NewtonPulsifer wrote:

Using the word "lobotomise" for a process that kills a neuron and then immediately restores its function seems overdone to me.

Crucially though it restores its function somewhere else. If I chop off your leg and it appears on another body you are still an amputee.

VV wrote:

Ilmarinen wrote:

If you disagree, please tell me what physical, empirically deducible mechanism exists that transforms past me into present me into future me. I maintain that it's the pattern of changes to the ego.

You can figure this out yourself with a simple thought experiment. Let's say we make an Alpha Fork of you. He goes into the next room. Can you see through his eyes? No. I suddenly shoot you in the head. Can you now see through his eyes?

No. Because - and this is key - the two of us are getting different updates to our egos. But since we had the same ego to start with, we're both the same person we were before we split. Just as if we both avoid getting shot and re-integrate ourselves the resulting person will have been both of us - because he would have gotten both sets of updates to the ego.

lets adapt wrote:

The more this goes on the harder it is to figure out exactly where you two are disagreeing with one another!

I know, right? The topic itself is interesting, but I feel like the debate here has evolved beyond going in circles and is starting to do backflips up one end of a halfpipe and back down the other side.

Ilmarinen wrote:

...apparently believes that if his brain is destroyed and then rebuilt exactly as it was, down to the last atom, then he won't get to experience whatever the new brain experiences.

Yes, exactly this. I am pointing out that nobody survives their brain being destroyed. A perfect copy of that brain being constructed later doesn't mean that I myself will suddenly start experiencing things again. So, let's go back to the idea of a farcast. We send a design for a perfect copy of my brain to a remote location, where it is manufactured and it starts perceiving things I can't. During the process we destroy my brain, which is not a survivable experience. Farcasting kills the user in location A and creates a copy in location B.

VV wrote:

Ilmarinen wrote:

...apparently believes that if his brain is destroyed and then rebuilt exactly as it was, down to the last atom, then he won't get to experience whatever the new brain experiences.

Yes, exactly this. I am pointing out that nobody survives their brain being destroyed. A perfect copy of that brain being constructed later doesn't mean that I myself will suddenly start experiencing things again.

What. The brain is the same. The memories are the same. The personality is the same. Anything quantifiable is the same. Yet somehow 'you' are destroyed? What [i]are[/i] you then? If 'you' aren't the pattern in which the brain's atoms are arranged, then give me some concrete thing that 'you' are. (Keeping in mind we've already agreed that the actual atoms that make up the brain don't make a difference).

lets adapt wrote:

In the first paragraph you say that you agree that they are effectively separate people, yet you disagree with that notion in second.

No. Both of us are the same person as our common past self but neither of us is the same person as each other.

lets adapt wrote:

Why wouldn't a fork be a completely new sapient, albeit one who shares the exact same ego as the original?

Because if he shares the same ego as the original then he's not a 'completely new' sapient. He's the same person as the original, up to the exact moment of the forking.

lets adapt wrote:

I'd ask you both this question: say you were mapping a person's life as a simple line graph, with the x axis representing the passage of time. Sometime during this person's life they create a fork. How you you map this on the line graph? Would it be a continuation of the same line or would that fork now create a new point parallel to the original?

It would be the same line splitting in two. That's what 'fork' means.

lets adapt wrote:

And I'd like you to explain a bit more about what you mean by consciousness as the changes that are made to the pattern. What implies this?

Right. There is the hardware (brain), the software (ego) and the process (consciousness). The process reads the file and the external environment and then makes changes to the file. An hour's worth of thoughts and new experiences equals an hour's worth of changes to the file. And that's all the difference that exists between past you and present you - those changes. If we were to undo each operation then we'd have the you from an hour ago again. If we were to redo them then we'd have the current you. If we stop the process and then restart it at a later point then we still have the current you, if disoriented by everything jumping around. The difference is that I think the contents of the file are the sole determinant of 'you'. Copy them somewhere else and restart the process and sure enough we have the current you again, no different from if we'd restarted it on the original hardware. Copy the file a bunch of times and start the process on all of the copies and you have multiple instances of 'you'. They don't share consciousness or experiences, but for the moment all of them are you. Each of them contains the you from an hour ago and a year ago within them. Where it gets tricky is the fact that they immediately start receiving different inputs and thus their files are updated in different ways. That means that when one of them dies something unique is lost. The 'you' from an hour into the future will be dead. The 'you' from an hour ago will survive - he's running around in multiple copies of himself.

