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Old 07-31-2017, 10:37 PM   #21
jeff_wilson
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I would expect the result of merged ghosts to be unable to think coherently because of too many program conflicts.
What do you mean by program conflicts and why would there be any?
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Old 07-31-2017, 11:56 PM   #22
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What do you mean by program conflicts and why would there be any?
Human brains aren't standardized. It's not just a matter of having different memories, although memories and sense of identity would conflict. They are structurally individual, producing different chemicals at any given moment. "Merge" two brain emulations and you'd have conflicting response patterns for any stimulus. The thing would crash.
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Old 08-01-2017, 02:14 AM   #23
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Human brains aren't standardized. It's not just a matter of having different memories, although memories and sense of identity would conflict. They are structurally individual, producing different chemicals at any given moment. "Merge" two brain emulations and you'd have conflicting response patterns for any stimulus. The thing would crash.
A simplistic merge of two brains is equivalent to taking two binaries and swapping half the bytes between them; a few areas might still function because they happen to actually do the same thing in both brains, most areas will be totally nonfunctional. A somewhat less simplistic merge is more like taking two books and swapping half the words, or two images and swapping half the pixels. An actually sophisticated merge can probably create a hybrid of two books or images, but it's a lot of work, on a par with simply creating a new book or image -- and creating things that function like ghosts from scratch is beyond the capabilities of THS.
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Old 08-01-2017, 08:34 PM   #24
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Human brains aren't standardized. It's not just a matter of having different memories, although memories and sense of identity would conflict. They are structurally individual, producing different chemicals at any given moment. "Merge" two brain emulations and you'd have conflicting response patterns for any stimulus. The thing would crash.
I'm still not not seeing what this has to do with the underlying program. If a simulation of two brains tossed together like a salad produces no useful or coherent behavior, that's presumably a correct assessment rather than a fault in the operation of the simulator program.
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Old 08-03-2017, 01:03 PM   #25
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I'm still not not seeing what this has to do with the underlying program. If a simulation of two brains tossed together like a salad produces no useful or coherent behavior, that's presumably a correct assessment rather than a fault in the operation of the simulator program.
I'm not sure I was ever talking about the underlying program or if there is one.
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Old 08-03-2017, 01:17 PM   #26
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I'm not sure I was ever talking about the underlying program or if there is one.
There is one; the Ghost Mind Emulation itself is a Comp 7 (IIRC) program.

I think he's taking your use of "program conflicts" to be literal where really you meant "incompatible information systems".
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Old 09-02-2017, 03:29 PM   #27
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There is one; the Ghost Mind Emulation itself is a Comp 7 (IIRC) program.

I think he's taking your use of "program conflicts" to be literal where really you meant "incompatible information systems".
That is correct, except that there is little that is "system"-atic above the level of anatomical features common to one's taxonomic group of neocortex-bearers. People appear to share some inborn stimulus responses common to primates like fear of snakes and grasping when the head is unsupported, but up from there it's ad hoc activity and growth where reinforced by some success in association with increased satiation of bodily needs, less so with increased wellbeing.

Edit: This might seem to be a restatement of some above posts, but I mean that the ad-hockery is distinct between parts of the same brain and between time slices of the lifetime of the same brain. Extreme stochasm and fabulation by billions of neurons are under the hood of the skull, but the overall similar pattern of needs and rate of the Monte Carlo-esque method of solution makes it seem like there is a mostly reliable commonality of behavior among distinct individuals but no one is ever quite the same as another person and never quite the same as they were years ago, nor could they be with so many moving parts.
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