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Okay, here’s a thought experiment…
Imagine a machine that’s both universal constructor and destructor. An enormous portal that deconstructs anything that touches it, but in the process scans and builds a digital copy of. It simulates what it deconstructs/scans in realtime and the simulation can interact with the copy in the real world as if the two were joined pieces of the same physical object. For example, if you were to stick your hand into it, blood would flow from your arteries into the computer simulation, flow through the capelaries in your virtual hand, then the blood would be reconstructed and flow back into your real veins.
Now, imagine that you stuck your head into this machine…
Would you die? In a physical form you would cease to exist, your matter devoured and disassembled by the universal constructor/destructor machine. But at the same time a complete computer simulation of your brain lives on inside the computer. And as soon as you pull your head “out” of the simulation and it’s reconstructed, you’re the same as you ever were. What if you stick half of your head, with the machine only gobbling up half your brain. Would you only half die? Imagine sticking half of your body into the machine that your left side existed in the digital world and your right side in the real one.
I find many people fear the concept of “downloading” your consciousness into a computer. They feel that the downloaded version would merely be a copy and that it is impossible to “transfer” your consciousness in such a way that you, as the emergent effect of the biochemical operation of your brain, could never be liberated from your body. But if you could transfer your consciousness into a computer in a continuous fashion such as the one I’m describing, to the point where you exist in both physical and digital form and gradually eliminate the physical form and allow the digital form to take on more of the processing of you, I believe you, experientally, would be transferred right along with it.
Would I be afraid to walk through such a portal? Certainly. Would I do it? If I felt it were safe enough, then yes.
Shamelessly syndicated from my blog:
singularitynow.net/2006/02/...orway-to- a-digital-world-2/
Imagine a machine that’s both universal constructor and destructor. An enormous portal that deconstructs anything that touches it, but in the process scans and builds a digital copy of. It simulates what it deconstructs/scans in realtime and the simulation can interact with the copy in the real world as if the two were joined pieces of the same physical object. For example, if you were to stick your hand into it, blood would flow from your arteries into the computer simulation, flow through the capelaries in your virtual hand, then the blood would be reconstructed and flow back into your real veins.
Now, imagine that you stuck your head into this machine…
Would you die? In a physical form you would cease to exist, your matter devoured and disassembled by the universal constructor/destructor machine. But at the same time a complete computer simulation of your brain lives on inside the computer. And as soon as you pull your head “out” of the simulation and it’s reconstructed, you’re the same as you ever were. What if you stick half of your head, with the machine only gobbling up half your brain. Would you only half die? Imagine sticking half of your body into the machine that your left side existed in the digital world and your right side in the real one.
I find many people fear the concept of “downloading” your consciousness into a computer. They feel that the downloaded version would merely be a copy and that it is impossible to “transfer” your consciousness in such a way that you, as the emergent effect of the biochemical operation of your brain, could never be liberated from your body. But if you could transfer your consciousness into a computer in a continuous fashion such as the one I’m describing, to the point where you exist in both physical and digital form and gradually eliminate the physical form and allow the digital form to take on more of the processing of you, I believe you, experientally, would be transferred right along with it.
Would I be afraid to walk through such a portal? Certainly. Would I do it? If I felt it were safe enough, then yes.
Shamelessly syndicated from my blog:
singularitynow.net/2006/02/...orway-to- a-digital-world-2/
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