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Afterlife, digital copies or clones


jmccr8

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7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

In that case, when resurrected you begin at your latest upload only having "lost" the period of time between the uproar and death 

Only for some values of 'you' that bear no resemblance to what is typically referred to as 'the afterlife'.

7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

What do you think cannot be copied? 

What do you think we possess, apart from  our memories and current thoughts?

What I just said, and others have also pointed out, what don't you understand?  Some religions claim that after we die we continue to be or become aware again.  Your scenario results in me never waking again after death, I'll have no awareness or experience of other copies of my 'identity', so from my perspective they may as well be different entities, which of course they are.  They aren't 'me', I'm dead in the ground in this scenario, so again there is something we possess that isn't copied because that something is lost when we die.

Try thinking about the differences between the afterlife experience as described by religions/souls and your tech scenario, what is lost should be easy for you to spot.

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2 hours ago, eight bits said:

The bottom line, then, is that Mr W might yet win this thread. You can distinguish between the cloned or uploaded "me" and the guy writing about being cloned here and now. Then again, you could, if you wished, distinguish between me here-and-now and my "childhood self," or Picard could distinguish between the Data who stepped into the transporter and the Data who stepped out (i.e. distinguish conceptually, not "testably").

I think I need clarification on the specific proposition from W that might win since his scenario has a fatal issue for me.  Yes, we can draw arbitrary lines of distinguishing between people at different points of their life, or in ST before and after transporting.  What is more difficult to reconcile is the scenario in the ST:TNG episode Second Chances, where a duplicate of Riker is found on a planet he visited years ago as the transporter split him into two separate people on a previous away mission beam up.  You have two Rikers, Commander Riker who beamed aboard years ago and Lt Riker who was trapped on the planet and thought that his ship mistakenly thought he had been lost in transport and was dead; the distinction between these two is not nearly as arbitrary, they are distinguished 'testably', it doesn't work well to treat these two beings as the same 'person'.  I'd argue that this occurs even if the duplication of Riker had just occurred and they had identical minds and there were two Cmdr Rikers.  These are not the same Rikers unless we're really going to butcher the word 'you', there is a distinction that has to be acknowledged since they clearly share no consciousness or awareness and will die independently.

A copy of my memories and 'identity' in a computer is essentially a more thorough and complete autobiography.  Mark Twain 'lives on' because he recorded his 'consciousness' prolifically when he was alive, and yet he is thoroughly, no scare quotes, dead.  If we take Walker's alien consciousness database and copy Twain's 'identity' to another duplicate body, that is not the same Mark Twain, as seems obvious to me since we can copy Twain's identity to a thousand bodies and we wouldn't then say all those copies are the same person as Mark Twainprime who kicked the whole thing off, and has no clue that any of this is occurring.

2 hours ago, eight bits said:

The take away, then, is that my sense of my own identity is not just that I think that I'm the same person this morning as the fellow who went to sleep in my bed last night, but that everybody else agrees

Agreed, but that is mooted if you have no sensations at all, being dead; whether you cloned yourself, knowingly or unknowingly, to one body or a million, doesn't seem to change that.  None of Walker's scenarios results in my awareness continuing or being resurrected, I'm hard-pressed to think of a more pertinent distinction of what makes someone an individual or not than what occurs at death, and I'm missing where what occurs to me at my death changes one iota based on whether there are copies of me existing somewhere.

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@Liquid Gardens

Poor Jay might need to start a second Mr Walker thread (and so it begins, first multiple Walkerian threads, then eventually Saru will change the name of the whole site to Unexplained Mr Walker).

It is quite clear that the largest religions, the ones most familiar in the "West," mainstream Christianity and Islam, feature a personal afterlife, good or bad depending on how things went during each person's one-to-a-customer natural life. All discussion of future technological developments, alien advanced technology, or science fiction scenarios, etc. is irrelevant to that variety of afterlife. It's supposed to be on offer here and now, to everybody (like it or not) on earth. While terms and conditions apply, those are already spelled out and available for inspection during business hours at the Afterlife Store, or visit our website.

