Wednesday, 16 August 2017

Digital Immortality, The Future of Memory, and Sci-Fi Utopias: An Interview With Dr. Phil Frana

quote [ When you sit down with Phil Frana, you better buckle up for a conversation that ranges from the history of artificial intelligence (he's literally writing the book on it) to visions of the future, including uploading our minds to the singularity and 3-D printing our way to a utopian society. Phil is one of the speakers at the upcoming Escape Velocity 2017, the Museum of Science Fiction's annual sci-fi and science event, where he'll be leading a talk on matter duplicators. Ahead of Escape Velocity, we sat down with Phil to talk about sci-fi, tech, and the future. ]

Digitally uploading consciousness seems like a variant of the teleporter problem. Which one is you? And if you're so unattached to the idea of your singular self why would you care about living forever if that's not going to be you anyway?
[SFW] [science & technology]
[by raphael_the_turtle@10:35pmGMT]

Comments

midden said @ 1:30am GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Funny]
Those questions have been explored thousands of times in SF, especially since Gibson introduced the Dixie Flatline in Neuromancer back in the mid 80s.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 2:57am GMT on 17th Aug
You could leave a variation of that response on every post and we could all pack it in.
5th Earth said @ 10:54pm GMT on 16th Aug
As much as I love the idea of uploading consciousness, none of these singularity advocates take into consideration the fact that we have no goddamn idea how brains work, let alone all of the broader physiological factors that play into mental processes. You can't simulate a system that you don't understand.
damnit said @ 11:58pm GMT on 16th Aug
Even if we do and we can store memory in full, is data really lossless or no because entropy?
Dienes said @ 12:17am GMT on 17th Aug
I've heard the singularity referred to as "The Rapture, but for nerds" and it seems to fit pretty well.
robotroadkill said[1] @ 2:52am GMT on 17th Aug
I've thought about this too, didn't realize it was a thing.

If someone duplicated me exactly, including my memories and tendencies, I wouldn't suddenly be OK with being killed, knowing that elsewhere my mind and experiences would go on. Likewise with having my living form obliterated in the ship and then reconstituted with other molecules down on the planet. The new version coming out the other end wouldn't know the difference, but the one going in is gone forever.
mechanical contrivance said @ 12:54pm GMT on 17th Aug
If you're about to die from old age or sickness, anyway, then it's ok.

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