Continuity is the key here. As soon as you create an effectively different consciousness then the continuity is broken.
Like every time you go to sleep.
Is a sailing ship with every plank replaced the same ship as the origional?
"This is the very axe George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Of course, since then the blade has been replaced three times and the handle twice."
How do you know when you wake up in the morning that you are really the same person that went to bed the previous night? You don't have continuity of consciousness through the entire night. Maybe the "you" of yesterday died, and you are just a copy; how would you know? ("I'd know the difference." "No you wouldn't, you'd be programmed not to.")
If you went to the "uploading clinic", and they put you under a general anaestheic, uploaded you, and terminated the leftover hunk of meat, how would that be different than simply going to sleep and waking up (albeit in a new "body")?
As you said,
This is not a subtle point.
Anyone who cannot grasp this either hasn't thought deeply about a subject, or is an idiot.
Re:can't be avoided, only delayed
on
Download Your Brain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Molecular Nanotech gives the ability to place every atom where it is needed
Certainly. But it doesn't guarantee that it stays there, or that it moves where and when it is supposed to. Errors can still arise due to thermal energy, external radiation sources, contamination, etc.
or rates so low that through redundancy failure can be avoided.
Use of redundancy to decrease failure rate does not require nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology has many potential advantages, but a zero failure rate is not one of them.
The lesser/greater system originated from people who didn't understand upload/download
False. The terminology originated in the early-to-mid 1960s with mainframes with remote stations. The remote stations were the smaller computers, and "uploaded to" or "downloaded from" the mainframe, regardless of which side initiated the transfer.
FTP's GET is always a download and its PUT is always an upload
And you found it defined that way in which RFC? It's certainly not in RFC 959.
What gives you the idea that molecular nanotechnology can achieve a zero failure rate? The failure rate may be much smaller than with today's integrated circuits, but it will still be nonzero.
There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual minute biological connections present in the brain.
Evidence?
Forty years ago, there was no plausible way for a machine sitting on a desktop to contain billions of bits of memory and hundreds of millions of logic gates, yet today such machines are commonplace, and even routinely get thrown away.
You'd have to "download" the state of every cell in the body to effectively save the state of a person such that it may possibly be re-simulated sometime.
Interesting hypothesis. Any evidence?
If I were uploaded with all my body state other than that of my appendix, would you say that it wouldn't be possible for me to be re-simulated sometime? Why? Are you claiming that without my appendix, I'm no longer me? What if my appendix is surgically removed before the upload?
What if my little finger is missing? How much do you think can be missing before there is a problem?
There's no particular reason why you shouldn't get more sex in a computer than as meat. It's unlikely that there will be any particular shortage of willing partners, especially with no risk of STDs.
Irrelevant. You have no more (or less) facility in your own brain for initiating download than upload.
The extropians have been using the term "upload" for many years, as has science fiction. It's based on standard use of computer industry terminology.
I routinely use my laptop to initiate either uploads to or downloads from a server. And sometime the server initiates uploads from or downloads to my laptop (e.g., Z-modem). The terminology has nothing to do with which side initiates the transfer. It is a convention based on "up" being "to the (conceptually) bigger system". I certainly don't want to transfer my mind into a system that has less capacity than my current brain, so I want to upload it.
And your "facility" claim doesn't even make sense. My brain does have the facility to initiate an upload, just as much as it has the facility to travel to Australia. My brain can choose to have my body buy an airline ticket and drive to the airport, or just as easily, to drive to an upload center, walk in the door, and sign the appropriate paperwork.
The big questions are whether I will live long for the service to be available, and whether I'll be able to afford it. In his book "The Age of Spritual Machines", Ray Kurzweil makes a reasonably convincing argument that I will, thanks to Moore's Law.
Ray points out that even if Moore's Law runs out of steam with regard to MOSFET technology, that there is good reason to believe that it will apply equally well to new technologies, since the known laws of physics still have "lots of room at the bottom" (as observed by Richard Feynman). He shows that Moore's law actually extrapolates fairly accurately all the way back to late 19th century mechanical calculators.
Unfortunately the email notification didn't get to most of astronomers, because AOL's spam filter blocked the message due to the subject line "A special powful astronomical object".
It's unclear whether the newborn is a boy or a girl, but what is known is that it has no hair.
Grammar isn't about how good it sounds. Many people find that sentences like "Save some cookies for Mike and I" sound better than "Save some cookies for Mike and me", yet the latter is grammatically correct while the former is not.
I had no idea that they were still using 50-year old technology to launch stuff into space.
It's not 50-year-old technology. At least not all of it. There have been many updates to the Titan since it was originally developed; portions of it have been completely redesigned.
I'm not arguing about common style; I'm arguing about correct grammar, since it appeared to be grammar (and spelling) that the O.P. was criticizing.
It should have both the definite article and the posessive form for reasons I've given elsewhere in the thread. Abbreviation doesn't change the grammatical construction.
There are pictures and movies on the UCLA physics site.
"There are pictures and movies on the University of California at Los Angeles'" physics site. Both the definite article and the possessive form are used. Abbreviating it to UCLA doesn't change the grammar, though it might change the spelling of the possesive (add the missing "s").
