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InvisibledeCypher
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The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists?
    #14386221 - 05/02/11 12:07 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

I recently read the book Physics of Immortality by the physicist Frank J. Tipler, and was surprised to find a well-supported and very intriguing argument for the resurrection of all sentient beings that is based on reductionist materialism and absolutely no flim-flam of the spiritual sort.  The argument goes something along the lines of this:

Assume that technological evolution develops to the point where we're capable of creating an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can increase its own intelligence.  At this point we've started a feedback loop that exponentially improves its own knowledge and wisdom: for all intents and purposes, a God.  This, IMO, seems likely to happen in the next few hundred years provided that we don't blow ourselves up first.

Assume that this God (which is practically omniscient and omnipotent... given that it does not literally possess infinite power and knowledge but these are increasing at a rate so fast that given enough time they will diverge to an asymptote) is practically omnibenevolent.  This premise is a bit more problematic than the first but the concept is already being worked on by such people as Eliezer Yudkowsky in the form of "Friendly AI."  Either we would have to hardcode in basic morality and hope that the AI has no incentive to change or remove it, or we would have to hope that being moral is ultimately the smartest thing to do according to the AI's logic.

Assume that such omnibenevolence would necessitate the resurrection of every sentient being that desires to live eternally.  I can envision such a process occurring in the following manner: design a virtual environment wherein the growth to maturity of every possible DNA that represents a sentient being is simulated.  This also assumes that the perfect functional simulation of a human being down to the quark level would have an identical consciousness to the actual human being (which would be true according to our premise of reductionist materialism; i.e. there is no soul or mystical substance apart from the atoms that make up our body that is necessary for consciousness), and that the recreation of the human being at some point far in the future by the AI would have a consciousness continuous with the original human being's death.

In short, from our perspective we would live ordinarily and die, but instantaneously afterwards we would wake up within the virtual environment designed by the AI: Heaven, in other words.  If you have qualms about the ability of simulated humans to be conscious then simply postulate that the AI would create a whole new real body with your DNA and subject the body to identical experiences--but this seems more difficult to do than in a virtual environment.  Either way, just imagine the relief from death anxiety that such a resurrection would bring.

Thoughts?


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OfflineNetDiver
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher]
    #14386300 - 05/02/11 12:32 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

I definitely don't think materialism precludes some kind of continuation of consciousness. To be made of the same stuff as the Earth and the stars (and everything else) is to be one with the Universe. Where did the Universe come from, and where is it going? When you ask these questions about the cosmos, you're asking them about yourself.

I'm not really big on the whole omnipotent AI thing, because if there's one thing I've learned from skepticism, basically anything could be true.. It's equally likely, for instance, that the AI could be crazy, and would destroy the Universe, or might sentence everybody to a virtual "hell" just for fun. So in my view, in examining the possibilities of consciousness beyond the death of one individual, we have to look at what we know.

To begin with, for such things as "consciousness," "unconsciousness," "existence," or "non-existence," to be defined requires a perception. Without the brain, there is no life, but there is also no death. "Life" and "death" are just words/abstractions; without something to define them in relation to its own state, they are nothing; there cease to be such things as "life" and "death" when the perception defining them ceases to exist.

In short, there's no such thing as "nothing." To imagine death as some sort of infinite black void is equally as ridiculous as imagining an afterlife... you're still imagining yourself in a situation; you're just replacing the word "heaven" with the word "void."

That said, I don't think of the continuation of consciousness that I'm thinking of is anything like an afterlife. Closer to reincarnation if anything, but that term is misleading, because it implies there's a "you" to be reincarnated. In my view, it's more like there's another body drawing from the same collective memory (instincts, written history, etc.) that created the context in which "you" lived previously.

For instance, the person you are now is strongly influenced by many things that happened before you were born. This language you're using, for example- you didn't invent it. And all the instincts for sex and mind alteration- probably a big part of who you are; they were inherited entirely from other bodies. None of this stuff is somehow unique to you; it didn't start when you were born and it won't end when you die. Your identity (and perception) is like a river- always changing, never the same, yet identifiable from time to time.

Here's a great philosophical article about "life after death" from a naturalistic viewpoint: http://www.naturalism.org/death.htm


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Edited by NetDiver (05/02/11 12:43 AM)

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OfflinejivJaN
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher]
    #14386820 - 05/02/11 03:41 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

i dont know what to think man.
it would be cool..
but it might not be.

i don't know if i would like to accept the fact that everything i ever did or do is part of a simulation.
i don't think i would like the idea of not having an influence.
I wan't at least some control god dammit ! :hissyfit:


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All my posts in this forum are strictly fictional.
They are derived from an acute mental illness , from which i am forced to lie compulsively.
I have never induced any kind of mind altering substance in my life  and i have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything illegal.
If I have ever suggested such a thing it would have most likely been , due to my personality disorder and i probably do not remember it at all..

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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: jivJaN]
    #14387357 - 05/02/11 08:20 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

It sounds as romantic as the middle ages model of the universe with earth in the center and all plausible celestial formations stacked above it in some kind of mythical tower arrangement.

