Do you want to be Transhuman?

I've got to imagine it'd be terrifying and something like having some serious schizophrenia

Oh really when?

Unfortunately, we have yet to give mice the enhancement of speech.

In the same sense that transhumans are superior to humans. I wasn't the one to use the word first.

Hence why we'd rebuild our brains to handle it.

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That level of brain enhancement would be extremely difficult for the moment. And given that we start seeing synthetic telepathy going on now I cannot see our neuroscience in that aspect (as in, understanding the link between brain structure and behaviour) being able to catch up.

So you'd support SEELE?

Keep Rolling On

About the whole "people would volunteer, so think about it thing": how many people have voluntarily had tattoos. To later regret it because they didn't think it through?

I consider such people to be dumbasses.

Not that I wouldn't feel sorry for them, but still dumbasses. People have to take responsibility for their choices, especially when it is going to be life-changing like getting an enhancement.

edited 14th Jan '14 1:32:30 AM by IraTheSquire

They wanted to forcibly combine all of humanity. How is that small-scale or voluntary?

Also, I was half-joking. It's just that the idea of doing crazy things For Science! is so funny, and also I like to be the devil's advocate.

edited 14th Jan '14 4:44:07 AM by CassidyTheDevil

As You Know, you're not alone. Although mostly, it depends on how I'm feeling at the time.

Keep Rolling On

I guess the first transhuman volunteers would be people with terminal illnesses who have nothing to lose.

You know, with all the talk about the Ship of Theseus question and the worries of copying problems associated with Brain Uploading over the past few pages, I thought I might just drop my two cents here.

If you do not believe in a soul of some sorts (here meaning anything that would, for lack of a better word, distinguish one "self" from another in a manner that defies known physical law), or assume the underlying physical processes that propagate consciousness occur at the quantum level (highly improbable, and not even necessarily insurmontable depending on where quantum computing goes), an uploaded mind of sufficient simulation quality*

, even one produced via the infamous "scan and destroy" method, would nececssarily have continuity of consciousness and selfhood, if such a thing can even be said to exist in the first place to the extent that "you" can be considered the same person at two consecutive instances in time. (And if it doesn't, such concerns that the "real" you would die in the process of mind uploading are doubly meaningless)

This comes down to a matter of physical law and logic. If we assume that there is nothing supernatural involved in the propogation of consciousness, that disallows any mechanism that does not abide by physical laws, which, assuming we are dealing with phenomena that do not arise from quantum mechanics, is entirely deterministic, and requires physically identical systems to function identically to each other, with two such functions postulated to be the self and consciousness.

This means that in the "swampman" thought experiment*

, the human being that was disintegrated by the first lightning strike and the one formed by the second strike necessarily have the same mind and consciousness for the reasons mentioned in the prior paragraph, making them the same person by all definitions of personhood that assume the lack of a mind-body

While this could be seen as a point against the feasibility, as it can be seen as suggesting true transference of consciousness would require the creation of a physically identical replica of the brain down to finest classically identifiable levels, consider that from day to day, all the cells in the human body and brain change in minor ways. A neuron dies here and there, connections in the brain change over time, and the exact atoms composing you at one point in time will not be the same as the one composing you at a different point in time will not be identical in all likelyhood. Thus, if you consider yourself the same person from day to day, if not moment to moment, an exact physical replica is not required for continuity of consciousness and selfhood.

Therefore real question for mind uploading is ultimately not "will the uploaded mind still be me?" but rather "Is the level of abstraction of a mind we can feasibly achieve enough to allow for continuity of consciousness?"

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The problem is that the new entity, even if completely identical down to the tiniest subatomic level, is in no way dependent on the destruction of the original. The new copy will (incorrectly) perceive its own continuity, but the old one is just gone. Needlessly.

edited 14th Jan '14 9:39:06 PM by Pykrete

How about if the replacement takes part in the brain itself, substituting synthetic, long-lasting matter for biological brain matter over the course of the brain's operation. e.g. as cells die, some form of nano-tech replaces them with a synthetic analogue that performs the same function.

The replacement only occurs as the biological bits are destroyed, leaving a synthetic neural net that is contiguous with the biological brain it replaced and has developed from the original brain as the person lives his/her life.

As I mentioned before that is extremely difficult and is probably not feasable at best (outright impossible at worst) for a long time.

Not to mention now you have the problem of the purpose when you are pretty much replacing the brain with something that is literally identical to a brain.

@Pykrete: Being absolutely identical necessarily means that any casual effect on the original will appropriately effect the "swampman". The only actual difference between the original and the swampman is that the latter is displaced in spacetime from the former by a potentially arbitrary distance, which, given that we're talking classically identical systems, is not meaningfully distinguishable in terms of continuity of subjectivity should the lightning strike have spontaneously teleported the original to the location and time of the second strike.

