07-11-2021, 09:48 AM
In the thread about human lifespan potentially being limited to 150 years, made the following comments:
For those of you who don't know what this "Mind upload" is about, it's a hypothetical far-future technology, which creates a computer program that does exactly what your mind does - thus, effectively forming a computer simulation of you. The attraction, of course, is that this code could potentially run forever, without being tied to a physical body - so, you'd effectively become immortal. However, as Spook points out, this does raise an interesting philosophical question: would your uploaded mind still be 'you'?
I guess it's hard to answer that question definitively, without knowing exactly what mind uploading will entail. We'd certainly want your mind to be uploaded with your memories and experiences intact, so that it wakes up thinking that it is you - but, we don't know whether it's possible for that to happen 100%. Perhaps we'll be able to get it 99% accurate, so that your uploaded mind is a close approximation of you - but ultimately still an approximation. Would that still be 'you' - and, if so, how close does the approximation have to be before it can be considered to be 'you'? And if your uploaded mind isn't still 'you'... then, it may well still have more in common with you than "the you of 10 years ago" did, but most of us will agree that "the you of 10 years ago" is still a version of 'you'. So, how do we sort that out?
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll just finish and ask for your thoughts on the matter .
Quote:then you have one final problem to overcome, the limitations of the human brain, we're already running into issues with stuff like Alzheimer's and other memory related disorders that occur as you age. this could be corrected with more advanced technology... and that is the holy grail, the mind upload. but that's a very long ways off and brings up the question of souls and if that's still you.
For those of you who don't know what this "Mind upload" is about, it's a hypothetical far-future technology, which creates a computer program that does exactly what your mind does - thus, effectively forming a computer simulation of you. The attraction, of course, is that this code could potentially run forever, without being tied to a physical body - so, you'd effectively become immortal. However, as Spook points out, this does raise an interesting philosophical question: would your uploaded mind still be 'you'?
I guess it's hard to answer that question definitively, without knowing exactly what mind uploading will entail. We'd certainly want your mind to be uploaded with your memories and experiences intact, so that it wakes up thinking that it is you - but, we don't know whether it's possible for that to happen 100%. Perhaps we'll be able to get it 99% accurate, so that your uploaded mind is a close approximation of you - but ultimately still an approximation. Would that still be 'you' - and, if so, how close does the approximation have to be before it can be considered to be 'you'? And if your uploaded mind isn't still 'you'... then, it may well still have more in common with you than "the you of 10 years ago" did, but most of us will agree that "the you of 10 years ago" is still a version of 'you'. So, how do we sort that out?
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll just finish and ask for your thoughts on the matter .