Do you think any aliens exist in the universe?

[pood]

I’d also note that the idea that aliens or we ourselves would try to colonize habitable worlds overlooks the inconvenient detail that if a world is habitable, it likely is already inhabited. What would be the moral justification for displacing extant life so that we could seize their world for our own use? Zero justification.

 

[excreationist]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

 

[pood]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

Maybe, but there is some growing evidence — I read an interstring article on this recently — that minds need more than brains. They need entire bodies. If that is so, you can forget about brains in vats, too. I think Loren’s idea was to upload minds to computers that could be propelled by light sails. I was referring specfically to that.

 

[Shadowy Man]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

 

[excreationist]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

Maybe, but there is some growing evidence — I read an interstring article on this recently — that minds need more than brains. They need entire bodies. If that is so, you can forget about brains in vats, too.

This talks about learning using a simulated body in order to competently interact with the real world:

The body of a brain in a vat could be robotic or involve simulated inputs/outputs.

 

[excreationist]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

I think the original you and the copy could be completely indistinguishable from each other in every way (including how they experience qualia). Except for the outside environment they experience.... but if you put them in identical environments before they diverged they'd initially respond in identical ways.
BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

 

[Shadowy Man]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

I think the original you and the copy could be completely indistinguishable from each other in every way (including how they experience qualia). Except for the outside environment they experience.... but if you put them in identical environments before they diverged they'd initially respond in identical ways.
BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

A simpler question is if someone got amnesia do they stop experiencing who they are? I think there’s more to me than my memories. Whatever the “I” is that is experiencing, feeling snd Thinking seems to continue even when i forget things. We are products of our past experience for sure but I wouldn’t say simply because we remember those experiences.

 

[excreationist]

BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

A simpler question is if someone got amnesia do they stop experiencing who they are? I think there’s more to me than my memories. Whatever the “I” is that is experiencing, feeling snd Thinking seems to continue even when i forget things. We are products of our past experience for sure but I wouldn’t say simply because we remember those experiences.

People with amnesia still have many of their memories including being able to recognize objects or have emotions associated with things - so I think they still experience who they are to some degree. In my question I'm talking about a complete swap of memories including muscle memory....

 

[bilby]

Lightsail can do .01c simply off sunlight.

Sweet. Then it will only take a few thousand years to get anywhere.

Give me a call when you've found some humans who are prepared to embark on a thousand year project. If they also expect their aims and desires to match those of the descendants who finalise the project, then I definitely want to know, so I can laugh at them.

 

[bilby]

I find the notion that we will never be able to upload ourselves ludicrous

I find the notion that we will ever be able to upload ourselves ludicrous.

Our selves are explicitly characterised by our bodies. You could likely upload something sentient, but it wouldn't be you - you would still be driving around that meat sack you were born in.

You could take the Star Trek transporter solution, and murder (then disintegrate) the original; But otherwise you're going to be uploading someone else. The upload would no more be "you" than your identical twin brother is "you" - and given his radically different body, would likely be dramatically less "you" than your twin, who at least shares a similar endocrine system with you.

 

[bilby]

I’d also note that the idea that aliens or we ourselves would try to colonize habitable worlds overlooks the inconvenient detail that if a world is habitable, it likely is already inhabited. What would be the moral justification for displacing extant life so that we could seize their world for our own use? Zero justification.

It's essentially impossible for a lifeless world to be anywhere close to inhabitable for humans. A sufficiently oxidising atmosphere cannot exist without a biosphere.

It's also vanishingly unlikely that any inhabited planets other than Earth would be able to support humans. Shit, even the Earth we have couldn't have supported humans for most of its history.

The temperature, atmospheric composition, predation environment, food sources, and radiation levels all need to be in a fairly small range. Go a few hundred million years into the past, and establishing a colony would be very difficult. Travel to another (life-bearing) planet, and the challenges would inevitably be far greater.

Humans weren't even very good at surviving intercontinental travel on their own planet until we spent a few centuries learning what we could and couldn't eat, and then dying in droves anyway, to establish immunity to local diseases.

 

[bilby]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

I think the original you and the copy could be completely indistinguishable from each other in every way (including how they experience qualia). Except for the outside environment they experience.... but if you put them in identical environments before they diverged they'd initially respond in identical ways.
BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

I think this mode of thought is a century behind physics.

It made some sense in the nineteenth century, but it's completely counterfactual today.

 

[excreationist]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

I think the original you and the copy could be completely indistinguishable from each other in every way (including how they experience qualia). Except for the outside environment they experience.... but if you put them in identical environments before they diverged they'd initially respond in identical ways.
BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

I think this mode of thought is a century behind physics.

It made some sense in the nineteenth century, but it's completely counterfactual today.

