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A comment on You Only Live Twice. Parent comment

Re:You Only Live Twice by rw on Friday December 12, 2008 @08:01PM (#396334)
In your words, what is not rational about "mind uploading, cryonics, singularity" ?

Even if you don't know for certain that there is or is not "existence after death", are you saying you live your life believing in that possibility?

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Re:You Only Live Twice by time_management on Friday December 12, 2008 @09:38PM (#396410)
In your words, what is not rational about "mind uploading, cryonics, singularity" ?

It's all extremely unlikely, and it's irrational to believe in it with the faith that a lot of the singularitarian atheists do.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a 150-year or longer lifespan-- in fact, it's probable that the first 150-year-old will be born before I die-- but mind-uploading makes no sense. How are we going to upload something when we don't know what it, physically, is... or even whether or not it's physical? Cryonics has the same issue, because there's no reason to believe the consciousness "sticks around" waiting to reawaken in that corpse.

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Re:You Only Live Twice by jodrellblank on Friday December 12, 2008 @10:05PM (#396428)
We do know what the mind physically is - it's somewhere less than all the components of a person. It may be non-physical in the sense that it's a pattern of information, but patterns can be represented electronically ... are you suggesting it's supernatural?

   no reason to believe the consciousness "sticks around" waiting to reawaken in that corpse.
Yes there is - I sleep each night and wake each day. I don't think consciousness exists separately, I think it's an emergent phenomenon. Note to Eliezer, that means I think it is a complex side effect of a multitude of electrobiochemical processes, not that I think it's magical. If my body is kept without decay and said processes can be restarted, then they will process information starting with existing patterns (what's in memory) and new input from senses and there, but for the fact that this is fictional, I am. Cogito, ergo sum.
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Re:You Only Live Twice by time_management on Friday December 12, 2008 @10:43PM (#396456)
Yes there is - I sleep each night and wake each day.

That's different. Your consciousness continues while you sleep, although you usually lose all awareness, mindfulness, and capacity to form memories. There are, however, yogis who are able to remain aware of their cognitive processes during both dream and deep sleep.

However, when a person is dead, the general consensus seems to be that the consciousness has left the body-- it's either elsewhere, or it has ceased to exist entirely. If the materialist explanation of consciousness is correct, then it's plausible that "someone" will awaken when your body is resurrected and will have your memories, but it won't be you, because you won't exist to be experiencing it.

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Re:You Only Live Twice by jodrellblank on Saturday December 13, 2008 @05:55AM (#396634) 

  However, when a person is dead, the general consensus seems to be that the consciousness has left the body
That's a silly consensus. Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, there's no evidence of anything leaving, or anywhere for it to go, or any reasonable sounding conjectures of what it might be made of or how it is powered or how it interacts with living brainmatter during life or any reasonable sounding suggestions for what happens in the event that the body dies with advanced alzheimers or as a foetus or in the fires of a nuclear bomb detonation or trapped in an inescapable airtight diving bell...

  If the materialist explanation of consciousness is correct, then it's plausible that "someone" will awaken when your body is resurrected and will have your memories, but it won't be you, because you won't exist to be experiencing it.
Of course it will be "me". If the materialist explanation is correct there isn't anyone else it could be or any way for it to be anyone else or any separate "me" that could not exist to experience it.

But it isn't quite right to say it will be me. Rather, I will be it. I wont waken when my body is resurrected, when my body is thawed and jump started, the processes that are me will be running again. An animated body is a thinking body and this particular body is me. I am not a thing that exists separately from my neurological processes, "I" am the result of the neurological processes.

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Re:You Only Live Twice by briancooley on Saturday December 13, 2008 @10:31PM (#397199)
Please save indenting for code rather than for quoting, if it's not too much trouble.

Long code sections like the one above force me to have to repeatedly scroll horizontally to read the thread.

Wrapping the quoted material in asterisks will italicize it, which seems to be a better option.

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Re:You Only Live Twice by jodrellblank on Sunday December 14, 2008 @09:11AM (#397370)
Beg your pardon, I started quoting with quotes, but didn't think it was clear enough, so tried this not thinking of the scrolling. Will use italics in future ( or avoid quoting ).
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