That isn't the only kind of religion, however. Another variety features a super-personal afterlife. You personally are a leaf on the tree (to use or abuse an image posted elsewhere by Apostle Will). What tree? Anything bigger than you will serve: Life, the species, the nation, the tribe, the family... whatever.. You bud, turn green, then turn bright colors, and finally you fall off the tree, dead and composted. If all goes well, however, the tree goes on, and has other leaves next year, in part because of the contribution you made this year to the survival of the tree.

I suspect that the familiarity of the personal-survival religions influences you to see "something missing" in the collective-only survival religions' afterlives. Not that you don't also value the survival of your family, ..., Life itself, BUT many Christians and Muslims do not expect collectives to persist in their afterlife, just individuals. Many don't see dogs there, much less "all Life." Jesus made a point that marriages don't continue (Paul made a similar point, Joseph Smith disagrees).

I mention all this in hopes that you might glimpse another perspective, one in which the afterlife concept that is familiar to you would seem to have "something missing" from that other perspective.

And if there is more than one conception of afterlife, not all equally familiar but all equally valid (or equally frivolous), then Mr W has arguably made the cut (albeit not to the exclusion of the familiar kind).

On a point that has arisen more than once: I think it is material to the usefulness of the "transporter problem" version of the hypothetical that the original is destroyed. Even in the episode you mentioned, while each Riker is somewhat inconvenient for the other Riker, they are sufficiently different that neither ultimately threatens the sense of personal identity of the other. It would be a ramped-up version of discovering that I had an identical twin after all. Hugely interesting to me, maybe eerie (no doubt there would be many coincidences in our biographies), but in the end, I'm eight bits and he's greenback byte.

But it is almost certain that I don't have an identical twin (if I did, my rep as a genealogist would be finished). Riker is exceptional in the ST Universe in having a surviving transporter clone. In general, transportees are like you and me: there are no rival claimants to being "the real us," and that is (IMO) part of the matrix of facts and situations that support our sense of being persistent distinct personal beings.

(This will also serve as my answer to @Rlyeh who raised a similar issue quoting my earlier post; also to @Mr Walker, that while there is no technical necessity to destroy the original in some of his scenarios, the concept of social identity would be wildly different if there were several of each of us running around. Simple cases first: Nobody claims to be Picard except the one whose socially defined biography, singular, includes several transports).

Edited by eight bits
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If it's possible to clone one what's stopping anyone from cloning more? 

Or if there's a kink in the process and the cloning process couldn't be deactivated and there ending up with s clone of someone popping up every minute for the next hundred years... 

Now that's a nice idea of afterlife for everyone 

~

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3 hours ago, eight bits said:

I suspect that the familiarity of the personal-survival religions influences you to see "something missing" in the collective-only survival religions' afterlives.

Well put, and you are correct, what I see missing is me.  Under the 'anything bigger than me will serve' then the afterlife already exists, here and now, since the universe has continued on after every person's death. No technology or supernatural anything required, although we've expanded 'afterlife' to be so general it doesn't mean too much from a definition point of view (not that people can't find meaning and comfort in this kind of "I'm both dead and after-living on" scenario). 

3 hours ago, eight bits said:

I mention all this in hopes that you might glimpse another perspective, one in which the afterlife concept that is familiar to you would seem to have "something missing" from that other perspective.

I see nothing necessarily missing in my afterlife conception in comparison to these other perspectives except my actual death.  Even within the major religions their conception doesn't always require hard-and-fast boundaries around a personal 'me', lots of times it is posited that I live on in some kind of union with God. The key part in your leaf analogy to me is what the implications are of 'dead and composted'; it's entirely standard and non-controversial to say it's not me, a particular leaf, that lives on, it is other leaves and the tree from which we were born.  I can of course understand the perspective of, 'well, you were part of something greater than you that persists, if you (greatly) expand the definition of 'your life' then you then 'live on' ', but I think at a minimum in order for us to be alive we require some awareness, and no one has disputed that ends for me, nor offered up how I am unaware yet still 'me' when something that is separate from my awareness persists.