Are you saying that quantum physics makes a difference? If so then couldn't a brain in a vat have similar quantum entanglement, etc, to an original brain? Are you saying that the "observer" and quantum phenomena makes a difference in the copy?

 

[bilby]

It is unproven that we will ever upload consciousness. I am skeptical. Uploading assumes consciousness is substrate independent. It may well not be.

Our consciousness involves the "observer" (that experiences qualia) and our personality (involving our memories). If our biological brains are required for the observer part then maybe you could grow a brain in a vat then give it the appropriate memories....

But, again, wouldn’t that just be someone else, with your memories? Not you yourself.

I think the original you and the copy could be completely indistinguishable from each other in every way (including how they experience qualia). Except for the outside environment they experience.... but if you put them in identical environments before they diverged they'd initially respond in identical ways.
BTW what if there were two people and you completely swapped their memories.... are "you" the body you originally had or are you the person with your original memories?

I think this mode of thought is a century behind physics.

It made some sense in the nineteenth century, but it's completely counterfactual today.

Are you saying that quantum physics makes a difference? If so then couldn't a brain in a vat have similar quantum entanglement, etc, to an original brain? Are you saying that the "observer" and quantum phenomena makes a difference in the copy?

Are you confident that it doesn't?

 

[excreationist]

I find the notion that we will never be able to upload ourselves ludicrous

I find the notion that we will ever be able to upload ourselves ludicrous.

Our selves are explicitly characterised by our bodies. You could likely upload something sentient, but it wouldn't be you - you would still be driving around that meat sack you were born in.

You could take the Star Trek transporter solution, and murder (then disintegrate) the original; But otherwise you're going to be uploading someone else. The upload would no more be "you" than your identical twin brother is "you" - and given his radically different body, would likely be dramatically less "you" than your twin, who at least shares a similar endocrine system with you.

So a clone with an identical mind including all forms of memories is "no more" you than an identical twin that doesn't necessarily share any of the same memories (if they were raised separately)? I completely disagree. Clones of your memories, etc, would think that they're you - it's just that the original you is the first one to think they're you.

 

[bilby]

I find the notion that we will never be able to upload ourselves ludicrous

I find the notion that we will ever be able to upload ourselves ludicrous.

Our selves are explicitly characterised by our bodies. You could likely upload something sentient, but it wouldn't be you - you would still be driving around that meat sack you were born in.

You could take the Star Trek transporter solution, and murder (then disintegrate) the original; But otherwise you're going to be uploading someone else. The upload would no more be "you" than your identical twin brother is "you" - and given his radically different body, would likely be dramatically less "you" than your twin, who at least shares a similar endocrine system with you.

So a clone with an identical mind including all forms of memories is "no more" you than an identical twin that doesn't necessarily share any of the same memories (if they were raised separately)? I completely disagree. Clones of your memories, etc, would think that they're you - it's just that the original you is the first one to think they're you.

Mind is nothing. The endocrine system is boss.

 

[excreationist]

Are you saying that quantum physics makes a difference? If so then couldn't a brain in a vat have similar quantum entanglement, etc, to an original brain? Are you saying that the "observer" and quantum phenomena makes a difference in the copy?

Are you confident that it doesn't?

Well Penrose thinks microtubules that involve quantum phenomena are required for consciousness to exist but even then I thought a clone of their brain could allow consciousness. I think it depends on whether there is an observer substance or whether regular physics is involved with the elementary particles, etc. If the clone has qualia and has every single memory of yours and thinks they're you then I think that practically they are you. Though legally I guess the original you could have more rights than any copies of yourself that you might make. (based on the "White Christmas" Black Mirror episode).

 

[excreationist]

So a clone with an identical mind including all forms of memories is "no more" you than an identical twin that doesn't necessarily share any of the same memories (if they were raised separately)? I completely disagree. Clones of your memories, etc, would think that they're you - it's just that the original you is the first one to think they're you.

Mind is nothing. The endocrine system is boss.

So if you and another person switched minds then the being with your original body is you and not the body your mind is in? That goes against everything I've learnt in body swap movies...

 

[bilby]

I think it depends on whether there is an observer substance

There isn't. Substance dualism is bunk.

or whether regular physics is involved with the elementary particles

Of course it is. All of physics is involved with everything.

 

[bilby]

So a clone with an identical mind including all forms of memories is "no more" you than an identical twin that doesn't necessarily share any of the same memories (if they were raised separately)? I completely disagree. Clones of your memories, etc, would think that they're you - it's just that the original you is the first one to think they're you.

Mind is nothing. The endocrine system is boss.

So if you and another person switched minds then the being with your original body is you and not the body your mind is in? That goes against everything I've learnt in body swap movies...

You cannot learn anything useful from movies.