they'll view autobiographies as a form of incredibly low resolution backup! A big part of the debate is that for the first time this is more about a thing that could actually happen. Historically and culturally there was never any real possibility of doing anything like recording egos. And while its still a loooong way off -if ever- the potential is there and we should be prepared. I will admit that despite my seemingly cavalier attitude about this, the thought that if I'm wrong and I'm getting mindwiped and overwritten if someone uses my original morph gives me the creeps. I'll wait till this one is done before starting another!

—

Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Sun, 2015-05-10 23:26

#30

jKaiser

Bit of research at least gave

Bit of research at least gave me a name for the problem we all seem to be hitting with this. It's a dozen different takes on the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you keep a brain alive but completely rewrite everything that gives it a particular identity, is it the same person? If not, what's the point of cut-off? If consciousness has a certain plasticity, as the more optimistic take on resleeving would surmise, at what point during the ego-bridge "hand-off" do the brains in question become/cease to be the individual? If you build a perfect replica of the brain, then somehow conduct the neuroelectric "spark" from the original, so that it leaves the first and animates the second...well, what's happened there? What part of the matter/energy relationship in our gray matter is us? That's kinda what I assume they've figured out in EP. It can still be a blackbox they don't fully understand, but if they can quantify it, much like we've managed to harness both special and general relativity despite not really understanding how they work together, that would go a long way toward explaining how this technology's gotten so accepted. That would go a long way toward explaining why psychosurgery is such relatively mature technology, too, actually. At this point I'm just talking out my ass and theorizing, it bears mentioning.

Mon, 2015-05-11 00:31

#31

jaunty Harrison jaunty Harrison's picture

My instincts tell me that if

My instincts tell me that if you have to restore from a backup, that's a recipe for a [b] human [/b] mind that's just plain dead, But the [b] transhuman [/b] mind is alive and kicking. For me, the important thing is that the technology in eclipse phase does more than just record and save the information carried by a person's neurons. It can be a two way street, altering and augmenting the brain while it is still conscious. A character with oracles, and cognitive enhancements is partially thinking with their implants. A character with a mnemonic augmentation is remembering things with their cortical stack, while they are still conscious. For me, the consequence of this is a larger transhuman mind. A human mind was originally used as one of the parts to manufacture this transhuman mind, but now it's a dependent part of the larger whole. Backing up, forking and merging are all living functions of the transhuman mind. These are the ways that it transmits and receives information from parts of itself. Now, you may point out that not all characters in Eclipse Phase use cognitive enhancements, or merge with their forks. To me, these unfortunate cases are transhuman, but only by a hair's breadth. In these transhuman minds, the parts struggle to send and recieve information from one another. The ongoing dialogue is crippled by the lack of the technology necessary to keep a transhuman mind healthy.

Mon, 2015-05-11 11:52

#32

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

ShadowDragon8685 wrote

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
uwtartarus wrote:
I worry about continuity before I go to sleep. How do we know that we aren't daily experiencing the death and "transporter problem."?
Well, if you feel that way, then there's no real reason [b]not[/b] to go ahead and upload, resleeve, etc, at will. Also, I wonder how in the hell you can get any sleep at all? A heavy sedative habit? Going until you physically crash?

I mostly end up adopting the "don't think about that too much" strategy to reduce dissonance, but I do need to use sedatives to maintain a work-friendly sleep schedule. Mostly I fear uploading much as I fear sleep, despite the illogic of all of that. A creeping dread that leaves me staring into the ceiling.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Mon, 2015-05-11 12:28

#33

Zarpaulus

uwtartarus wrote

uwtartarus wrote:
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
uwtartarus wrote:
I worry about continuity before I go to sleep. How do we know that we aren't daily experiencing the death and "transporter problem."?
Well, if you feel that way, then there's no real reason [b]not[/b] to go ahead and upload, resleeve, etc, at will. Also, I wonder how in the hell you can get any sleep at all? A heavy sedative habit? Going until you physically crash?
I mostly end up adopting the "don't think about that too much" strategy to reduce dissonance, but I do need to use sedatives to maintain a work-friendly sleep schedule. Mostly I fear uploading much as I fear sleep, despite the illogic of all of that. A creeping dread that leaves me staring into the ceiling.