Once again, in the sense that the exact configuration of atoms is not the same, your rain already does that from day to day in normal biochemical processes, which either means that the self is merely an illusion, or that continuity of subjectivity isn't dependent on the exact physical configuration of the brain.

Note also that the idea that gradually replacing the brain is not meaningfully different from doing it all at once; the net result is the same, and they will have the same consciousness and mind.

edited 15th Jan '14 2:46:52 AM by Archereon

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That depends though. We have no idea whether the configuration of atoms we have at the moment is the one and only configuration that can generate the exact consciousness.

I am of the "self is an illusion" side anyway.

Contemporary neurobiology is on the fence on the issue of the self as far as I recall; it comes down to how you define the self ultimately.

As far as whether or not the mind can be considered software or whether it is intrinsically related to the structure of the brain, it's important to note that many animals which appear*

to be self-aware have different brain structures from humans, which suggests that the source of consciousness is not specific to the exact structure of the brain.

edited 15th Jan '14 7:02:41 AM by Archereon

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See, that's what I'm saying: we don't know yet and it will be a LONG time before we figure it out. Thus why I say it will take a long time at best.

Also, my counter argument would be mind altering drugs and lobotomy alters a person's mind by changing the brain physically.

edited 15th Jan '14 12:59:56 PM by IraTheSquire

Any definition of the self or of the conciousness that is to be consistent with modern neurobiology requires them to be mutable, precisely because of the effects that physical interactions between the brain and its environment, such as the aforementioned mind altering substances have on a person's subjective experience.

Of course, whether or not the self exists at all is not particularly pertinent to the topic at hand-should the self be conclusively found to not exist, there would be no need to fear that a digital copy of your mind might not really be the real you, as there would be no real you in the first place.

While the issue becomes somewhat more complex when the self is assumed to exist, ultimately, my own understanding of the relevant implications of contemporary science and the apparent lack of evidence to support any sort of mind-body dualism leads me to believe that the particular objection to mind uploading being discussed is unfounded so long as a few of the most fundamental principles of modern physics are true, which observational evidence gives us no reason to doubt.

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And my grounds for objecting the discussion of mind uploading is that we have zero idea whether the theory behind it actually works as that varies according to the relationship between the mind and the brain (if there is no self in the first place, there is nothing to copy in the first place. If the brain needs the exact configuration, down to the atomic level, in order to generate the same self then copying is meaningless). We might as well as discuss casting magic missiles.

If the mind/self/personality/whatever is nothing more than a product of the neural links we've formed over the span of the development of our own brains, then the only possible copy would be something that replicates that exactly so that the right neurons - biological or artificial - fire the right way when exposed to the same stimuli.

A factor in replacing the majority of the "meat" with an artificial body will naturally be changes in the brain/mind/self due to having a different body (or choice of bodies) as we would be removing or reducing a lot of biological body-related stimuli.

e.g. I respond to certain stimuli in certain ways depending on a large number of factors including physical fatigue, hunger, pain, reaction to alcohol etc.

With a different body, my responses to stimuli may well alter due to not having some of those factors or perceiving them differently. So I would not be as I am now - just as the "me" now is not as I was when I was a child or a teenager.

So if the biological neurons were replaced/replicated by artificial ones they could only respond as I would if I had artificial neurons.

If we're more than the sum total of our neural connections and have some form of "soul" or "spirit", that is our "self" then how could that possibly be copied?

Well, our natural organic bodies undergo major changes during puberty too, and so does our brain and our minds, so that's not really a problem.

As for the second part, what I mean is that we do not know if those artificial neurons have to be completely identical to natural neurons in order to them to function in the same way. If they do then there would be no point in replacing them as that would amount to replacing an orange with an orange: nothing is changed.

Finally, there's no evidence to show that "self", if it exists, is any more than the summation of the brain physiology.

edited 15th Jan '14 7:11:41 PM by IraTheSquire

"If the brain needs the exact configuration, down to the atomic level," Is there any reason to think that this even makes sense? If anything you can lose whole neurons and stay you.

The only reason for replicating/replacing the neural network would be for robustness - replacing the organic network with a longer-lasting synthetic one - which is more akin to replacing a wooden building with an identical one made of steel-reinforced concrete.

Ideally that would be done in stages as part of the routine repair of the brain and would require not only a compatibility in function but a compatibility with the biological bits. That way, there's never any issue of there being a "copy", just a continuation of the same entity that changes with time - as we all do, except this time the replacement parts are not biological.

I'd like to replace my ear with a cyborg one, mainly because it sucks and I could really use a new one; or I could have a new one grown and transplanted ; whichever works best. I'd also like new eyes, so I can get 20/20 vision. Maybe new limbs too, since robotic ones would be inherently stronger than the ones I have right now. And maybe a robotic heart, since that would probably have a longer lifespan . Or, over time, I could have my organs replaced with cloned versions of them, grown in a lab, effectively keeping me young for an extended period of time

edited 15th Jan '14 9:10:52 PM by Xopher001