3 hours ago, eight bits said:

And if there is more than one conception of afterlife, not all equally familiar but all equally valid (or equally frivolous), then Mr W has arguably made the cut (albeit not to the exclusion of the familiar kind).

Seems like everything makes the cut, what conception doesn't?  Not even the materialistic, atheistic conception doesn't make the cut, that's entirely compatible with the 'part of something bigger' "afterlife".  If you're just saying Mr W might still win the thread because it's not possible for anyone to lose, I guess I agree but it's kinda a hollow victory.

3 hours ago, eight bits said:

while each Riker is somewhat inconvenient for the other Riker, they are sufficiently different that neither ultimately threatens the sense of personal identity of the other.

Not sure how true that actually is, the wiki page mentions that Data postulates that the two Rikers are resentful of each other because of a loss of uniqueness.  This is a weird situation also as it's not technically a 'clone' since neither Riker can be said to be the original; Riker was duplicated by the transporter and it's not possible to say either is the 'original' or real one.

I think you are approaching this from a different perspective, you are introducing questions of what makes my identity, who do other people recognize me as, etc... all of which is definitely interesting but is at a sub-level.  One can have very little concept of who they 'really' are and be confused about their identity but nonetheless be indisputably alive.  I'm more focused on something simpler, death, as I think what the implications of that event are defines the absolute ground level of definition of what 'you' or 'I' am.  We have discussed different ideas of what life is, what an afterlife is, what constitutes a person, but there really hasn't been much dispute about what happens at death, which is loss of awareness.  I don't understand or agree with conceptions of 'life' and 'me' without awareness.

Edited by Liquid Gardens
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8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Yes, indeed, it is a lot like " god " :) but it is only " god" if we make it so.

Hi Walker

We have broached this subject before and I will restate that aliens are not gods and as of yet there is no evidence to suggest that they have been here recently or in the past, besides You know that For me god is our ability to think,create and realize potential and that is something that can be observed , measured,  tested and recorded.

8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

and yes my conclusions are based on my personal life experiences, but not beliefs. 

I am inclined to think that your belief does play a part in this as you must first believe that your experiences have the significance that you credit them for.

8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

While the ethics might be questionable, the clone would have no mind of its own, until your mind was transferred to it. There are a number of feasible ways this could be done.  It is no more morally questionable than aborting human infants before they have self  awareness :) 

For me the ethics of it would be highly questionable and the movie "The Island" demonstrates this quite effectively, but I am interested in the number of feasible ways that you perceive that this could be done.

 

8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Otherwise one would have to murder a separate,  individual,  self aware consciousness, to take over its body

Yes that is my point and glad you brought it up.

 

8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

A body obeys a mind. That is how humans work. Once your mind is in a body it does as you tell it to.

Although it might have to spend some time learning the muscular control to walk talk etc., just as a child does 

The body and mind are what makes us human and the development of body and mind are dependent on each other and a clone would need that interaction to grow and develop, those experience of learning are unique to every living being and is not the same for all which is how we develop as a person so I do not see how one could avoid a clone from understanding it's self awareness. There are no shortcuts, it takes a certain amount of time for a body to develop so a clone would have to live a life until you decided that you needed it's body and the clones body is 25 yrs old when you need it and if your body is genetically weak and the source of donor material for the clone then you will need to continuously have other clones developing in order to ensure your continued existence because the clones body would likely have the same physical defects that you do because it is your dna.

8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

I do not approve of killing even unborn children, and certainly not ones which are alive and evolving as an individual However it is sometimes the lesser of two evils

I would not allow one child to die, so that the other might live UNLESS the first was going to die no matter what was done to help it   I don't approve of having a child to get compatible organs for a sick sibling, but i do approve of  informed consent, where one person gives a part of them self so  that another might live

But that is exactly what taking a clones self awareness does it kills it for the needs of another individual.

jmccr8

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8 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

I've considered that.  It is possible for some things, but not others. eg we visited dance halls i have never been in and saw the shapes of rooms, cornices, mouldings, placement of doors and  windows etc of the time.  