How in the name of Bob did this notion that sleep is death of consciousness emerge? You dream, don't you? The brain is not a binary system like a computer, it's a hybrid of analog and digital. The incoming signals received by neurons vary across a wide scale. Throughout the Earth's rotation your brain activity slides up and down an even bigger scale, including during the sleep cycle. And it does not reach "zero" until you die, for real.

Mon, 2015-05-11 12:36

#34

jKaiser

Ever woken up unable to

Ever woken up unable to remember any dreams or how you fell asleep? For a lot of people, that feels like a break in continuity, which can be very distressing.

Mon, 2015-05-11 15:12

#35

Zarpaulus

jKaiser wrote:Ever woken up

jKaiser wrote:
Ever woken up unable to remember any dreams or how you fell asleep? For a lot of people, that feels like a break in continuity, which can be very distressing.

No, but I've had my memory of my dreams fade a few minutes after waking up. A couple times I tried keeping dream journals before losing interest from apathy.

Mon, 2015-05-11 15:21

#36

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

I occasionally dream, sure,

I occasionally dream, sure, but other times I cease to be conscious and then my consciousness restarts and I am in bed and time has passed. I have had micronaps in class or on buses and it seems like time skips. It feels like a break in continuity. For all I know the version of me that ceases to be conscious is gone for good and that an exact copy of the same mind starts, with prior memories, so it is functionally me. But the transporter problem breaks the continuity of morph that makes the discontinuity of ego non-problematic. Resleeving as well. When you egocast, a version of you dies possibly. But reading Peter Watt's [i]Blindsight[/i] and [i]Echopraxia[/i] has also broken down the concept of self and consciousness in my mind too. Every minute we encounter new things and our brains change, our neural structures change, and the sense of continuity is just a lack of fine detail or resolution of the gradual changes. So ultimately, it is only when I am trying to sleep that I stop and think "I may cease to exist if I lose consciousness and while a version of me may awaken, how can I tell if that is actually me?" This sense of concern is the SV associated with resleeving and egocasting, I believe.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Mon, 2015-05-11 16:40

#37

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

LONGPOST IS LONG

The self is non-existent. There's nothing to maintain from this end to that, because there was never a self on this end to preserve on the other. Honestly, I figure if tech like EP's comes around, it'll be like going to sleep for the duration of the ego transfer and not horrifying or disorienting to the degree the game ratchets it up to (but I like it for thematic flavour nonetheless, and hey the tech's only a few decades old). Contemporary neuroscience is rapidly piling up evidence on the side of the table that the Buddha's been peeking over, giving us that smug beatific grin, for over two and a half millennia. The self is illusory. Organic machines on the micro and macro scales adapt. The meat machine adapts to various problem ecologies whether a lil' dinosaur like a hoatzin or a big ol' polar bear or even a homo sapiens. The meat adapts, including the meat inside the skull. Evolution jury-rigs the computer unceasingly, uncaringly, just moving forward until death. Lots of these blind jury-rigs are maladaptive because there's no programmer with a goal, just lots of code spewing out into ecosystems and dying until the shit that worked filters through into the future. The machines that adapt and escape relatively unscathed by accidents, escape being out-adapted in lethal ways, etc can last a really long time relatively unchanged like some bacteria, but I don't imagine brain structure shifts in the order of life we know about with the most dramatic brain structure shifts (primates and their immediate ancestors) are going to be a rare occurrence or anything. Whatever the time scale looks like, even unassisted by tech we'd eventually have become transhuman/posthuman/exhuman in the sense that we might be considered to be exaustralopithecus or whatever. So the idea that the heuristics our meat adapted from external problem ecologies to internal problem ecologies are going to see only things actually there, and anything not consciously perceived is not the self...well, I mean again modern neuroscience has dispelled that entirely. Stanislas Dehaene's [i]Consciousness and the Brain[/i], Peter Carruther's [i]The Opacity of Mind[/i], Thomas Metzinger's [i]Being No One[/i] (or [i]The Ego Tunnel[/i] if you want his more pop science intro to the concepts) all go into this to some degree but following developments in neuroscience and philosophy of mind even ideas like Dan Dennett's "intentionality" are being shown for the skyhooks they are. Bakker's Blind Brain Theory is the first cogent attempt I've seen articulating a neuroscientifically informed post-intentional philosophy of "mind", but Carruther's recent attempt is also shaping up to be pretty great. Another guy named David Roden is writing really good philosophy about posthuman possibilities that venn diagram with what I'm talking about here and Eclipse Phase really well. Just putting all this here in case anyone wants to not just take my word for it. And when I say internal problem ecologies, I'm including subsets of that like social problem ecologies that the externalization of internal heuristics, via language, messily attempt to communicate...I mean, that's probably where self-concept develops, and that's literally just time throwing shit at a dartboard and not killing us yet (self-concept and illusory human egos puffed up too big might wipe us all out though so it actually might be SUPER maladaptive) and there's just so much room for error there! We've got cognitive biases coming out the wazoo that say we don't have the competence to assess that we have a self any more than most of us clueless ape dinguses could assess (for a ridiculously long time) the counter-intuitive fact that we revolved around the sun from the information of the sun moving across the sky. Eventually, science moved us away from geocentrism, we all know anthropocentrism is b.s., now noocentrism can be banished along with the practically theological concept of the noos/nous, i.e. the knowing mind, one that can assess truth in reality. It's not a real thing, it's a magic trick done by a three pound magician inside your skull. Neuroscience is now standing behind the magician, and can tell you why you'll never see it from your angle in the audience. It just remains to be seen if people can see past the counter-intuitive, past the coin vanishing into thin air from their perspective, past the sun of their thoughts crossing the sky of their Earth-self...and into real knowledge of the counter-intuitive reality that they don't have a self, mind, intellect, will, soul or any other little microtheology in our heads. I think extreme conservatives and reactionaries are pretty much going to be the bulk of the people who still believe in selves in 100 years (you know, if cascading ecosystem collapse our maladaptive asses caused hasn't wiped us out by then).

