Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Which is all well and nice for the virtual personality, but it isn't much related to the previous human personality.

What if I choose to remain in a familiar environment or a simulation of one? What if, upon upload, I go right back to my life as I was conducting it before?

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

It's a whole new set of stimuli, so the emergent personality changes to reflect the new set.

What if it's not? What if I get ghosted, then download right back into a bioshell modeled on me at age 20?

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

In a way it depends on how far you take it, taken far enough your reactions and personality cease to be the person you had been, whether that's caused by TBI or by a VII editing your stimuli and turning you into an animated flesh puppet which responds only to the edited/chosen stimuli, or because you're on drugs which turn you sane/insane/different from who you were otherwise.

I think you're using a substantially different definition of identity than most folks then. If tomorrow I went out and got myself addicted to crystal meth, the person I am today v. the person I will be after 10 years of drug addiction may be different, but they are different in a way that is a commonly understood and accepted part of the passage of time and life experiences. The same is true of uploading. Sure, after long enough I may change if I choose to embrace the full consequences of digital immortality, but so what? I also might have a mid-life crises and retire to open a dive shop in Cancun.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

What if I choose to remain in a familiar environment or a simulation of one? What if, upon upload, I go right back to my life as I was conducting it before?

You don't do anything, you died, a copy of your memory is run in a simulation is all.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

What if it's not? What if I get ghosted, then download right back into a bioshell modeled on me at age 20?

You died and a construct built to look like you uses your memories as a base to form its personality.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I think you're using a substantially different definition of identity than most folks then. If tomorrow I went out and got myself addicted to crystal meth, the person I am today v. the person I will be after 10 years of drug addiction may be different, but they are different in a way that is a commonly understood and accepted part of the passage of time and life experiences. The same is true of uploading. Sure, after long enough I may change if I choose to embrace the full consequences of digital immortality, but so what? I also might have a mid-life crises and retire to open a dive shop in Cancun.

Sure, all personality changes, the crystal meth you kills the current you, the difference is that with uploading you die a clear death vs. the subtly dying away as your personality changes from meth, and your personality might come back if you're capable of kicking the addiction.

The magic copy of your personality uploaded also changes, but it's not you to begin with, even it it thinks it is because that's what it's programmed to do.

After all, say you have a magic digital copy of you, that means you can duplicate as often as you want, put one in a dishwasher, one in a ship, one is a k-9, one in a waste disposal unit and one in a humanlike bioshell, do you think any of them are you? do you think all of them are you? or are none of them you?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

...
Even if for some people that personality change is a vast improvement, even if taking away certain stimuli from a ghost would make them saner than the human the were magically copied from, their personality is still changed and they are different from the person who died and whose memories were copied into their code.

I'm still me. Heck, I consider me on drugs more me than without. I have more control of my emotions and actions. My healthy self is not really a different person than my constant emotional pain self.
If you go that far with your idea, then angry you is a different person than happy you. That goes so far as to become a useless definition of self, in my opinion.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

You don't do anything, you died, a copy of your memory is run in a simulation is all.

You died and a construct built to look like you uses your memories as a base to form its personality.

If a simulation is so complex that the construct can't tell the difference between me and it, if I'm not around anymore I don't have any problem with it claiming to be me, and from it's perspective, it will be.

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Sure, all personality changes, the crystal meth you kills the current you, the difference is that with uploading you die a clear death vs. the subtly dying away as your personality changes from meth, and your personality might come back if you're capable of kicking the addiction.

What I'm saying is that if life can already effect these changes gradually, or I can momentarily "not be me" by getting drunk, then who cares if I am me? If personal identity is that fluid, why should I cling to it?

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

After all, say you have a magic digital copy of you, that means you can duplicate as often as you want, put one in a dishwasher, one in a ship, one is a k-9, one in a waste disposal unit and one in a humanlike bioshell, do you think any of them are you? do you think all of them are you? or are none of them you?

I think they're all me. They'll differentiate into me's that are different from one another via the accumulation of life experiences as soon as we progress past the point where I make the copies, but it's no greater a difference than being able to follow both paths of a future where I choose to become an engineer or a beach bum. We'll still be closer than most siblings for a long time.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I think they're all me. They'll differentiate into me's that are different from one another via the accumulation of life experiences as soon as we progress past the point where I make the copies, but it's no greater a difference than being able to follow both paths of a future where I choose to become an engineer or a beach bum. We'll still be closer than most siblings for a long time.

And that's all well and good if that's what you're into, but you dying and then becoming a dishwasher, a ship, a k-9, a waste disposal unit and a humanlike bioshell all claiming to be you is why Transhuman Space is an inherently "silly" high magic genre.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

If a simulation is so complex that the construct can't tell the difference between me and it, if I'm not around anymore I don't have any problem with it claiming to be me, and from it's perspective, it will be.

"if I´m not around anymore". How can the nature of the ghost be different depending on whether the uploading was destructive or not ? If you believe in an immaterial and transferable soul, yes, but otherwise ?

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

And that's all well and good if that's what you're into, but you dying and then becoming a dishwasher, a ship, a k-9, a waste disposal unit and a humanlike bioshell all claiming to be you is why Transhuman Space is an inherently "silly" high magic genre.

I don't follow. More importantly, I'm not sure whether it's relevant to this thread, the one on ghosts, mind copies, and identity, as opposed to the thread about whether TS is a silly setting, much less high magic.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Not really, since it is not known what happens to it under what circumstances. Are xoxes parallel reincarnations or duplicate souls? Etc.

Faith can answer that it in many ways. Maybe xoxes are soullless beings. Or maybe a merciful and good god wouldn´t like that and gives them new souls, just as he possibly does with self-aware AIs.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

"if I´m not around anymore". How can the nature of the ghost be different depending on whether the uploading was destructive or not ? If you believe in an immaterial and transferable soul, yes, but otherwise ?

I would be upset if it tried to use my bank accounts without my permission while I was alive. Once I'm dead, it might as well be me, because I'm beyond caring and it's probably the closest thing to me around anymore.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I don't follow. More importantly, I'm not sure whether it's relevant to this thread, the one on ghosts, mind copies, and identity, as opposed to the thread about whether TS is a silly setting, much less high magic.

Heh, I thought I was posting in a thread called Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?, that's the title of this response chain even, so if someone wants to toss all my comments onto that thread instead, no skin off my nose.