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[deleted] t1_j1oz9xj wrote

Reply to comment by SoundTracx in Is it possible to Live Forever? by gg2ezpzlemonsqz

Two problems with "uploading our consciousness."

For one. We have no clue, even if we were capable of doing so, that a digital copy of consciousness would actually be conscious versus just imitating consciousness.

Second. Even if we could copy it, and be assured the copy was conscious. It's still just a copy. The original you still dies.

For digital immortality to really be feasible you can't just make a copy. You need a way to transfer consciousness from one "body" to another.

For all we know this is simply impossible.

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SoundTracx t1_j1p2jy2 wrote

Your conscious for all we know isn’t even connected to your body in terms of we know of. It could literally just be 1s and 0s but in biological terms.

Past memories we’ve studied to be mostly false to what actually happened. What you remember isn’t true. In fact most of it isn’t. It’s why humans used songs to pass down information in story form instead of using just our memories. Those stories while can be changed like our memories tend to have more legitimate history.

I’m not saying you remembering what food you had for dinner last night type of memory but more long term. Humans are terrible with long term memories, unless they were traumatic in some way.

You could wake up with false memories tomorrow and still be you for all “you” know. This is where it gets very tricky. We don’t know what “you” is. Is it your memories? If it is then shit my idea works fine. If it’s not then it’s going to be more difficult.

A clone of you is just you, but not “you”. So Star Trek teleportation is not this. It’s still “you” being transferred from one location to the next.

If we could do the matter -> energy -> matter teleportation and even fix or cure ailments during that process which includes the degradation of DNA then we could in theory live forever.

There’s many many solutions to the problem, only one needs to be correct. But it still doesn’t solve the problems that come with it

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[deleted] t1_j1q72yg wrote

First let me say thank you for the post.

"Your conscious for all we know isn’t even connected to your body in terms of we know of. It could literally just be 1s and 0s but in biological terms."

Science is just now exploring the idea of the brain as a receiver of consciousness rather than the materialist generator of consciousness. But if it is a receiver, that puts us even farther away from making it work. How can we even begin to understand something (the source or signal the brain receives) if 1) we don't know what that would be. 2) can't even prove or disprove the materialist vs receiver hypothesis.

Even if consciousness could be boiled down to ones and zeros if it's a receiver we have no means whatsoever to find or experiment with that source.

Maybe there is a way to live forever through advanced anti oxidation, nanobots repairing cellular damage, or periodic dna repair. That's not really my field. But the whole consciousness transfer thing is very far fetched imho.

In terms of what a person is, you're right we don't know what it is. But you do hit on a good point. We certainly aren't just our memories. It seems we are more the sum total of our DNA, experiences, nurture, as well as the stream of unique cognitive functions that process those things (often with unique mistakes and interpretations).

This creates an issue where the "you" that you are is highly unique and ever changing. Almost like an AI who can rewrite its own code. It begs the question, if even one tiny bit of information was incorrect, how far off from "you" would any copy be? We can't just copy memories from the original, because the originals memories aren't correct either. It's not about just the end product of the memory. It's about the unique fingerprint of what about the actual experience was coded into memory, and the unique things remembered, forgotten, and distorted. There's likely important and unique information not just in what was remembered, but what was also forgotten and distorted.

If you want a good book on the subject "I am a strange loop." It's a good read.

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