Here's one you might like. Let's take my brain out of my head and set it on a table while keeping it alive using advanced technology. Let's set it on a table. And then let's perform two different experiments. In experiment A we move my brain one foot to the left. Am I still me? Of course I am. This happens all the time. Now we'll take a single carbon atom from my brain and replace it with a different one. Am I still me? Yes, yes I am. There was nothing special about that particular carbon atom. Now let's continue this until each and every atom in my brain has been replaced by an identical atom. Am I still me now? I must be since nothing has happened to my brain that wouldn't happen over the course of seven or so years anyway. None of the atoms that were taken and replaced were integral to my identity. In experiment B we do things a little differently. We look at the empty spot one foot to the left of my brain and begin assembling an identical copy there. We put it together atom by atom until the final product is identical to the brain to the right of it (as well as the brain in experiment A). Now for the next step we will disassemble my original brain atom by atom until no two of them are stuck together. Now: am I me? Keep in mind that the end result is functionally identical. The brains are the same. All the particles and their positions are identical. Nobody walking into the room could tell whether experiment A or experiment B was performed. If the answer is yes then we have license to farcast. If the answer is no, then we're asserting that even though the result of the experiment is physically identical something non-physical happened that causes a difference. And I would very much like to know what it is.

Ilmarinen wrote:

What. The brain is the same. The memories are the same. The personality is the same. Anything quantifiable is the same. Yet somehow 'you' are destroyed?

Yes. Destroying my brain destroys "me". I don't think this is a controversial idea so I don't understand why me believing I cannot survive brain death is somehow mystifying you.

Ilmarinen wrote:

What [i]are[/i] you then? If 'you' aren't the pattern in which the brain's atoms are arranged, then give me some concrete thing that 'you' are. (Keeping in mind we've already agreed that the actual atoms that make up the brain don't make a difference).

I am this brain. I get that atoms are lost and replaced all the time. They are lost and replaced within this brain. Creating a copy of my brain somewhere else does not mean I somehow don't die if you shoot me in the head.

VV wrote:

Ilmarinen wrote:

In experiment B we do things a little differently.

That is quite the understatement. In experiment B we make a clone of person 1, then kill person 1, and say it doesn't matter because there's a functionally identical copy of person 1 sitting right here so what's all the fuss about.

Ilmarinen wrote:

If the answer is no, then we're asserting that even though the result of the experiment is physically identical something non-physical happened that causes a difference. And I would very much like to know what it is.

Something physical happened when you destroyed Brain A, which you must admit causes a difference that matters at least to Brain A.

So can you find an actual tangible, quantifiable difference between the end states of the two experiments or is this just a philosophical thing?

Ilmarinen wrote:

So can you find an actual tangible, quantifiable difference between the end states of the two experiments or is this just a philosophical thing?

Well my opposition to killing people is a little bit more than just philosophical. You accept that you killed Brain A when you destroyed it atom by atom?

Ilmarinen wrote:

So can you find an actual tangible, quantifiable difference between the end states of the two experiments or is this just a philosophical thing?

So if you were gently and silently raped, would that be ok? You don't remember it or register any effect from it, so why would you mind?

How about C: We take the brain out and start taking every atom one foot to the left one at a time. Somehow our advanced technology alows us to communicate every interaction between the already moved atoms and the one that are yet to be moved. They don't behave different in any way from how it would be when they were actually directly next to each other. Did it die? Maybe not being able to know the difference by any intrinsic means makes it equal in the eyes of some people here but not in the eyes of everyone. In thermodynamics there are some things that don't change when you choose a different path for a process, like volume, but the flow of thermal energy or heat (Q in my German books) may be different although the two processes end up at with the same volume. Also: How much do you care about your Alpha forks?