60 years later when i visited those places for the first time, they were still basically the same as when i saw them in my time with dad. ie in my virtual visit my fathers memories were accurate  and i shared them. 

Hi Walker

60 years later how old were you when your dad died seeing as how you are 67 now? Either your dad died when you were young or you have confused some time lines as I am sure that your mom and dad were sitting in the house when you had your first alien encounter in your early 20's and that would allow sufficient time to have recorded a fair bit subliminally. I am not going to say that it did not happen but will say that you will have to work harder to demonstrate it's validity.

jmccr8

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21 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Well put, and you are correct, what I see missing is me.  Under the 'anything bigger than me will serve' then the afterlife already exists, here and now, since the universe has continued on after every person's death. No technology or supernatural anything required, although we've expanded 'afterlife' to be so general it doesn't mean too much from a definition point of view (not that people can't find meaning and comfort in this kind of "I'm both dead and after-living on" scenario). 

Ah, so you see the advantage, then. Yes, in some of these other views, there is only now, and you are one of the current actors in a drama that will carry on as well without you in the future as it has already done until recently in the past.

Um, kinda like the Universe actually is, has been and likely will be for a while after we're both gone. There's no law against humans sacralizing plain facts. Look what we've done with food, drink and sex!

Finally, on that block, maybe afterlife wasn't the best word in the first place. It makes sense when discussing the Christian-Islamic trial-first-then-permanent-reward-or-punishment system (it's the permanent part), but for other conceptions of where "I" do or might fit into the larger scheme of things, maybe it works less well, or is too broad from the get-go.

39 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

lots of times it is posited that I live on in some kind of union with God.

Yes, theosis. But at least in the Eastern Orthodox version of it, it is an asymptotic approach to union. You're never quite not yourself anymore, and God is never quite you. Another interesting feature (and one of the few hard sticking points in the schism with Rome that doesn't concern who's the boss here on earth) is that death isn't a necessary condition for the achievement of any particular degree of theosis. It's the usual thing that death confers a big step up, but there's no upper bound on how close the devoted adept can come to union while still earthbound.

46 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Not even the materialistic, atheistic conception doesn't make the cut, that's entirely compatible with the 'part of something bigger' "afterlife"

I guess i don't share your surprise. As I said, maybe afterlife simply isn't the right word, or as sometimes happens when "the right word" is hard to find, maybe the question you're asking is ill-posed. I think we all are agreed that surviving a transporter roundtrip to go on to enjoy a thrilling career in Starfleet can be distinguished from having forty virgins peel grapes for you forever.  Either one, however, can be described as "an afterlife," in part because all either of us actually knows about afterlives is a range of concepts which have little in common.

53 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

This is a weird situation also as it's not technically a 'clone' since neither Riker can be said to be the original;

Jeesum Crow, and people give me a hard time for talking about semantics :)

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7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

ps to say solve a murder You would need to access the mind of the murder or witnesses. Given you don't know who the y are to begin with, that is not an easy thong to do

You are riding other people's consciousnesses with this skill, not simply projecting your consciousness to a location  

Hi Walker

Well if wearing a thong helps solve crimes why not.:lol:

You have just stated that you have been in contact with your dad and others so witnesses or suspects are irrelevant as it would be the victim that you would pursue for answers because that is the known and apparently they need to be dead in order to communicate with you which is unknown if the perp or witnesses are deceased and we know who the victim was and that they are in fact dead.

jmccr8

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7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

If YOU ie your consciousness is not dead, then you are not dead. If your consciousness can be retrieved from  storage, then you were dead, but are now alive again

Hi Walker

Could you give an example of this?

7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Our bodies are not US , our minds are . You would not even necessarily be aware that you had died, or that time had passed, but you WOULD be the same  human being as before (even  if uploaded to someone of the opposite sex or into an android body )

Possession is 9/10s of the law so if you take a body away from a self aware being you have taken it without consent which is theft as the body is the possession of that particular being.

