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Epiphany comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (477)
Elements of death:
There are a lot of elements to dying and if technology progresses far enough I think we could have incidents where some but not all of them happen. However, depending on what exactly happens, some of these should still be regarded as being just as bad as death.
Death of experience
Your experience of the world stops permanently.
This is important because you will never experience pleasure again if you stop experiencing permanently.
Death of self
Your personality, memories, etc, your "software pattern" cease to exist.
This is important because other people are attached to them and will be upset if they can't interact.
Death of genes
Your genetic material, your "hardware pattern", is lost. Your genetic line may die out.
This is unacceptable if you feel that it's an important purpose in life to reproduce.
Death of influence
It becomes impossible for you to consciously influence the world.
This is important because of things like the necessity of taking care of children or a goal to make a difference.
Death of body
Your body, or the current copy of your "hardware" becomes unusable.
This is important if your brain isn't somewhere else when it happens but may not be important otherwise.
There may be others. Can you think of more?
It's a good list. Now to define "you" and see if an upload fits into the definition and if so, how much of your list applies.
I am uploaded. A copy of my "self" is made (I believe this is the definition of "you" people are using when they're talking about uploading themselves) and the original is disassembled or dies of natural causes. That's all that was done. I'm assuming no other steps were taken to preserve any other element of me because it was believed that uploading me means I wouldn't die. I'll call the original Epiphany and the copy I'll call Valorie.
Epiphany:
Death of body - Check. Brain was in it? Check.
Death of experience - Check. (See previous note about my brain.)
Death of genes - Check. Pregnancy is impossible while dead. Genes were not copied.
Death of influence - Check. Upload was not incarnated.
Death of self - No. There is a copy.
Valorie:
Death of body - No body. It's just a copy.
Death of experience - Doesn't experience, it isn't being run, it's just a copy.
Death of genes - Doesn't have genes, a copy of my "self" is being stored in some type of memory instead of a body.
Death of influence - Cannot influence anything as a copy, especially if it is not being run.
Death of self - No. It's preserved.
Conclusion:
I am dead.
Of course it's not hard to imagine other scenarios where everything possible is copied and the copy is incarnated, but Epiphany would still stop experiencing, which is unacceptable, so I would still call this "dead".
I'm perfectly willing to accept that if you get uploaded and then nobody ever runs the upload then that's death. But if you're trying to give the idea a fair chance, I'm not sure why you're assuming this.
There's one really important detail here. If you get uploaded, even if the copy is put into a body exactly like yours and your genes are fully preserved and everything goes right, you still stop experiencing as soon as you die.
Is that acceptable to you?
Okay, I was pretty sure that was your real point, so I just wanted to confirm that and separate away everything else.
But to be honest, I don't have a real answer. It's definitely not obvious to me that I will stop experiencing in any real way, but I have a hard time dismissing this as well. One traditional answer is that "you will stop experiencing" is incoherent, and that continuity of experience is an illusion based on being aware of what you were thinking about a split second ago, among other things.
The continuation of experience argument is compelling if you consider my transporter malfunction scenario.
That is one situation that would definitely result in a discontinuation of experience.
Others which I have discussed with Saturn and TheOtherDave (a wonderfully ironic handle for this discussion) have resulted in my considering other possibilities like being re-assembled with the exact same particles in the same or different locations and being transformed over time via neuron replacement or similar.
I decided that being transformed would probably maintain continuity of experience, and being re-assembled out of the same particles in the exact same locations would probably result in continuity of experience (because I can't see that as a second instance), but I am not sure about it (because the same particles in different locations might not qualify as the same instance, which brings into question whether same instance guarantees continuous experience) and I'm having a hard time thinking of a clarifying question or hypothetical scenario to use for working it out. (It's all in the link right there).
What's not incoherent, though, is looking forward to experiencing something in the future, yet knowing you're going to be disassembled by a transporter and a copy of you will experience it instead. That, in no uncertain terms, is death. We can tell ourselves all day that having a continuous experience relies on you being able to connect your current thought and previous thought, but the real question we need to ask is "Will I have any thoughts at all?" so the connected thoughts question is a red herring (as it relates only to your second instance, not your first one) and is a poor clarifying question for telling whether you (the original) survived.
In coherent terms, what we should avoid is this:
Either way, only a copy of you will experience it, because the non-copy of you is trapped in the present and has no way to experience the future. The copy can be made artificially, using a transporter, or naturally as time passes. Why is there a difference?
Why do you think that time copies you?