You misunderstand me. I'll try again. I agree with you that Brains A & B are functionally the same. I don't believe there is some kind of mystical force that only Brain A possesses. That's not my problem with experiment B. My problem is the part where you

Ilmarinen wrote:

disassemble (Brain A) atom by atom until no two of them are stuck together.

This kills Brain A.

Ilmarinen wrote:

Where, then, is the continuity? Where is the thing that the brain from experiment A has that the brain from experiment B does not. It can't be in the atoms. They weren't part of the original brain in any case. They're identical atoms, occupying identical positions. It can't be in the pattern. The pattern is identical. The instructions according to which the new atoms were arranged remained the same in each experiment. Is it then a mystical force? Did it flow from the old atoms to the new as soon as they touched? Can it be observed? Can it be measured?

You don't have to able to measure a difference for it to be relevant, and the inability to measure a difference doesn't mean we're being mystical. Let us say that in one hour we'll incinerate a brain with a consciousness running it. It will be reduced to ash with zero information content. Are you saying it would be insignificant whether or not we had it experience excruciating pain during that hour, since we can't measure the difference afterwards?

I am trying to work this out in my head as I type it so bear with me! Ilmarinen, in experiment B you are creating a copy of the original then disassembling the original. An outside observer would see no difference between the two. From the point of view of the original, he'd just cease to exist, though from the point of view of the copy he'd have no subjective loss of consciousness, assuming brain states were able to be kept concurrent through the process. So, to answer 'am I me' would be to define 'me' as being a brain state/ego. If that is the definition of self we are using, then yes, the new brain is just as much you as the original. If you define the self as being a combination of ego and the unique perspective of the process/consciousness (which is what VV seems to be going for), then no, the original combination is no longer functioning as that process was unique to that instance of the entity as a whole. So, the question then becomes is each process/consciousness unique? That is a hard question to touch, at least it is for me. In a new experiment (experiment C) we take a brain, copy it in real time via ego bridge to a new brain, rerouting neural pathways to the new brain while shutting down parts of the old. Are you still you? We'd all probably agree that this would be yes. The only difference is between these experiments would be the subjective perspective of the consciousness. Along these lines, could one conjecture that the second a consciousness arises it becomes a unique entity in that it physically occupies space in reality, thus affording it a unique perspective? If you fork yourself into a body standing next to you, you exist in separate points in space, thus immediately diverging your perspectives. Does that not factor in? Regarding the question 'am I me," I think that ultimately the consciousness defines the self as it is the process that perceives the self. The ego is merely a set of operating procedures. If each process/consciousness is a unique perspective, then no, I am not myself with regards to experiment B. Though! At the same time, with experiment C, what does the gradual transition matter? With the Star Trek transporter example, why would that not be acceptable? If all of your atoms are moved, one by one, over to a different point in space, reassembled, would you not be yourself? We've already noted that the matter in question doesn't matter, merely the configuration, so what is it about stream of consciousness that is so important to how the self is defined? The bigger question, really, is this: does this distinction even make a difference?

lets adapt wrote:

So, to answer 'am I me' would be to define 'me' as being a brain state/ego. If that is the definition of self we are using, then yes, the new brain is just as much you as the original.

That's the perspective I and the Eclipse Phase rulebook are arguing, yes.

lets adapt wrote:

If you define the self as being a combination of ego and the unique perspective of the process/consciousness (which is what VV seems to be going for), then no, the original combination is no longer functioning as that process was unique to that instance of the entity as a whole.

Can you draw a clear distinction between the process/consciousness and the state of the ego?

lets adapt wrote:

The ego is merely a set of operating procedures.

Except that it also includes the state of the process when it was last running. That seems significant to me.

lets adapt wrote:

The bigger question, really, is this: does this distinction even make a difference?

