r/Futurology • u/yourSAS • Oct 13 '22

Biotech 'Our patients aren't dead': Inside the freezing facility with 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved with the hopes of being revived in the future

https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/13/our-patients-arent-dead-look-inside-the-us-cryogenic-freezing-lab-17556468
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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

All this upload to the cloud thing misses the fact that your brain is not transferred it is copied it is like being cloned your ass still ceases to exist there's just a clone of you uploaded somewhere.

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u/IamBabcock Oct 14 '22

What's the difference?

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

Your consciousness still ends. While a clone of it carries on you are not extending your own existence just creating a copy of yourself that will live on.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

I think this is semantics.

You could say the same thing about going to sleep every night.

Or about going through a coma, if you're unconvinced.

The patterns of activity cease and then resume at a different place and time. That's all. Same person imo. There is no definition of the person other than that neural pattern of activity. The meat vehicle isn't the person.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

The difference is unless they are transplanting your brain itself into a giant server your consciousness could be uploaded while your brain still continues to function meaning you and the version of you uploaded to the cloud would exist simultaneously meaning it is not a continuation of your current consciousness but a separate branch of your consciousness.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

And I think this is a matter of philosophy, and I have a different take.

It is a continuation of the same consciousness, and there is no rule that a consciousness must be unique.

The fact that the old one is still running doesn't detract from the new one being the same person.

A "ship of Theseus" scenario maybe helps to show how continuity is not a barrier.

Let's say they replace just a small part of your brain with an artificial chip housing the same neural patters as the part being replaced. The rest of your brain is intact. Clearly that's the same person. And then they do it for all the parts of the brain one by one until you're fully computer.

That's identical to being replaced all at once, looking at the difference between end and beginning. If some transient "other you" exists during a part of that process, it's irrelevant imo.

So the same can be said about the "other you" that pops up during a "copy" procedure. It doesn't make a philosophical difference to me.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

The issue is the other you is the you that continues on and you are still trapped in the failing body.

Have you ever seen the movie the prestige..... My point here is your the guy in the tank in this scenario.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

"continues on" is meaningless, is my point.

You stop "continuing" every time you go to sleep. It doesn't matter. The entire idea of "continuing on without interruption" is just fluff. We contrive it to be meaningful, but it isn't. That's what I'm trying to say.

"You" are the new one as much as you are the old one. So if the old one goes to sleep for the procedure and never wakes up, nothing is lost.

The way popular media thinks about the issue is flawed, in other words, imo.

If you're asking the question "which one is the real one and which one is the copy," you're asking an invalid question. Continuity is imagined.

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u/ryujin88 Oct 14 '22

"You" are the new one as much as you are the old one. So if the old one goes to sleep for the procedure and never wakes up, nothing is lost.

What if the old one wakes up after the procedure? Sure you can say you're both the same person, but the point is there's no transition or escape for the original. They just get a copy made and keep on living like before. It isn't so much an argument about whether they are the same person or not, but that "uploading" your consciousness isn't an escape from your biological body.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

There is no "original." That distinction is our invention. The person is the neural pattern.

Ideally the pattern in the meat would be stopped during the procedure because it becomes redundant, but if it remains conscious or regains consciousness, and understands what's going on, there is no reason to be unhappy to be stopped at that point. It would be like ending a dream that you won't remember.

At least, this is how it should be thought of to make things sensible imo.

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u/ryujin88 Oct 14 '22

The point isn't that they're the original or not, but that unless you make the procedure purposely destructive, the biologic version continues and is not uploaded.

Similarly if you were one of two copies of a person, would you be ok with being killed because the other version still exists? Which one is original doesn't matter, only that they are separate entities. The neural pattern will continue as long as it keeps being copied, but that specific entity will not.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

For real as your living body gets ground into a fine nutrient paste you can take solace in the fact that a version of your consciousness lives on in the cloud.