It would be nice to live in the body of a gynoid but why on earth would I want to bring my old self along?

Sure beats dying so yeah. I'd rather live in a virtual reality than a body though - or maybe both (exist in the real world so I can look after my virtual utopia, making sure no one pulls the plug). Unfortuneltly the problem is by the time this technology exists we will have given up on the notion of the individual and we'll probably all just merge into one human entity. Given the choice I'd still prefer my own little world but the Borg people will probably look down on me (like someone who doesn't have facebook nowadays) and force me to sign up to their scheme. Fucking Borg

The problem with consciousness transfers is the same that deconstructive teleportation faces.

In deconstructive transportation you are transported between two points via deconstructing your body into digital information at a start location, and sending into a reconstructor at the destination. Now, imagine by chance that the deconstruction process mistakenly does not destroy your old body, and unaware of this the second station still constructs a second you. There are now two of you in existence, are you the still same person?

Now imagine the technicians apologize and inform you that you still have to be destroyed according to procedure, this other you, this stranger, now has the rights to your life. Would you still be willing to die now? Is it really any different than if the procedure had gone right and you had been destroyed earlier?

With any such manipulation of a stream of consciousness, there's always the biting question of whether the man who comes out is really the same one who comes in. It may seem like a clean transition to the you that comes out of the procedure, and hundreds of people who have used the technology may cry in favor of it because of this, but there's really no telling if there's an equal amount of those who went in that have damned themselves to an eternal void of nonexistence.


If I was to become one of these androids, I think I'd like to keep my same brain at the very least.


Also, I highly recommend the Christopher Nolan film 'The Prestige' which deals very well with this subject.

I had an interesting thought. What if the reason that all religions have a theme of transcendence, whether through genetic, biological, honorable or moral perfection, is because its a part of our deepest desire to evolve and become higher functioning live forms. You all know you secretly wish you could live to see the perfection of humanity to the point we would think ourselves gods.
Anyways, so what if this is our current if even intended attempt to transcend, through the biological perfection we would be given in the bodies of machines? Everything that the basic creature desires; intelligence, strength, agility, ability to avoid predators and catch prey, could be heightened immediately? Again, we all know we secretly want it even when we deny it. We will transcend into machine life forms because our instinctual drives will motivate us towards it.

>>726
There's quite a few trans-humanist interpretations that can be made with various religions, easy when so many of them include concepts of improving ones self or seeking transcendence. Buddhism is and especially interesting one with it's added concepts of reality and consciousness.

My favorite are some forms of pandeism which hold the belief that the universe is actually God rebuilding itself, and the exponential growth and conglomeration of data and communication are examples of the pieces coming together. In this, trans-humanism is quite literally part of the path to becoming God universal.

Philosophical religion is a pretty interesting subject.

>imagine the technicians apologize and inform you that you still have to be destroyed according to procedure
pretty sure this would never happen in reality.

>Is it really any different than if the procedure had gone right and you had been destroyed earlier?
It is totally different because your stream of conciousness has been interrupted. They could reasonably ask you to re-upload again and THEN destroy you as you transition. Then they could merge the 2 in the virtual reality and have both sets of memories. Problem solved.

>there's always the biting question of whether the man who comes out is really the same one who comes in
This really doesn't interest me as a philosophical concept at all, i must say. Am i the same me? Am i the same me as yesterday? Do other people really have thoughts? It's irrelevant. If its all just an illusion/an artifice then it doesnt matter - the illusion is sufficient. If it's an illusory state of perception in the transferred me then its also just as illusory in the physical me and therefore doesnt matter. Unless you believe in some ethereal essence of pure spirit.

However, having said all that
>I think I'd like to keep my same brain at the very least
I'm with you on that. Better to be safe than sorry :p

>>729
>It is totally different because your stream of conciousness has been interrupted.

The transfer to a computer would require a similar interruption though wouldn't it? You're taking information from one physical platform and copying it to another physical platform, essentially the same as the transportation thought experiment just without the added physical reproduction of the platforms- you already have one ready

>They could reasonably ask you to re-upload again and THEN destroy you as you transition. Then they could merge the 2 in the virtual reality and have both sets of memories. Problem solved.

