TheOtherDave comments on Timeless Identity - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 June 2008 08:16AM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 October 2013 05:07:07AM *  0 points [-]

Sure, if your omelette and my omelette are so distinct that there is no common data structure that can serve as a referent for both, and ditto for all the other people in the world, then the whole idea of an encyclopedia falls apart. But that doesn't seem terribly likely to me.

Your concept of an omelette probably isn't exactly isomorphic to mine, but there's probably a parametrizable omelette data structure we can construct that, along with a handful of parameter settings for each individual, can capture everyone's omelette. The parameter settings go in the representation of the individual; the omelette data structure goes in the encyclopedia.

And, in addition, there's a bunch of individualizing episodic memory on top of that... memories of cooking particular omelettes, of learning to cook an omelette, of learning particular recipes, of that time what ought to have been an omelette turned into a black smear on the pan, etc. And each of those episodic memories refers to the shared omelette data structure, but is stored with and is unique to the uploaded agent. (Maybe. It may turn out that our individual episodic memories have a lot in common as well, such that we can store a standard lifetime's memories in the shared encyclopedia and just store a few million bits of parameter settings in each individual profile. I suspect we overestimate how unique our personal narratives are, honestly.)

Similarly, it may be that our relationships with our husbands are so distinct that there is no common data structure that can serve as a referent for both. But that doesn't seem terribly likely to me. Your relationship with your husband isn't exactly isomorphic to mine, of course, but it can likely similarly be captured by a common parameterizable relationship-to-husband data structure.

As for the actual individual who happens to be my husband, well, the majority of the information about him is common to all kinds of relationships with any number of people. He is his father's son and his stepmother's stepson and my mom's son-in-law and so on and so forth. And, sure, each of those people knows different things, but they know those things about the same person; there is a central core. That core goes in the encyclopedia, and pointers to what subset each person knows about him goes in their individual profiles (along with their personal experiences and whatever idiosyncratic beliefs they have about him).

So, yes, I would say that your husband and my husband and your omelette and my omelette are all stored in the encyclopedia. You can call that an index of partial uploads if you like, but it fails to incorporate whatever additional computations that create first-person experience. It's just a passive data structure.

Incidentally and unrelatedly, I'm not nearly as committed as you sound to preserving our current ignorance of one another's perspective in this new architecture.

Comment author: someonewrongonthenet 01 October 2013 09:04:39AM *  0 points [-]

I'm really skeptical that parametric functions which vary on dimensions concerning omelets (Egg species? Color? ingredients? How does this even work?) are a more efficient or more accurate way of preserving what our wetware encode when compared to simulating the neural networks devoted dealing with omelettes. I wouldn't even know how to start working on the problem mapping a conceptual representation of an omelette into parametric functions (unless we're just using the parametric functions to model the properties of individual neurons - that's fine).

Can you give an example concerning what sort of dimension you would parametrize so I have a better idea of what you mean?

Incidentally and unrelatedly, I'm not nearly as committed as you sound to preserving our current ignorance of one another's perspective in this new architecture.

I was more worried that it might break stuff (as in, resulting beings would need to be built quite differently in order to function) if one-another's perspectives would overlap. Also, that brings us back to the original question I was raising about living forever - what exactly is it that we value and want to preserve?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 October 2013 03:02:12PM 0 points [-]

Oh, and agreed that we would change if we were capable of sharing one another's perspectives.
I'm not particularly interested in preserving my current cognitive isolation from other humans, though... I value it, but I value it less than I value the ability to easily share perspectives, and they seem to be opposed values.