7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

its not too bad being in an AI.

And you know this how?:huh:

7 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

For a very short time i was a "human"  mind uploaded into a computer to pilot a fast needle /courier ship The accelerations etc precluded a human crew and while the computer could have flown it, some " people" believed it needed a "human"  to make the decisions  (the y were neither human nor people, but another organic sentient life form in another system ) :) 

There was plenty of sensory input, especially while in system   but mainly "I"  was just so busy navigating and flying that i never really had time to be bored  

it wasnt really me of course.I was just hitching a ride as an observer on the consciousness that controlled the ship  and maybe it wasn't even real, :)  but it was fascinating fun and informative.

Not as much fun as riding a dragon, mind you, or being one of the crew on a huge war dragon  as big as a tennis court and with a fighting crew of half a dozen, aboard.  :) 

This sounds more like lucid dreaming.

jmccr8

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7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Hey J

All the best with that. Mr Walker does not have a great track record for staying on topic. I'll be happy to be proven wrong. 

Hi Psyche

Thanks, my intent is to organize and counter his claims so I expect there to be some latitude allowed in a thread that is specifically about his perspectives and he sees a relationship in them so I am interested in seeing how he sees these interactions.

7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

With all due respect, they are quite clearly 2 different things. I think that's been well established recently. Personally I think it's more a 'man who fell to earth' syndrome, but if you wish to explore the character of that world, I'm sure we are all in for some astounding tales. Some of it is bound to entertain I guess. I don't think anyone intends to outright ridicule the man, he's just good at digging holes. I think we have all had a pleasent discussion with him at one time or another. Sometimes he's a very interesting poster. Sometimes..... not so much. 

Agreed and understood. He has stated many things in a variety of other threads that ended up being a distraction in those threads and if we have an opportunity to examine his claims here where that is the focus of discussion it may have a greater overall value.

7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

I'm not sure about that. Self proclaimed 'knowers' show up all the time. The difference I'm seeing there is that Mr Walker has more manners than most, Illy, Mo, Habit, they all like to proclaim how inadequate modern science is and how misguided the more learned posters are when goat herders myths satisfy their word view better. Walker just shuts down and makes up some future science. Basically chess with a pigeon. He doesn't have the aggressive approach that the more eccentric posters tend to exhibit, which is what I find makes him unique. 

True and he has been a member here for quite some time and that is not likely to change. Walker is a part of UM and some time back I decided to try a different approach in engaging him which is why I am encouraging him to explore his perceptions here so he can be the focus that he needs and to try to organize his experiences into a format that can be questioned effectively.

Walker and I have banged heads several times only to get threads of value closed down so I thought a change of direction may have more value by including him here. I do see Walker as a friend of sorts and he is aware that we can disagree and accepts my challenges so for me this is a good way of creating a "safe" environment to challenge him without derailing the whole forum.:D

jmccr8

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6 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

I believe the traditional after life view is a construct by non technical humans who encountered technology so advanced it seemed magical or miraculous (Arthur Clarke's  third law )  

Hi Walker

And what is the evidence of this technology? Would one not need to have actually discovered tech in order to say that it existed and with what has been found we know that dinosaurs existed, a myriad of cultures and evidence of human evolution so where is this tech if it has not been found?

jmccr8

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5 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Try thinking about the differences between the afterlife experience as described by religions/souls and your tech scenario, what is lost should be easy for you to spot

Somewhat like....I play a song on the guitar..it is being recorded.   You are witnessing me playing live.  I am fully aware of you witnessing me and I am fully aware of playing live.   Then....I take a copy of the recording and give it to you.  You have a copy of a live event.  But...in reality...the live event is over...it doesn't exist...and that copy of the recording is NOT the live event.  It never can be.  The copy has no awareness of who is listening to it.  Those listening can experience the music of the live event...maybe if it's a video they can see what the live event looked like....but never, ever can they experience that live event.  No smells, no reverb intensely reverberating again and again through out the dark chasms of their mind!  It is NOT a live event.  A facsimile of one's life at best...at the very, very best ...only a facsimile of one's life.  