Mon, 2015-05-11 16:46

#38

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Outing The It That Thinks

Outing The It That Thinks goes a bit into alternate theories of agency that made us conduits of the Gods in Homer's time rather than self-willing rational agents, right at the beginning (the whole thing is great but you only need to read the first bit for what I'm talking about really). Across time and cultures, even within Western cultures, the self has not been a consistent belief or idea.

Mon, 2015-05-11 17:18

#39

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

"Consciousness mediates

"Consciousness mediates between two opposing instincts" was the gist of Watt's Echopraxia.

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Mon, 2015-05-11 18:31

#40

Zarpaulus

uwtartarus wrote:I

uwtartarus wrote:
I occasionally dream, sure, but other times I cease to be conscious and then my consciousness restarts and I am in bed and time has passed. I have had micronaps in class or on buses and it seems like time skips. It feels like a break in continuity. For all I know the version of me that ceases to be conscious is gone for good and that an exact copy of the same mind starts, with prior memories, so it is functionally me. But the transporter problem breaks the continuity of morph that makes the discontinuity of ego non-problematic. Resleeving as well. When you egocast, a version of you dies possibly. But reading Peter Watt's [i]Blindsight[/i] and [i]Echopraxia[/i] has also broken down the concept of self and consciousness in my mind too. Every minute we encounter new things and our brains change, our neural structures change, and the sense of continuity is just a lack of fine detail or resolution of the gradual changes. So ultimately, it is only when I am trying to sleep that I stop and think "I may cease to exist if I lose consciousness and while a version of me may awaken, how can I tell if that is actually me?" This sense of concern is the SV associated with resleeving and egocasting, I believe.

It could just as easily be your sense of time slowing down to a standstill.

Mon, 2015-05-11 19:22

#41

VorlonJoe

Two cents worth . . .

Errors in transmission are just inevitable so I think I'd pass on egocasting and copying . . . :)

Tue, 2015-05-12 00:28

#42

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

VorlonJoe wrote:Errors in

VorlonJoe wrote:
Errors in transmission are just inevitable so I think I'd pass on egocasting and copying . . . :)

Per the setting you can back yourself up without wiping or otherwise affecting your current ego. So there'd be no reason to pass on copying because of errors, they could just restart the backup process if an error happened, no loss on your end. Edit: that has me thinking...I wonder how many biocons who aren't religious are basically fine with the idea of a backup but don't want to egocast until they're already a copy...like a living will that ensures a "child" of you lives on who wouldn't care whether a copy was copied any more than the biocon did during their entire flat life.

