Sociopath Community

Tryptamine said: 

AliceInWonderland said: 

What's our definition of death? 

To me, the cease of the brain causing consciousness. I'm aware the topic gets a bit nuanced. I don't buy into the uploaded into a network concept, to me that is replication, not transfer. If someone slowly substitutes all parts of the brain for mechanical replacements, everything may seem seamless. We can even say that our brains are in such flux that we could call ourselves different beings over days or years.

I don't subscribe to any of that because I consider myself to be a relatively stable set of neurons, but there's a lot to unpack there.

Yes, this is where consciousness and existing enter the twilight zone. I'm only asking because transhumanism and the like have been brought up. 

So by your definition if the the stable bundle of neurons cease to fire this constitutes death.

I've been thinking that if your bundle of neurons is mapped and stored this is just a replication but it becomes more complicated if it is then placed in a physical copy of your body or in a simulation.

In the physical case it seems that it'd become a different person that's base neurology at say t_1 is a replication of yours. But after t_1 the events you and the copy experience are different and as such the external stimuli that cause transformations will lead to different mappings. 

In the simulation case the same would occur unless your actual experiences were used as input. Keep in mind this is not exactly the same as merely replicating your neurology by snapping a photo at some rate, the simulation is developing the same neurology as you by starting with its base mapping and then undergoing the same stimuli. What if it reacted to all the same stimuli exactly the same? 

AliceInWonderland said: 

What's our definition of death? 

As we get more advanced we can push the standard definition of death I think. So if we just look at the fundamentals, we'd see the one thing which we cannot yet replace or even replicate, which is our consciousness. So when that ends, we are truly dead. 

Tryptamine said: 

AliceInWonderland said: 

What's our definition of death? 

To me, the cease of the brain causing consciousness. I'm aware the topic gets a bit nuanced. I don't buy into the uploaded into a network concept, to me that is replication, not transfer. If someone slowly substitutes all parts of the brain for mechanical replacements, everything may seem seamless. We can even say that our brains are in such flux that we could call ourselves different beings over days or years.

I don't subscribe to any of that because I consider myself to be a relatively stable set of neurons, but there's a lot to unpack there.

Slowly replacing parts of the brain seems like a good option. This brings me to the question though, is consciousness static? Or does it evolve alongside us? And how much of it can we retain before we stop being ourselves? 

AliceInWonderland said: 

What's our definition of death? 

Death itself is pretty straight forward, yes? The only confusion tends to be over what comes after that. I see more questions in what it means to be alive. 

If you ask me anyway, you are alive as long as you are still 'yourself'. In one hand you could argue that means 'you' die every time you learn something new while another 'you' is born, but it's really meant to portray against concepts like Amnesia, Alzheimers, Lobotomies, or the like. 

Life in terms of "the spirit" for lack of a better phrase is effectively the impression we leave on reality through our physical forms. Our body is not us, but our mind is. As such, downloading a person into a hard drive like Neuromancer could be considered a form of living, but if new memories can't be created like the movie Memento... then the notion of "being alive" becomes more of a question.