Besides that...I am quite speculative that the memory in our brains can be digitized.  It's a bit too far fetched. 

Edited by joc
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https://www.cnsnevada.com/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brain/

"Bringing this back to the human brain, according to a 2010 article in Scientific American, the memory capacity of the human brain was reported to have the equivalent of 2.5 petabytes of memory capacity.  As a number, a “petabyte” means 1024 terabytes or a million gigabytes, so the average adult human brain has the ability to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes digital memory. "

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4 hours ago, eight bits said:

Poor Jay might need to start a second Mr Walker thread (and so it begins, first multiple Walkerian threads, then eventually Saru will change the name of the whole site to Unexplained Mr Walker).

:lol:

jmccr8

 

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1 hour ago, eight bits said:

I guess i don't share your surprise. As I said, maybe afterlife simply isn't the right word, or as sometimes happens when "the right word" is hard to find, maybe the question you're asking is ill-posed.

I'm just a little surprised and agree that some of what is being described as an afterlife is not using the right word, because I'm of the opinion that if one asks non-believers for example if they believe in an afterlife, most of them are going to say no.  If one then follows up with, "So you don't believe your family/nation/life will continue at all after you die?  That's what I mean by 'afterlife' ", they'll receive a much-deserved eye-roll.

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

I think we all are agreed that surviving a transporter roundtrip to go on to enjoy a thrilling career in Starfleet can be distinguished from having forty virgins peel grapes for you forever.  Either one, however, can be described as "an afterlife," in part because all either of us actually knows about afterlives is a range of concepts which have little in common.

Maybe, the virgins scenario usually involves that occurring in a different realm, not in this universe.  With the transporter round-trip we actually don't know for sure that after transport you aren't the 'same' person, or if instead you died and were reconstituted as a different new consciousness/awareness; either way there is something that can certainly at least be confused with the same 'you' in this universe and is still alive.

To me 'afterlife' is not a range of concepts which have little in common, it is not difficult for us to imagine that our consciousness doesn't terminate at death and our consciousness lives on in heaven or Valhalla or wherever. "Afterlife" means to me the life you have after your 'death' in this universe; it's not just what persists 'after you've lived your life here', to me that's better referred to as 'afterdeath'.  Plus to borrow from something I said not too long ago to Will, if we say 'the afterlife exists' simply because dirt continues on after we die, then we could really use a word for the idea that my consciousness/awareness persists in some form after my death, since that is an extremely prevalent and popular belief, and 'afterlife' fits that bill rather nicely.

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14 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

To me 'afterlife' is not a range of concepts which have little in common, it is not difficult for us to imagine that our consciousness doesn't terminate at death and our consciousness lives on in heaven or Valhalla or wherever. "Afterlife" means to me the life you have after your 'death' in this universe; it's not just what persists 'after you've lived your life here', to me that's better referred to as 'afterdeath'.  Plus to borrow from something I said not too long ago to Will, if we say 'the afterlife exists' simply because dirt continues on after we die, then we could really use a word for the idea that my consciousness/awareness persists in some form after my death, since that is an extremely prevalent and popular belief, and 'afterlife' fits that bill rather nicely.

Hi Liquid Gardens

To me the common understanding of afterlife is to be transformed into a perfect being and no longer dwell in this plane of existence which is why I have to question Walker's concept of afterlife. In Walker's scenario one would continue to live on as an imperfect being and still tied to the life on this earth which may not be much of a reward in the long run.:hmm:

jmccr8

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21 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

To me the common understanding of afterlife is to be transformed into a perfect being and no longer dwell in this plane of existence which is why I have to question Walker's concept of afterlife. In Walker's scenario one would continue to live on as an imperfect being and still tied to the life on this earth which may not be much of a reward in the long run.:hmm:

Good point, the 'perfection' aspect is another point I haven't thought of.  Ha, I'm still stuck on what 'one' really means and refers to...

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Quote

Many sci fi stories have approached this topic.