Tue, 2015-05-12 07:26

#43

VorlonJoe

True . . .

That's absolutely true of course, I was being a bit real worldy with my answer. =)

Wed, 2015-05-13 06:35

#44

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Come with me on this journey...

Just because something is illusory, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Long Version:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

It's important to consider what we mean by Self. Imagine we have an unknown particle in a vacuum. If we want to find out what type of particle it is, we pelt it with other particles which we know the identity off, such as electrons, and observe the interactions. However, we know the identities of those other particles because of their interactions with others. If we now move up a level, we find the same behaviour; arrangements of particles are identified by their interactions with other particles or particle groups... and we can repeat this ad infinitum. We can generalize this to form the following definition; An entity's identity is the pattern of it's effect on other entities. This provides us with a solution to the Ship of Theseus; The Ship is an entity which interacts with the world a certain way. Changing the planks or the sail doesn't change that identity unless it alters the nature of the ship's interactions, beyond those allowed by the Definition of the Ship. To clarify this last sentence, if replacing a plank would make the ship cut through the water a little easier, or a rope be moved from one position to another, this need not alter the identity of the Ship if the definition allows for those changes; a particle may have clockwise or counter-clockwise spin, and exist in various physical locations, without altering it's identity. Interestingly, this can also be applied to entities which do not have a “physical” existence including the self; motions are patterns in matter, actions are patterns in motion, thoughts are patterns in action, the Self is a pattern in thought. As such, changes to an individuals physical substrate, such as the replacement of material through metabolic processes and Uploading, as well as changes to mental capabilities, can all be allowed without ending the Self so long as the definition of that Self allows for it.

Short Version; “I” am an iteration of the Pattern I define as ThatWhichNeverWas, with singular identity acquired through Continuity of Conciousness. Creation of a Fork or other non-continuous mindclone creates a new iteration of ThatWhichNeverWas, distinct from “my” iteration. I have metaphors if more explanation is desired :P

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Fri, 2015-05-15 10:11

#45

Zarpaulus

I've been reading Subliminal:

I've been reading Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. And I'm wondering what your ideas concerning the relationship between the subconscious and the "self" might be. To be clear, he's not talking about Freud's "Oedipus Complex" bullshit, he means the unconscious that processes things like all sensory input and lets through just enough so that you're not overwhelmed, the source of your "hunches" and "gut feelings", etc.

Fri, 2015-05-15 22:16

#46

thepedant

On the gameplay/game fiction level

While I have the same existential dread as everyone else about whether a backup instance is really "me," in game terms that's dealt with either through negative traits (Identity Crisis, Edited Memories) or the Integration rolls after resleeving. So, to some extent, your SOM stat determines how much the existential crisis bothers you. The other issue is just straight-up cultural. By post-Fall, people have been resleeving for decades, and other than bioconservatives, people have been taught that the information in their mind, rather than the meat mind, is the self (they're taught from a young age to talk to their muses - software - like people, for example). So reinstantiation probably holds less dread for them as they already accept that multiple copies can exist.

Fri, 2015-05-15 22:22

#47

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Zarpaulus wrote:I've been

Zarpaulus wrote:
I've been reading Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. And I'm wondering what your ideas concerning the relationship between the subconscious and the "self" might be. To be clear, he's not talking about Freud's "Oedipus Complex" bullshit, he means the unconscious that processes things like all sensory input and lets through just enough so that you're not overwhelmed, the source of your "hunches" and "gut feelings", etc.

