[nzmsv]

I have to ask: but why? The author correctly concludes that the human mind is software, but then their survival instinct gets the better of them and they don't carry this thought to its logical conclusion. And that is: death is a feature, not a bug.

The planet-wide human computer happens to run its computation by transferring some state from the current generation of humans to the next via a mixture of lip flapping, squiggles on paper, and backlit screens panels. In doing so it performs pruning of the state: every detail is not transferred.

In essence, a person pushing for immortality is a single selfish genome with a singular purpose: replicate to the detriment of maximizing the global utility of the system. The system by design will try its best to thwart this effort.

[nyokodo]

> the human mind is software

It’s an understatement to say this has yet to be established. The human body is very much hardware and includes our incredible cognitive system that we haven’t and may never be able to simulate accurately. Everything from quantum interactions of particles composing neurons to physically interacting with the world etc may prove irreducibly complex to intelligence so as to make simulation essentially just cloning. The “mind as software” meme really needs to have better evidence for its arrogant presentation.

[Maursault]

> The “mind as software” meme really needs to have better evidence

It never will because it is fundamentally a bad metaphor in reverse. The proper metaphor doesn't apply in reverse to mind and brain. Mind is not an algorithm or a series of instructions that gets executed on brain, the notion is absurd.

Mind is also not something else, it is not some thing, as it has no substance, has no weight, color, smell, etc. Though we are certain the brain is the seat of the mind, you can slice up brain as many ways as possible and never find the mind. Near as experts can figure, mind is a phenomenon of personal experience that arises from healthy brain.

Conversely, Strong AI, a living but artificial mind in a digital machine, is unattainable and will remain the domain of science fiction, though it is easy enough to have a convincing enough AI fool us into believing an AI has personal experience, it is simply physically and logically impossible, at least until two things occur: 1) we actually fully understand mind (unlikely to occur) and 2) we attain the ability to create neurons at the scale of what makes neurons (may be impossible). But if it ever occurs, what a horrendous and cruel thing to create. Imagine being consciousness under those conditions.

[nzmsv]

But what about Plato's cave? You say that a mind arises from a healthy brain, but let's say we put a perfectly healthy brain into an environment where it cannot experience the same kind of stimuli that the brains riding in our bodies do. Would it still be healthy? Could we relate to this intelligence, and would we consider it to have a mind?

I'm no expert, but I wonder just how much of the distinction is entirely artificial and the only fundamental difference between our intelligence and what we call AI is the set of input data, and the rest of the difference can be attributed to scale. After all, scale has an effect on cell-based wetware too. Does a cat have a mind? Could one pass for a human?

[garmaine]

So should we gas the elderly as soon as they’re past child rearing age?

[csb6]

This is a bad faith interpretation of what the parent said. They did not suggest gassing anyone or executing old people. There is a world of difference between that and saying that immortality is a selfish goal.

[garmaine]

I don’t believe it is bad faith interpretation. I used a rhetorical technique where you ask a question which shows where a line of reasoning ends up.

The poster said we shouldn’t seek immortality as it goes against evolution. By the exact same logic we shouldn’t lift a finger to medically help people beyond child rearing age. It’s the same argument. And if we really believe that evolutionary incentives define morality, than we might as well cull that population to eliminate dead weight.

Sounds horrific? That’s because our sense of right and wrong has very little to do with what benefits evolution. And as a consequence, evolution has little if anything to contribute to this discussion of whether we should research immortality or not.

[nzmsv]

I think our sense of right and wrong actually has a lot to do with evolution. Indeed, it's one of the things that drives our evolution as a species.

Self-preservation is very important, and anything that puts it in question tends to elicit a very negative visceral reaction. However, I do think you mischaracterized what I said. Not putting one's survival first and foremost is not always horrific in the grand scheme of things. We tend to call people who sacrifice their life to save others heroes. In the end, continued survival of the group outweighs the survival of an individual in human societies.

So far we have a working method for maintaining and evolving culture by way of knowledge transfer as well as replacement of the bodies that run this "software". And yes, it is absolutely "co-designed": our neural patterns shape the way we think as much as the collective knowledge does. With immortality the author is proposing to do away with a significant driver of cognitive evolution, and it's unclear to me what the benefit of this is, other than pandering to a selfish desire of self-preservation.

I also agree that if immortality was a thing humanity would still continue to evolve. It would just be a very different path, and it's not clear that it would be better.

[tablespoon]

> The poster said we shouldn’t seek immortality as it goes against evolution. By the exact same logic we shouldn’t lift a finger to medically help people beyond child rearing age. It’s the same argument.

No it isn't, and if it seems that way then you're oversimplifying. For one, someone living forever is a far bigger insult to "evolution" than someone living 20 years past "child rearing age." You only get to "gas the elderly" by being over-literal and over-strict. Living a little longer doesn't disrupt the system, but living indefinitely longer does.

[garmaine]

“Insult to evolution” is not a viable moral argument.

[tablespoon]

> “Insult to evolution” is not a viable moral argument.

So? The point was your reductio ad absurdum fails. You said "exact same logic" gets you both places, when it doesn't actually, especially once you start adding in real-world complexities.