For potentially millions of people in Eclipse Phase, it does not. Those for whom it did faced insurmountable natural selection pressures.

Ilmarinen wrote:

Can you draw a clear distinction between the process/consciousness and the state of the ego?

There's the rub, isn't it? I think I'd try to set the distinction as this: the state of the ego is defined by the neural pathways and chemical composition in the brain. The process/consciousness is merely a function that arises out of the interaction between the entity and the environment. Through this function the ego is rewritten in real-time through these interactions. I think the creation of memories serves as a great example of this interaction. I believe this definition would address the state of the process as it was last running if you were to copy an ego. Edit: words

I think the biggest disconnect here is Subjective vs Objective. I find myself sympathetic to both sides. First let's look at the objective picture. If you can imagine a 2D line graph where the Y-axis is Events Experienced (as a numerical index, rather than an assessment of quality) and the X axis is time, then graph the life of a normal flat, you'll come out with a (curvy) line segment. If you then look at how ego-casting effects this graph, it appears to have no measurable affect, because a fork and a termination happening simultaneously looks precisely like an unbroken line. Forking creates interesting structures on this graph. So from the societies perspective, farcasting isn't death - but I don't think that was ever in question. (This will turn out to be more important later on). If we then examine the subjective experience, things get a little murky (as it always does). If Erenthia.Flat@BumFuckUSA goes to a farcasting facility and beams his ego off-world, he initiates a new process, let's call it Erenthia.Remade@lunarHab. Erenthia.Flat is terminated and Erenthia.Remade goes about his business. From the perspective of Erenthia.Remade, just a few minutes ago he was on earth sleeved in a flat. From his perspective, his consciousness was transferred from Earth to Luna. But of course this is an illusion since the Erenthia.Remade process was only recently initiated (but then again, so is consciousness). Erenthia.Flat never experiences the things that Erenthia.Remade experienced, as it was said he is terminated. So the question is, am I Erenthia? Or am I Erenthia.Flat? If I am Erethia.Flat then what do I want with a farcasting facility? If indeed, I am Erenthia.Flat, then I stand to benefit a great deal from Alpha Forking, by creating people who have exactly the same perspective that I do and will therefore agree with me on most things, but farcasting will kill me. This is a question of identity, which is culturally (socially) constructed. So the next question to ask is, why do we think death is a bad thing? The most obvious answer is that it ends a unique experience that can never be regained. This is also the wrong answer. Certainly it does this, and it's the excuse we use to explain why we think death is bad. The [i]real[/i] reason we think death is bad is because of how it affects the living. We lose people to death, and therefore it is bad. Farcasting, if it is a kind of death, is a kind that doesn't impact society, and therefore won't be looked at as bad. Because of that, cultural constructions of identity will change to be based around the class rather than the instance. But how a future culture constructs identity doesn't answer the question, "If I walk into a farcasting facility, will I die or will I wake up in a new body?" The answer, counter-intuitively, is both. If you farcast you WILL die. If you farcast you will be transferred to a new body. Both are equally true at the same time.

I apologize if this has been brought up earlier, since I must admit that I have mostly skimmed this thread. However, I would like to ask VV two questions: a) What evidence do you have that a "you", a "consciousness" or an "identity" exists separate from your memories, personality traits, emotions, etcetera? b) Why are you afraid of losing this "you", "consciousness" or "identity"? My simple solution to this problem is: "You" don't exist. "You" and "I" are collections of cognitive and affective systems slowly designed by evolution to operate as if "you" and "I" were unified wholes, because that's the best way to think of these systems on the savanna. Doesn't mean it's true. Folk psychology is a terrible way to approach cognitive science, since our intuitions about the nature of our minds are very often wrong. We accept that our intuitions about physics are very often wrong, why should our gut feelings be an accurate guide to this particular science?

