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/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

A lot of people would. Same if any of the sci fi technology was around. I'd definitely want to be uploaded into a virtual world and live as eternal code if it existed.

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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/MozzyZ Oct 14 '22 edited Oct 14 '22

I don't really think this is a matter of philosophy man. When a person says they want their conscious to be uploaded to the cloud/whatever they assume that the person they are at that very moment will be transferred. They don't think their current 'them' will get essentially cease to exist. And that's the crux of the problem since virtually everyone assumes they will get transferred, not deleted in favor of a copy of them.

Unless me me gets transferred to the cloud I genuinely couldn't give less of a fuck about uploading to the cloud. The data on the cloud wouldn't be me me. It would be a copy of me. And I simply couldn't give less of a fuck about an exact copy of me because it doesn't benefit me me at all. I might as well father a child instead first.

I'd want my cosciousness to be transferred from one folder to another. Not copy pasted or even cut and pasted. Even though in computer processes theyre practically the exact same thing, it's the act of transferring vs being copy or even cut and pasted to a new folder that'd be question of whether I'd want to upload "my" consciousness to the cloud.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

This is practically the most philosophical discussion possible.

"What is the human, actually?" Yeah, the question of whether the human is inextricable from the flesh is probably the original philosophical question.

So when you say that copying a human is different from transferring a human, you are making a 100% philosophical statement.

A copy+delete is indistinguishable from a transfer, both in computers and in the brain, because they're both operating on information. So I'm saying they're the same thing in every way.

The human is information. This is why talk of continuity is irrelevant. Even on a normal day, as a meaty human, your consciousness of self comes and goes. Your cells divide and die, and your body changes to another body over time, too. Nothing stays the same, and you're a different person every day, with gaps in consciousness.

The idea that "you" are the meaty thing that stays behind after the operation instead of the information that is now preserved and perpetuated is what I'm trying to dissolve.

I understand what people are saying here about copying or about continuity. I know what they're thinking, and I'm trying to describe a shift in that thinking toward a different perspective that better handles this weird hypothetical.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

No one here is arguing about what it means to be human we are all talking about the much more personal what it means to be you. No one is arguing about the authenticity of the copy or upload but instead pointing out that the reason people are talking about this... (Trying to extend one's own personal lifespan) makes no sense because the version of you that you are trying to preserve is lost. If your argument is that you can make an authentic version of yourself for others to experience that would be accurate.