Within all this, that would simply be a second operation that destroys two of you at once to make a third. Consider it too has it's destroy functionality broken and three of you now exist, the problem persists.

Regardless of their names or methods, all these operations similarly involve a 1:1 copying of a mind into a new one. 'Transfer' or 'move' may be useful names for the process as a whole, but unless we have found some ethereal essence of pure spirit or similar entity that backbones consciousness that we actually can truthfully transfer, then what's really being done is simply a copy of memories and the active neural mapping of the brain into a new one; which of course may be completely successful- but the old ones, the old consciousness, still exist until you destroy it.

Hopefully such a 'spirit' can actually be found however, as it would solve many deep set fundamental uncertainties that make thought experiments such as these filled with such scary problems.


>This really doesn't interest me as a philosophical concept at all, i must say. Am i the same me? Am i the same me as yesterday? Do other people really have thoughts? It's irrelevant. If its all just an illusion/an artifice then it doesnt matter - the illusion is sufficient. If it's an illusory state of perception in the transferred me then its also just as illusory in the physical me and therefore doesnt matter. Unless you believe in some ethereal essence of pure spirit.

It's not so much a lofty mental concept though as it is a real practical risk. Which 'you' you become after the machine works is a perhaps pointless philosophical paradox to try to figure out, but it still remains that one of you are going to cease to exist in the end of it. At this point this becomes less a problem of illusion and more just self-denial of murder.

As the thought experiment goes: if both of you end up existing congruently after the operation and and you can't read the thoughts of the other you, then you are different beings- different minds. The one that gets to go on may be happy enough with the situation, the illusion holds up, but putting yourself in the place of the other one though presents a much more horrific scenario.

It's all a very interesting topic, one of those few but deeply fundamental issues that science hasn't even begun to solve (and even has a scary possibility of never solving). I look forward to seeing what becomes of it.

>>730
The situation you're describing pretty much exactly mirrors a short story called Think Like a Dinosaur. It's about teleportation, but the idea is the same.

>>738
Very good read, thank you.

Everyone seems to think that if one person merged with the machine then all people would get rolled up into the new Borg collective.

I think it's more likely that the first person to achieve interface with the machine would be the last. This new non-human entity might want to kill us or it might just want our treasure and women but it probably won't want to give everyone equal access to the new superpower.

>>717

assessment of readiness to change: how confident are you that you will achieve this goal?


assessment of readiness to adapt: what is the biggest challenge you must ovecome in attaining your goals?

>>726
>You all know you secretly wish you could live to see the perfection of humanity to the point we would think ourselves gods.
>Secretly
I'd want to be the fucking catalyst.

I'd hesitate to sacrifice myself for a hundred people I don't know, but something like this I think would be worth dying for.

The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.”

— Edward Abbey

>>730
I think, in a practical sense, selfhood is retained if there's no noticeable interruption in one's sense of existing. By this, I mean a piecemeal replacement of neurons etc., rather than a whole-organ copy of the brain. It would have to be a very gradual process, with checks every step of the way.

So to answer OP's question: Assuming the nature of data is basically the same as it is today (never mind the mechanisms, e.g. quantum computing), I would never consider becoming an infomorph. The idea of a cyberbrain is much more palatable, though.

>>798
Yeah, the Ship of Theseus Paradox, which is a really interesting concept. We essentially already do this organically due to our body constantly growing and rebuilding itself, so in essence you literally are not the same person you were 10 or 20 years ago, but at the same time are.

This leads us to imagine that we're just a sum of our parts which evolves and changes as time progresses and they individually get replaced, and that theoretically you could introduce nanomachines and other technologies into the body as you mention and slowly change into something else.

But this too isn't without it's problems, long term change is still a change and in the end with all these technologies will you still be 'human', or even conscious by the end? Additionally there's the issue of the tons of matter in our brain which doesn't change or get replaced, what contribution does this matter have to our mental being? Would it be able to be replaced with tech or would we need a Ghost-in-the-Shell-like future where we encase this precious matter in artificial brain casings to preserve our core ghosts of consciousness.

It's a very interesting prospect that invites tons of science and philosophy.