Well, it doesn't even perfectly preserve the original, so I fail to see what else it could be but a copy.
You might argue that for some reason the time-derived copy is more important than an artificial copy, of course, but why?
So your definition of self stops at the physical body? Presumably mostly your brain? Would a partial brain prosthesis (say, to save someone's life after a head trauma) mimicking the function of the removed part make the recipient less of herself? Does it apply to the spinal cord? How about some of the limbic system? Maybe everything but the neocortex can be replaced without affecting "self"? Where do you put the boundary and why?
No. As I mentioned, "This (referring to Death of Body) is important if your brain isn't somewhere else when it happens but may not be important otherwise."
If you get into a good replacement body before the one you're in dies, you're fine.
If you want to live, a continuation of your experience is required. Not the creation of a new instance of the experience. But the continuation of my (this copy's) experience. That experience is happening in this brain, and if this brain goes away, this instance of the experience goes away, too. If there is a way to transfer this experience into something else (like by transforming it slowly, as Saturn and I got into) then Epiphany1's experience would be continued.
If Epiphany1's experience continues and my "self" is not significantly changed, no. That is not really a new instance. That's more like Epiphany1.2.
Not sure why these are relevant. Ok limbic system is sort of relevant. I'd still be me with a new spinal cord or limbic system, at least according to my understanding of them. Why do you ask? Maybe there's some complexity here I missed?
Hmmm. If my whole brain were replaced all at once, I'd definitely stop experiencing. If it were replaced one thing at a time, I may have a continuation of experience on Epiphany1, and my pattern may be preserved (there would be a transformation of the hardware that the pattern is in, but I expect my "self" to transform anyway, that pattern is not static).
I am not my hardware, but I am not my software either. I think we are both.
If my hardware were transformed over time such that my continuation of experience was not interrupted, then even if I were completely replaced with a different set of particles (or enhanced neurons or something) that as long as my "self pattern" wasn't damaged, I would not die.
I can't think of a way in which I could qualify that as "death". Losing my brain might be a cause of death, but just because something can cause something else doesn't mean it does in every instance. Heat applied to glass causes it to become brittle or melt and change form, destroying it. But we also apply heat to iron to get steel.
I'm trying to think of a metaphor that works for similar transformations... larva turns into a butterfly. A zygote turns into a baby, and a baby, into an adult. No physical parts are lost in those processes that I am aware of. I do vaguely remember something about a lot of neural connections being lost in early childhood... but I don't remember enough about that to go anywhere with it. The chemicals in my brain are probably replaced quite frequently, if the requirements for ingesting things like tryptophan are any indicator. Things like sugar, water and nutrients are being taken in, and byproducts are being removed. But I don't know what amount of the stuff in my skull is temporary. Hmm...
I want to challenge my theory in some way, but this is turning out to be difficult.
Maybe I will find something that invalidates this line of reasoning later.
You got anything?
So the "continuity of experience" is what you find essential for not-death? Presumably you would make exceptions for loss of consciousness and coma? Dreamless sleep? Anesthesia? Is it the loss of conscious experience that matters or what? Would a surgery (which requires putting you under) replacing some amount of your brain with prosthetics qualify as life-preserving? How much at once? Would "all of it" be too much?
Does the prosthetic part have to reside inside your brain, or can it be a machine (say, like a dialysis machine) that is wirelessly and seamlessly connected to the rest of your brain?
If it helps, Epiphany has implied elsewhere, I think, that when they talk about continuity of experience they don't mean to exclude experience interrupted by sleep, coma, and other periods of unconsciousness, as long as there's experience on the other end (and as long as the person doing that experiencing is the same person, rather than merely an identical person).
Right, it's her definition of "same" vs "identical" that I am trying to tease out. Well, the boundary between the two.
Yeah that has gotten tricky. I've worded the question as "Same instance or different instance?". I've also discovered a stickier problem - just because a re-assembled me might qualify, in all ways, as "the same instance" I am not sure that guarantees the continuation of my experience. I explore that here, in two examples being re-assembled from the same particles both in the same arrangement and in a different arrangement. (scroll to "Scenarios meant to explore instance differentiation and the relation to continuous experience" - I labeled it to make it easy to find.)
As TheOtherDave pointed out, the question is what is, in your opinion, the essence of "self". Clearly it cannot just be all the same "particles" (molecules?), since particles in our bodies change all the time. You seem to be relating self with consciousness, but not identifying the two. That's why I'm asking questions aimed to nail the difference. That's why I asked these questions earlier: