World of Tomorrow

[detrius]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

This movie has interesting, philosophical implications. First of all traveling back in time is physically impossible, so the whole setup of older self meeting younger one is wrong. But let's just got for it. So the people in that 200+x year away future are able to upload their memories and whole persona, and then put into a perfect clone of themselves. So by always transferring their memories into new bodies or digital cubes they are kind of immortal.

I mean the first problem is: how to pull the persona out of a biological brain? That's for us totally unresolved, and many scientists do believe that this is and will be impossible to do so. This video implies that this is a solved problem in that future. This leads then to the next quesion: if this is possible someday, what do we end up with exactly? Most likely what we are going to have then is a digital copy of that persona, but not a transfer of the original consciousness. So what we got is a certain backup of the original persona at a certain time. If the original person dies, all memories from the backup time until death are lost.

This also means when the original donor persona dies, it is dead. The implication is that this form of longevity is no biological immortality, but some form of relative immortality, because what lives on are copies of the original persona, which make their own experiences and then are copied again. So we've got many throwaway host bodies, like a computer running the persona for a time, then persona gets copied and installed to the next host body. Another question is obviously how accurate these persona copies would be; would the be copying the whole persona, or will they have to cut corners somewhere? It could be the case that the first persona copy had to cut some really big edges, with getting technology getting better over time.

This is the same discussion as with transporters in Star Trek by the way, and how they are supposed to work, namely by converting matter into energy, moving this then to the target destination and converting there again the energy into matter. This means that the original physical body right at the beginning gets destroyed, and put together later. So while the reconstructed body is made out of the original molecules, the philosophical aspect is if the consciousness in the transported body is still the same as before, or a new one. TNG says no, many people do argue otherwise. In the end we will never know until we've found a way to build such a device on our own, which is highly unlikely.

Another interesting technical implication is putting personas into digital cubes. For that you need to have a technology around which is capable of whole brain emulation (WBE), which is a thing from which again science today is far away from. There are experiments around, where computers were and are being used for brain emulation. But the size of that simulated brains is either just that of very simple animals, like the roundworm or fruit fly. The emulation of higher brains, like rats, is today still technical impossible because we don't have the technology around to do so. So only parts of a rats brain where emulated so far. Also another problem is the accuracy of emulation; for that we really need to know exactly how a biological brain is working, which some people doubt we already figured out.

A simpler way to circumvent that is if you got the technology around to copy personas, to just put a cloned biological brain into that digital cube, install the persona into it and put it into a nutrient liquid solution which keeps the biological brain alive, so in essence creating a simple cyborg.

So at the end of the day in that animation above we have not the still living adult version of that young Emelie talking to herself, but a 3+x generation probably somewhat accurate persona copy instead.

 

[Soen Eber]

A simpler way to circumvent that is if you got the technology around to copy personas, to just put a cloned biological brain into that digital cube, install the persona into it and put it into a nutrient liquid solution which keeps the biological brain alive, so in essence creating a simple cyborg.

This is the premise of the Ghost in the Shell franchise, which does a pretty deep dive into the workings of the physical, emotional and philosophical consequences.

ETA: ...which, of course, Detrius ... already ... knows.

Because of his avatar

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Well actually both Ghost in the Shell and Cyberpunk franchises are addressing these topics, yes. And there are no easy answers to these questions.

 

[Soen Eber]

Well actually both Ghost in the Shell and Cyberpunk franchises are addressing these topics, yes. And there are no easy answers to these questions.

I can barely wrap my head around 2001:A Space Oddysey (finally! After a lot of study!). The singularity and mind and ghosts and artificial intelligence and all is just too much for me to even START plodding through. Maybe next life.

 

[Noodles]

Well actually both Ghost in the Shell and Cyberpunk franchises are addressing these topics, yes. And there are no easy answers to these questions.

Isn't this also the plot of Serial Experiments Lain?

I remeber thinking that show was pretty cool, but its been a while since I have watched it.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I can barely wrap my head around 2001:A Space Oddysey (finally! After a lot of study!). The singularity and mind and ghosts and artificial intelligence and all is just too much for me to even START plodding through. Maybe next life.

Try FLCL.

 

[Noodles]

This movie has interesting, philosophical implications. First of all traveling back in time is physically impossible, so the whole setup of older self meeting younger one is wrong.

What if we figure out how to fold space and you travel faster than light to a point where your past hasn't existed yet because it hasn't reached that point in space yet?

 

[Free]

What if we figure out how to fold space and you travel faster than light to a point where your past hasn't existed yet because it hasn't reached that point in space yet?

If this was the 1980s, I'd make a joke about the exorbitant cost of the long distance call to yourself.

 

[Khamon]

Yeah but this was the 1980s. It really was. SRSLY

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Try FLCL.

I didn't know you were a weeaboo, Kami. I thought that was just me and everyone else.

 

[Khamon]

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

That sounds like Jean Shepherd of "A Christmas Story" fame.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I didn't know you were a weeaboo, Kami. I thought that was just me and everyone else.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I didn't know you were a weeaboo, Kami. I thought that was just me and everyone else.

I figure I'm the only non Weeaboo then. ....I have almost no knowledge of anime, lol.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

If this bothers you, pick up Axiomatic or The Best of Greg Egan and read "Learning to be Me".

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I can barely wrap my head around 2001:A Space Oddysey (finally! After a lot of study!). The singularity and mind and ghosts and artificial intelligence and all is just too much for me to even START plodding through. Maybe next life.

Well... 2001 is mostly about mankind's dependance on having tools for evolution, until there is no need for tools any longer. Why are there in the beginning these apes, then the monolith appears and suddenly one has the idea to use a bone as tool? Because that's the start of mankind's usage of tools, that's why.

And fast forward: HAL-9000 in the end is the ultimate tool. Almost human, but not really, still a tool - and malfunctions in the end, because he has an ego and contradicting orders. And we witness the birth of that star baby, a natural being which does not need tools any longer.