With the method real time resleeving there is a third possibility in Eclipse Phase Both minds were the original. During the transfer the original mind doubled in size. That doubled mind is then separated & two resulting minds are the half of it. The continuity check crisis is now instead philosophically similar to a patient receiving Corpus callosotomy (surgically separate the two hemispheres of the brain). Except the result isn't a obnoxious half-brained alien hand, when the two former originals are at odds. (alien hand syndrome). Reusing & refurbishing one of my previus post, as there was a thread on this topic in 2010, http://eclipsephase.com/continuity-comprehension-check

This is why I love Eclipse Phase. I have to recommend the book "Rapture of the Nerds" more than ever. Spoiler below-- The main character is a sworn luddite who is forced to upload to what amounts to a massive simulspace. He has to cope with the fact that his mind is forked millions of times against his will, and that he is the only one who survives--that there was a massive holocaust of his own mind. Those other minds suffered, and were every bit "him", and they were erased without a qualm. His birth body was shredded down to it's base atoms in order to make a perfect software duplicate. The transhuman minds that did this to him more or less say "get over it". While the tone is almost comparable to Hitchhiker's Guide, it does deal with these quandaries in a very lucid way. --end spoiler I think the thought experiments above (which are essentially variations on the question of Theseus's Ship) bear out that the idea of a copy, or an original, or even a unique "you" "me" or "I" are, at best, flawed approximations of reality, and that alot of our anxiety is arbitrary. Arbitrary, but not trivial. Lots of people say 'death is nothing to be afraid of'. How many of them want to give it a shot? Unless the (trans)human mind is so flexible that it can adapt to the idea of death as a diffuse, temporary thing (overcoming a billion years of ingrained survival instinct), I imagine anyone who has to resleeve more than once in their life is at risk of unimaginable trauma or existential terror. Then again, people have bravely faced death, comforted by the knowledge that their family name will carry on, or that they'll be rewarded in heaven, or that their memory will ring down through history--wobbly arguments, all, but a testament to what a motivated mind can adapt to. Transhumans in EP, on the other hand, know for a *fact* that a precise duplicate, perhaps with a memory that leads right up to the moment of their death, will live on essentially forever (as long as they don't skip a payment on their backup insurance). It'd be amazing to have the 'old man' character mentioned earlier on infect more happy-go-lucky transhumans with a fear of resleeving... like a jittery engineer, talking to his fellow passengers on an airplane, running down a list of all the ways that a plane can just... fall out of the sky! I've pondered an EP game where uploading and resleeving are not nearly as easy and painless as described. In this interpretation, Firewall agents would either be alpha forks of capable people (who are therefore expendable, since the "real" you is still safe at home), or else they are people with their brains tweaked to not fear death (which could manifest as a severe psychotic disorder, or merely a deeply strange posthuman mindset). Or else they're slowly going batshit crazy, ala Call of Cthulu--you know Firewall will leave you a broken, jibbering wreck, but what else can you do? That's much 'less brave, strange new world', and much more 'scared children huddled up in the dark'. If you're really into survival horror.

Alkahest wrote:

I apologize if this has been brought up earlier, since I must admit that I have mostly skimmed this thread. However, I would like to ask VV two questions: a) What evidence do you have that a "you", a "consciousness" or an "identity" exists separate from your memories, personality traits, emotions, etcetera? b) Why are you afraid of losing this "you", "consciousness" or "identity"? My simple solution to this problem is: "You" don't exist. "You" and "I" are collections of cognitive and affective systems slowly designed by evolution to operate as if "you" and "I" were unified wholes, because that's the best way to think of these systems on the savanna. Doesn't mean it's true. Folk psychology is a terrible way to approach cognitive science, since our intuitions about the nature of our minds are very often wrong. We accept that our intuitions about physics are very often wrong, why should our gut feelings be an accurate guide to this particular science?