My issue is that even if we could upload our conciousness, it would just be making a copy. 

So sure, the copied conciousness would have all your member and feel like you.

But the actual you would still be dead. You would not be the one expierencing it. Your copied conciousness would be. 

You still die. 

 

I was thinking about this today, and interesting counter thought is that our cells are always making copies of themselves, reproducing.

So the cells we have today or not the same as we had a year ago. So did our old conciousness die?

So perhaps uploading us to a robot isn't much different from what already happens lol.

Mind boggling stuff.

Edited by spartan max2
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12 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Its not a new idea. Thomas Reid postulated the very same way back in 1775. What indicates alien technology is involved? 

There's a pretty notable difference between the two. You're normally more polite. 

There's absolutely no evidence that such is a viable idea. 

Maybe or maybe not. 

Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain?

RE... CONVERSATION : MIND The Future of the Mind How AI Technology Could Reshape the Human Mind and Create Alternate Synthetic Minds

Yeah, well see, that just sounds like crazy talk unless you can back that up. 

All of this is reasonable 

We cant really control what we know and thus think, but it is not polite always to say what we are thinking. 

if you don't believe in gods then i guess its logical not to believe in aliens, which past  humans regarded as gods because of their advanced technology.

Crazy?

No

Demonstrably real and physical? 

No 

Experienced by myself and other human beings? 

Yes.

I cant even demonstrate or prove to you that i can construct my dreams and am totally lucid within them.  It would be impossible, then, to prove to you  that I did the things in those dreams which i have described, let alone prove the were MORE than just dreams. 

 Ps  your source doesnt deny this is possible. If anything it expresses concerns about the consequences when it is done or whether it SHOULD be done.

if it is possible a nation like china without religious values on the sanctity of human life, or the existence of a religious soul, will do it  

 

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12 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Only for some values of 'you' that bear no resemblance to what is typically referred to as 'the afterlife'.

What I just said, and others have also pointed out, what don't you understand?  Some religions claim that after we die we continue to be or become aware again.  Your scenario results in me never waking again after death, I'll have no awareness or experience of other copies of my 'identity', so from my perspective they may as well be different entities, which of course they are.  They aren't 'me', I'm dead in the ground in this scenario, so again there is something we possess that isn't copied because that something is lost when we die.

Try thinking about the differences between the afterlife experience as described by religions/souls and your tech scenario, what is lost should be easy for you to spot.

I disgree  it resembles the after life i have studied with many religious groups Maybe some don't see humans as being restored in physicla bodies and living on earth restored to Eden, but tha t is wht the bible says and thus basically what Christianity is about.  eg we (christians)  were once all buried facing the rising sun, so that when our bodies were physically resurrected we would see the sun rise W are supposed to be reunited with loved ones after the Resurrection 

and yep if copied  your other selves will be individuals BUT you can combine your minds regularly so that you know and experience all that they have done between exchanges This is all hypothetical at present, but inevitable if human technology progresses. 

 Nup i cant see anything lost

what we call our soul is our slef aware consciousness. Restore tha t and you  restore our soul.

Split it  (copy it)  between bodies and each one has its own soul.

Depite the authors belief consciousness IS just sophisticated intelligence.

Develop  a computer capable of thinking LIKE a human and it will think like a human ie learn, evolve, and BECOME  like a human, in its inner identity and thoughts 

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11 hours ago, eight bits said:

@Liquid Gardens

Poor Jay might need to start a second Mr Walker thread (and so it begins, first multiple Walkerian threads, then eventually Saru will change the name of the whole site to Unexplained Mr Walker).

It is quite clear that the largest religions, the ones most familiar in the "West," mainstream Christianity and Islam, feature a personal afterlife, good or bad depending on how things went during each person's one-to-a-customer natural life. All discussion of future technological developments, alien advanced technology, or science fiction scenarios, etc. is irrelevant to that variety of afterlife. It's supposed to be on offer here and now, to everybody (like it or not) on earth. While terms and conditions apply, those are already spelled out and available for inspection during business hours at the Afterlife Store, or visit our website.

