[Version467]

I've never understood this. Even if we would have perfect mind-uploading capabilities, this doesn't help the billionaire who is afraid of death, right? It'd just be a copy of them. An immortal one, sure, but the original person would die just the same, no?

[falcor84]

There's the philosophical argument that we have no continuity of consciousness in our meatbag bodies either - e.g. when you wake up, it's rebooting your consciousness from suspended memories.

[vbezhenar]

There's physical continuity. You can be sure that most of your neurones will be the same tomorrow.

So to solve immortality, you gotta replace meat cells with silicone ones, slowly, one percent after another. It'll maintain relative continuity and hopefully will transfer memories and other person traits to the silicone, so one day the brain will be immortal and repairable.

[mofunnyman]

Not to mention that nearly all of the atoms in your body are replaced every decade, meaning most of you went into sewage treatment long ago.

[kyleyeats]

We actually breathe out most of our previously-us mass.

[caskstrength]

But once they pay $$$ and turn on the uploaded consciousness won't they be like "Hey, why I'm still here in my meat body and not in Amazon Brain Cloud(c)"?

[bratbag]

Daily backup with a final scan after death, if possible.

Then your mind is booted into a simulation from your memories, instead of being booted into your pillow from your memories.

Functionally not much different to waking up after loosing some time from being blackout drunk.

[caskstrength]

I thought the the fact that your mind is not magically booted into simulation while you are still alive (during sleep, backout while drunk or just pressing the power button on the server running it) should be a clue that you won't suddenly wake up in simulation after you have died.

[Aerbil313]

You are still dead tho. That thing is a clone of you. Nothing can help this fact.

[ben_w]

Our language can't fully represent the possibility, as it doesn't currently exist and language is learned by mutually shared experiences upon which we then agree terminology.

If you make a backup of my mind every midnight, and at noon one day biological-me faces death, that's still death for noon-me, while also being a way to cheat death from the point of view of the me from 12 hours before.

Restoring your computer from a backup doesn't mean the hard drive never failed, but it is does get you data back.

[Aerbil313]

No, our language is perfectly capable of expressing this simple fact: When you die you die, no matter how many clones or backups of you are up and running.

[arethuza]

Just don't make the mistake of going for the "Unlimited" option in ABC...

Edit: I wonder if cloud brain emulators would censor inappropriate thoughts?

[ben_w]

> I wonder if cloud brain emulators would censor inappropriate thoughts?

Now you mention it, I'd be surprised if they didn't, given the efforts cultures go to to keep people's inner demons at bay.

[junke]

gunshot sound

[Kerbonut]

The movie Dark City (1998) explores this concept somewhat.

[ChatGTP]

If you weren’t conscious when asleep, how do you explain dreams and memories?

I’ve read about high level meditators who were “aware” they were asleep too. Not sure why they’d make this up.

[OttoVonBizark]

yeah normal sleep is a bad example of rebooting. heavy general anaesthetic is a better example

[ChatGTP]

You conscious thoughts might be asleep but some part of you is still "there" and operating or else you wouldn't be able to wake up and remember anything?

[v4dok]

There would be no way to find out if that would be true however. The person in the vat might say they are the same person but you don't know if they really are. Also what happens if you create a copy? Is that two people or is there some kind of shared consciousness? If it is, how do they communicate?

[gat1]

Same with teleportation, you cannot know for sure if the person after the teleportation is the same as the one before, they can just be a copy.

[freilanzer]

Lucid dreaming would like a word.

[ben_w]

Even then it's not continuous over all your sleep.

[viraptor]

It probably depends on your idea of what the soul/consciousness is and how it interacts/integrates with the physical world.

There's a few people interested in the idea of (simplifying a lot) "brain as an antenna receiving the consciousness signals".

[Borrible]

The belief of being no one can be a truth, the belief of being someone an advantage.

[rokkitmensch]

The Altered Carbon books explore this line of thinking decently.

[paulluuk]

It's probably not a fear of death, but a fear to cease to exist. And uploading your mind does mean that you continue to exist.

[xialvjun]

Ship of Theseus

[Version467]

Afaik Ship of Theseus is replacing parts incrementally until eventually no part is from the original ship. This is more like taking the ship, building an exact copy of it and then throwing away the original ship. Not sure that thought experiment is applicable.

[GoblinSlayer]

Integrate your brain into a machine then gradually replace it.

[sparrowInHand]

If you do battle with the scramblers and you blow up your anti-matter stockpile, do you even have any ship left?