Your argument doesn't wash. "UCLA" and "University of California at Los Angeles" are both proper names, therefore you can't make the claim that a definite article should be used on one but not the the other on the basis of only one being a proper name.
What it said originally (though abbreviated) was There are pictures and movies on the University of California at Los Angeles' physics site." This is correct. The use of an abbreviation does not render the use of the definite article incorrect.
Anonymous coward was picking on spelling and grammar errors in the story, then wrote:
There are pictures and movies on
the UCLA's physics site.
What are you claiming to be wrong with that sentence? I'm not sure about the "s" after the apostrophe, since it would expand to "Angeles's",
and I'm not sure about the rules spelling for possessives of abbreviations whose expansion ends in "s". I suspect that it is correct as written.
But the word "the" that you highlighted seems to be correct spelling and grammar, even though it could have been omitted.
Re:Hmm, what could cause this?
on
Exploding Toads
·
· Score: 1
Being given a bicycle?
The answer is obvious!
on
Exploding Toads
·
· Score: 2, Funny
There must be a Scanner in the area practicing. If I lived near there, I think I'd move away quickly!
If I program something in Visual Studio 05, and there is a beta bug in it and my enterprise server app with 100000 customers fails, can I sue M$?
Yes. The real question is whether you can win the suit and collect damages. The EULA you clicked on probably said that you can't. But did you actually read the EULA? And is it enforceable?
The antibacterial plastic is called Microban. When I was in a computer store yesterday, I saw an optical mouse made of Microban! I haven't yet seen such a keyboard, though.
Slashdot Mirror
If you went to the "uploading clinic", and they put you under a general anaestheic, uploaded you, and terminated the leftover hunk of meat, how would that be different than simply going to sleep and waking up (albeit in a new "body")?
As you said,
Nanotechnology has many potential advantages, but a zero failure rate is not one of them.
What gives you the idea that molecular nanotechnology can achieve a zero failure rate? The failure rate may be much smaller than with today's integrated circuits, but it will still be nonzero.
Forty years ago, there was no plausible way for a machine sitting on a desktop to contain billions of bits of memory and hundreds of millions of logic gates, yet today such machines are commonplace, and even routinely get thrown away.
And you claim that this linkage between neurons is not "information"? Why?
Also Greg Egan's novel "Diaspora" covers the idea of the type of civilizatons that might result.
And what makes you think that it wouldn't be possible to experience those states while uploaded?
If I were uploaded with all my body state other than that of my appendix, would you say that it wouldn't be possible for me to be re-simulated sometime? Why? Are you claiming that without my appendix, I'm no longer me? What if my appendix is surgically removed before the upload?
What if my little finger is missing? How much do you think can be missing before there is a problem?
There's no particular reason why you shouldn't get more sex in a computer than as meat. It's unlikely that there will be any particular shortage of willing partners, especially with no risk of STDs.
The extropians have been using the term "upload" for many years, as has science fiction. It's based on standard use of computer industry terminology.
I routinely use my laptop to initiate either uploads to or downloads from a server. And sometime the server initiates uploads from or downloads to my laptop (e.g., Z-modem). The terminology has nothing to do with which side initiates the transfer. It is a convention based on "up" being "to the (conceptually) bigger system". I certainly don't want to transfer my mind into a system that has less capacity than my current brain, so I want to upload it.
And your "facility" claim doesn't even make sense. My brain does have the facility to initiate an upload, just as much as it has the facility to travel to Australia. My brain can choose to have my body buy an airline ticket and drive to the airport, or just as easily, to drive to an upload center, walk in the door, and sign the appropriate paperwork.
The big questions are whether I will live long for the service to be available, and whether I'll be able to afford it. In his book "The Age of Spritual Machines", Ray Kurzweil makes a reasonably convincing argument that I will, thanks to Moore's Law.
Ray points out that even if Moore's Law runs out of steam with regard to MOSFET technology, that there is good reason to believe that it will apply equally well to new technologies, since the known laws of physics still have "lots of room at the bottom" (as observed by Richard Feynman). He shows that Moore's law actually extrapolates fairly accurately all the way back to late 19th century mechanical calculators.
It's unclear whether the newborn is a boy or a girl, but what is known is that it has no hair.
Grammar isn't about how good it sounds. Many people find that sentences like "Save some cookies for Mike and I" sound better than "Save some cookies for Mike and me", yet the latter is grammatically correct while the former is not.
It should have both the definite article and the posessive form for reasons I've given elsewhere in the thread. Abbreviation doesn't change the grammatical construction.
Your argument doesn't wash. "UCLA" and "University of California at Los Angeles" are both proper names, therefore you can't make the claim that a definite article should be used on one but not the the other on the basis of only one being a proper name.
What it said originally (though abbreviated) was There are pictures and movies on the University of California at Los Angeles' physics site." This is correct. The use of an abbreviation does not render the use of the definite article incorrect.
But the word "the" that you highlighted seems to be correct spelling and grammar, even though it could have been omitted.
Being given a bicycle?
There must be a Scanner in the area practicing. If I lived near there, I think I'd move away quickly!
The antibacterial plastic is called Microban. When I was in a computer store yesterday, I saw an optical mouse made of Microban! I haven't yet seen such a keyboard, though.