Yeah well, my enjoyment of sex is just some evolved trait and really nothing but some hormones and electrical activity in my brain. It has no real meaning. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore it, or that I could even if I would. The same thing with my sense of identity and survival instinct. I'm not just going to dump those because some philosopher decides that everything is meaningless. Everything is obviously meaningless, except for the meaning we inject into the world, by that haphazard jumble of traits and preferences that evolution and chance bundled up in those fancy brains of ours. What is the next thing you want to remove? Morality? Ambition? Curiosity? Valuing truth over lies?

Ilmarinen wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

Ilmarinen wrote:

Where, then, is the continuity? Where is the thing that the brain from experiment A has that the brain from experiment B does not. It can't be in the atoms. They weren't part of the original brain in any case. They're identical atoms, occupying identical positions. It can't be in the pattern. The pattern is identical. The instructions according to which the new atoms were arranged remained the same in each experiment. Is it then a mystical force? Did it flow from the old atoms to the new as soon as they touched? Can it be observed? Can it be measured?

You don't have to able to measure a difference for it to be relevant, and the inability to measure a difference doesn't mean we're being mystical. Let us say that in one hour we'll incinerate a brain with a consciousness running it. It will be reduced to ash with zero information content. Are you saying it would be insignificant whether or not we had it experience excruciating pain during that hour, since we can't measure the difference afterwards?

That's an interesting question. However it's a question of values, which means the answer must be inherently subjective. Are you saying that the question of identity is also subjective? Because I'd be on board with that.

That was not my point. My point is that you're wrong when you claim that if two states are identical then it doesn't matter that their history was different. It matters a great deal. It is meaningful if someone is tormented or not before their death. You also didn't respond to my question about gentle, silent rape. If you were raped but had no memory of it and no pain or discomfort afterwards, would you really be indifferent to that?

EP posits what might be the best version of egocasting/resleeving imaginable--as each "original" connection is severed, an identical one is made in the new body. And as I understand it, the alpha ego could be said to temporarily inhabit both bodies, running in parallel. At least where lightspeed lag allows. Follow that up with decades of memetic manipulation to ensure an orderly transition into transhumanism, and I could imagine many people being ok with the philosophical ambiguity. Setting aside the extremes of rape and brutal murder for a moment--the circumstances above seem to involve no suffering, trauma, or even the immediate deletion of an ego. It's as close to falling asleep in one place and waking up in another as you're likely to get. Your experience of continuity may not even be broken--you continue to do research, play VR games, or whatever in a slowed down simulspace. If that's the case, taking a nap is closer to death than egocasting. Then again I have to wonder how many people would rather secretly donate an Alpha fork to Firewall, instead of egocasting. Seems like a great idea at the time, but it might be distressing to know that there's another "you" out there, living the life of a secret agent, while you optimize the design of spray nozzles for cleaning bots. After all, it's not necessary to end the initial brain state after ego casting... it's just convenient to do so. It would also seem that most people feel the negatives of alpha forking outweigh the benefits of preserving the existence of identical egos. Now get this--a crime syndicate could use an ego bridge as a murder weapon--use it to erase the ego, and break the body down to base elements. No anesthetic of course--now you really do get to find out what it's like to have your brain turned into a smooth lump of fat and protein. Then they sell all the organic chemistry for a tidy little profit (assuming selling the morph itself will draw too much suspicion). Creepy, no? Sort of like finding a trunk full of bodies at the junk yard.

Yeah, but for the "you" who makes the decision to fork, that other person does all the suffering and has all the adventures. I'm not saying it's the only course of action, or even a logical one, but I don't think it's unlikely, given the mental acrobatics we're all so good at. There's evidence that humans do not even consider their future selves to be "themselves", and can process the consequences of their actions as happening to "someone else". Which is why it's so easy to have one more drink and hop in the car... and then curse your past self when you wind up in the drunk tank. Yeah, [citation needed]. That doesn't bode well for the treatment of alpha forks. I see two separate but related discussions in this thread--there's conjecture over what empirical facts reflect, and what humans or transhumans do with that information. Unmodified human brains are amazing machines, but they're built for surviving in a certain environment--not for facing up to hard facts.