Yeah, Stanislas Dehaene's [i]Consciousness and the Brain[/i] that I mentioned earlier in the thread has very up to date research on just how much even psychologists and neuroscientists thought had to require consciousness that totally doesn't. If you follow neuroscience blogs you tend to see a lot of this information piecemeal, but it's nice to have it all in one place. Between Carruthers' "integrative theory of self-knowledge" and Dehaene's "global neuronal workspace" it's pretty clear that large swathes of the brain activate in order to let the heavily edited slivers of sensory/thought info filter through to "conscious access", and most of that can happen absent conscious access or even attention in many cases. And, of course, conscious access always takes place after the fact! Our present moments are always timelags of the past, no matter how minuscule the information filtering in, and whatever is experiencing it is just as post-hoc cobbled together and not-in-the-moment as any other neural event that makes it to conscious access (and what makes it to conscious access can be influenced and manipulated, as both stage magicians and neuromarketing companies can tell you). Just as Carl Sagan referred to "the god of the gaps" to show how theology keeps to where science can't experiment and test theories, so too are ideas of personhood, selves, minds, souls, etc. all basically self-concepts of the gaps, and the gaps are vanishing much faster in neuroscience all the time. Which isn't to say people won't still have aesthetics of the self...love may be the equivalent of an optical illusion before the mind's eye that takes advantage of our cognitive biases more than it does anything else, but people take acid knowing it's just some hallucinations, y'know? It's a trip to shape a self-concept from the ether and have people see it as real.

Tue, 2015-05-19 06:52

#48

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Cogito Ergo Sum... I think.

Zarpaulus wrote:
I've been reading Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. And I'm wondering what your ideas concerning the relationship between the subconscious and the "self" might be.

In the off chance that this is an open question; In my opinion (and coinciding with what I posted above), the “Self” is an idealised mental model of ourselves, allowing us to evaluate our actions through the “concious” mind. This allows us to dynamically monitor our own physical and mental health; we can tell when our actions do not align with those we intend or “should” perform, indicating a physical or mental fault. Essentially, the Subconscious makes decisions according to the preferences stored as the Self, and the Concious Mind then provides feedback as to the efficacy and result of those decisions.

ThePedant wrote:
While I have the same existential dread as everyone else about whether a backup instance is really "me," in game terms that's dealt with either through negative traits (Identity Crisis, Edited Memories) or the Integration rolls after resleeving. So, to some extent, your SOM stat determines how much the existential crisis bothers you.

Backup dread should be coming from Continuity checks, not Integration. Integration is your ego accepting the fact that you suddenly have gills and/or tentacles.

consumerdestroyer wrote:
Which isn't to say people won't still have aesthetics of the self...love may be the equivalent of an optical illusion before the mind's eye that takes advantage of our cognitive biases more than it does anything else, but people take acid knowing it's just some hallucinations, y'know?

Slightly off topic, but this is something that really gets on my Redacteds; the whole “Love is only chemicals in the brain” bit. I mean, the statement is technically accurate... but it's likes saying “the Mona Lisa is only Canvas and Pigment” or “Diamond is only Carbon”. It's a statement of no real substance – the physical basis for emotion is utterly irrelevant to discussions regarding said emotion.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Wed, 2015-05-20 19:35

#49

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

I am just going to post my

I am just going to post my thoughts on the matter as in regards to the original post, There is only one I but there could many me. If i ego cast there is only the I at the destination. the one before the transmission is now dead. I do a full alpha fork it becomes We are me until such a time as we can not be irreconcilably merged at which point we become separate I's and Me's. To me death is the state in which we only exist in others and the lingering butterfly effect of our existence. To upload resleave or egocast is to redefine death and no defintiion of it holds terror over me.

Thu, 2015-05-21 16:50

#50

Pyrite

Basically it comes down to

Basically it comes down to "Is there something magical about consciousness"?

—

'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Fri, 2015-05-22 08:04

#51

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Look out! Philosophor is attacking Tokyo!

Pyrite wrote:
Basically it comes down to "Is there something magical about consciousness"?

Not really. It's a philosophical issue based on the questions of what one means by identity, and whether identity is important. Consciousness needn't be magical to exist, and even if it does that doesn't mean it “matters”. The question isn't even restricted to consciousness; imagine you have a diamond. You put it through a transporter. Is what you got out the same diamond, or an identical copy? What would have to happen for it to be the same diamond? If it's the same diamond, what if the transporter glitches and throws out two new examples?

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Continuity and Identity (or, Are the Biocons Right?)

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