Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Is it sunny out?, rainy?, did the barometer drop?, sleep well?, wake up funny?, feeling the burn from yesterday's workout?, feeling slothful from that overindulgent dessert?, etc., any personality which doesn't reflect changes in stimuli and the environment is greatly less than human.

Why are you assuming that Ghosts don't reflect changes in stimuli and environment?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Molokh

I know that changes are significant. But I'm pointing out that some changes are more significant than the changes resulting from the transfer to a digital medium. And yet people talk about Ghosts being heirs, but do not consider people to be their own heirs after things like cyclic changes, getting drunk, getting less sleep etc.

Ze'manel is making some strange point of dubious relevance that has nothing to do with my reasons for taking that view. I'm perfectly prepared to stipulate the adequacy of the emulation. See the other thread at the top of the list.

Bill Stoddard

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Why are you assuming that Ghosts don't reflect changes in stimuli and environment?

Which environment would they be reflecting?
A server room with a machine capable of running the code?
The circuits that magic code happens to be running on?
The current magical construct they're riding?

The last real stimuli would come from their body before they died, after that you only get what you choose to get, no flashlights, fluorescents or sunlight in the eyes...


I recently tried reading another really bad book in a TS like setting and couldn't get past the silliness, if you want to read a book even more atrociously craptastic than Schismatrix, try "Eve - The Empyrean Age", it's right up the TS alley.
Not that Gonzalez is a fraction the author which Sterling is, but "Schismatrix" seems like one of the primary inspirations for the TS silliness.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think it's misleading to say that there is no observed change for the ghost. The relevant viewpoint is that of the person contemplating being unloaded. And what that person will experience is a final loss of consciousness, not followed by any waking.

How do you figure? He falls asleep in his organic body, he wakes up in his new shell (whatever it is). He may or may not remember the death of his body and the circumstances that caused it, but so far as the ghost can tell, he's still alive, given a definition of "life" broad enough to include ghost emulation. Cogito ergo sum, you know.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Xplo

How do you figure? He falls asleep in his organic body, he wakes up in his new shell (whatever it is). He may or may not remember the death of his body and the circumstances that caused it, but so far as the ghost can tell, he's still alive, given a definition of "life" broad enough to include ghost emulation. Cogito ergo sum, you know.

"He" does not wake up. Not ever.

The idea that two entities with the same information content are somehow the same entity is sheer mysticism.

If the ghost is rational, he will not think of the situation as his still being alive, but as his having come into being with someone else's memories, the someone else in question being dead by suicide. (Or perhaps murder or misfortune.) Of course, if uploading is voluntary, there will be a very strong correlation between choosing to upload and having irrational beliefs about uploading.

Indeed, the very fact that memories are transferable between different infomorphs is going to make it impossible for an infomorph to define its identity in terms of its memories. It could be given someone else's memories; it could be given a low-resolution version of someone else's memories and be unable to tell that they were low-resolution; it could have its memories untraceably edited; it could have complete synthetic memories implanted in it; it could even exchange memories with another infomorph. When memory is that labile a different criterion of identity is needed.

Which takes us back to the subject of horror treatments of THS that led into this exercise in metaphysics. . . .

Bill Stoddard

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

...
Which takes us back to the subject of horror treatments of THS that led into this exercise in metaphysics. . . .

Bill Stoddard

I recently had a dream that all I know about reality and myself was a delusion of false perception. Even after finding out the truth, I still clung to the moral conclusions and ethics I learned from the delusion.
That certainly leaves room for some creepy people.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Which environment would they be reflecting?

The virtual world they're tooling around in, the real world they're tooling around in via cyber- or bio-shell, etc.

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

The last real stimuli would come from their body before they died, after that you only get what you choose to get, no flashlights, fluorescents or sunlight in the eyes...

How do you distinguish between "real stimuli" and non-"real"? If it's getting fed into my optic nerve or the software equivalent, sufficently complex simulation is going to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Also, note that SAIs have to be trained up to full sapience in THS. They can be copied afterwards, but it seems thought processes still aren't understood well enough that you can cobble an intelligence together from scratch. I would think that this implies that it's entirely possible that a digital intelligence wouldn't have complete control over every aspect of their sensory input.

Besides, turn your argument around. Are you saying that if I have a VII and use it to edit out certain undesirable sensory inputs I'm no longer human?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

...
Besides, turn your argument around. Are you saying that if I have a VII and use it to edit out certain undesirable sensory inputs I'm no longer human?

What about drugs? They certainly alter sensory input from the inside as well as the outside. Am I less than human, just because I use enough anxiety reducing paxil to kill a horse?

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

The virtual world they're tooling around in, the real world they're tooling around in via cyber- or bio-shell, etc.

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

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

How do you distinguish between "real stimuli" and non-"real"? If it's getting fed into my optic nerve or the software equivalent, sufficently complex simulation is going to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

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

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Besides, turn your argument around. Are you saying that if I have a VII and use it to edit out certain undesirable sensory inputs I'm no longer human?

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.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What about drugs? They certainly alter sensory input from the inside as well as the outside. Am I less than human, just because I use enough anxiety reducing paxil to kill a horse?

You're a different person on the drugs than otherwise.
So the persona you'd be normally is gone, replaced by one whose creation is owed to the drugs' stimuli.

Personality changes in this case mean someone on drugs is not who they were without drugs because the drugs turn you sane/insane/different from who you were otherwise

Which is why some people choose to not take anti-psychotics, since they prefer being less functional, or even being locked up, to committing personality suicide.


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.