That isn't the only kind of religion, however. Another variety features a super-personal afterlife. You personally are a leaf on the tree (to use or abuse an image posted elsewhere by Apostle Will). What tree? Anything bigger than you will serve: Life, the species, the nation, the tribe, the family... whatever.. You bud, turn green, then turn bright colors, and finally you fall off the tree, dead and composted. If all goes well, however, the tree goes on, and has other leaves next year, in part because of the contribution you made this year to the survival of the tree.

I suspect that the familiarity of the personal-survival religions influences you to see "something missing" in the collective-only survival religions' afterlives. Not that you don't also value the survival of your family, ..., Life itself, BUT many Christians and Muslims do not expect collectives to persist in their afterlife, just individuals. Many don't see dogs there, much less "all Life." Jesus made a point that marriages don't continue (Paul made a similar point, Joseph Smith disagrees).

I mention all this in hopes that you might glimpse another perspective, one in which the afterlife concept that is familiar to you would seem to have "something missing" from that other perspective.

And if there is more than one conception of afterlife, not all equally familiar but all equally valid (or equally frivolous), then Mr W has arguably made the cut (albeit not to the exclusion of the familiar kind).

On a point that has arisen more than once: I think it is material to the usefulness of the "transporter problem" version of the hypothetical that the original is destroyed. Even in the episode you mentioned, while each Riker is somewhat inconvenient for the other Riker, they are sufficiently different that neither ultimately threatens the sense of personal identity of the other. It would be a ramped-up version of discovering that I had an identical twin after all. Hugely interesting to me, maybe eerie (no doubt there would be many coincidences in our biographies), but in the end, I'm eight bits and he's greenback byte.

But it is almost certain that I don't have an identical twin (if I did, my rep as a genealogist would be finished). Riker is exceptional in the ST Universe in having a surviving transporter clone. In general, transportees are like you and me: there are no rival claimants to being "the real us," and that is (IMO) part of the matrix of facts and situations that support our sense of being persistent distinct personal beings.

(This will also serve as my answer to @Rlyeh who raised a similar issue quoting my earlier post; also to @Mr Walker, that while there is no technical necessity to destroy the original in some of his scenarios, the concept of social identity would be wildly different if there were several of each of us running around. Simple cases first: Nobody claims to be Picard except the one whose socially defined biography, singular, includes several transports).

As much as I adore Jay, I must admit at first read this thread was looking like another all about how special Walker is. 

Thank you for changing my mind, 

You bring in a great point that many religions incorporate an “afterlife” belief. 

I can see applicability in the idea in the context that one may use it as  way to get the most out of their life now. And, maybe deal with the harder aspects of life such as when a loved one dies.

While my contribution is not exactly ground breaking or deep, you have me thinking and this is always a good thing.

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19 minutes ago, Mr Walker said:

I cant even demonstrate or prove to you that i can construct my dreams and am totally lucid within them.  It would be impossible, then, to prove to you  that I did the things in those dreams which i have described, let alone prove the were MORE than just dreams. 

Hi Walker

I think most of us understand lucid dreaming so it's not that much of a mystery in the greater sense. I think in part where trouble arises is when it is not made clear as to whether you are describing a dream or an event.:)

jmccr8

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19 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Walker

I think most of us understand lucid dreaming so it's not that much of a mystery in the greater sense. I think in part where trouble arises is when it is not made clear as to whether you are describing a dream or an event.:)

jmccr8

He can always start a separate thread about dreams and stay on topic on this one. :P

Nota Bene for anyone interested the most interesting knowledgeable poster on dreams is 8ty.

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1 minute ago, Sherapy said:

He can always start a separate thread about dreams and stay on topic on this one. :P

Nota Bene for anyone interested tge  most interesting knowledgeable poster on dreams is 8ty.

Hi Sherapy

:lol:

I am inclined to consider that his lucid dreaming plays a big part in his perspectives on many subjects so it will likely be a side issue that is brought up on occasion.:tu:

jmccr8

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