A few hundred years later, this is the same view skewed through a computer - AI arrangement.

I find it funny how when an idea has a few words like DNA and AI thrown in people are inclined to give it plausibility. Used to be the use of the word "God" did the same.

different times, different fashions, same need to gain control over reality.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: redgreenvines]
    #14387373 - 05/02/11 08:24 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Like when 'turbo' was tacked onto everything, even stuff without spinning parts. Now it is 'quantum'. Fully 10% of New Age books, whose authors are totally unschooled in physics, try to add credence to nonsense buy using the 'Q' word.


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OfflineNetDiver
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #14387620 - 05/02/11 09:46 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quantum mechanics is used to support a lot of stuff that it shouldn't be used to support, yeah.

But it also really is pretty damn weird/amazing.

Quantum immortality, for instance, is a theory developed by quantum physicists (not new-agers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality


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InvisibleSlashOZ
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: NetDiver] * 1
    #14387669 - 05/02/11 10:04 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

I'm not sure if this new consciousness in the computer realm would be me. Wouldn't I have to, before death, meld my mind into the computer so in essence I was already within this AI before my body actually dies? Otherwise it would just be a computer program exactly like me but not me at all.


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"Life sucks but in this really beautiful way" - Axl Rose
"Life's a bitch and then you die that's why we get high cuz you never know when you're gonna go." - NAS
"When people don't know what you're about they put you down and shut you out" - Black Sabbath
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" - Gandhi
"Look up at me I am God, look down on me and I am evil, look at me I am you." - Charles Manson.
"Don't question my reality." - Me (as far as I know)

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InvisibleCognitive_Shift
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher]
    #14389731 - 05/02/11 04:37 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

I'm confused on the "continuation of consciousness" part.  Why would this happen?  Would we have memory of our "past life?"


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L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs

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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
    #14389776 - 05/02/11 04:43 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

a couple years back it was string cheese
very popular fundamental food product.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: NetDiver]
    #14389856 - 05/02/11 05:00 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Quantum immortality, for instance, is a theory developed by quantum physicists (not new-agers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality




A theory or mental masturbation? If it is a theory, then how would one possibly falsify it without dying?


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher] * 2
    #14390214 - 05/02/11 06:01 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

design a virtual environment wherein the growth to maturity of every possible DNA that represents a sentient being is simulated.  This also assumes that the perfect functional simulation of a human being down to the quark level would have an identical consciousness to the actual human being

I see two potential big problems with this.

1. The Uncertainty Principle precludes creating such a machine.

2. It may be that consciousness is a consequence of unreplicable aspects of quantum mechanics a la quantum cryptography where the act of simply reading a message (knowing its content without actually touching it) irrevocably changes its content. You couldn't simulate the natural time-progression of such a consciousness because the act of simulating it renders it's time-progression different from what you were trying to simulate in the first place.

I have a feeling (it's all conjecture, of course) that if an artificial conscious is possible to create, it will not be possible to set its starting parameters (set up the domino cascade so to speak) precisely (read: recreate an existing consciousness). I think it will have to be an unpredictable emergence from some starting conditions the same way a baby is a mass of chemistry and a couple years later is somehow a sentient little devil on two legs.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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InvisibleDieCommie

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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher]
    #14390243 - 05/02/11 06:06 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

At this point we've started a feedback loop that exponentially improves its own knowledge and wisdom: for all intents and purposes, a God. 




That is not well supported, and is in fact shown to not be possible given our current knowledge.  Its flim-flam.



Quote:

Thoughts?



With such an unrealistic premise, none of the conclusions are relevant or interesting.  :grin:

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InvisibleDieCommie

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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: Diploid]
    #14390263 - 05/02/11 06:10 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
design a virtual environment wherein the growth to maturity of every possible DNA that represents a sentient being is simulated.  This also assumes that the perfect functional simulation of a human being down to the quark level would have an identical consciousness to the actual human being

I see two potential big problems with this.

1. The Uncertainty Principle precludes creating such a machine.

...





How so?  I get the impression are you appealing to hidden variables here...  You can completely know a particle's quantum state, it just happens that simultaneous position and momentum are not part of that state.  Thus, they are not needed to clone a particle's state, only a complete set of commuting observables (which x and p are not a part of).

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: DieCommie]
    #14390283 - 05/02/11 06:13 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Presumably, the hypothetical machine we're discussing's functioning is a product of not only the quantum state of it's constituent particles, but also their position and momentum.

I don't buy into hidden variables and the documented violations of Bell's Inequality have all but shut the door on them besides.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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InvisibleDieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: Diploid]
    #14390348 - 05/02/11 06:23 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Particles dont have position and momentum.  :grin:  The quantum state completely describes them (within quantum theory of course, and for everything per the 'reductionism' of the title).  The information to clone a person would require the complete set of commuting observables with phase and no more because that is all there is to know.

Edited by DieCommie (05/02/11 06:28 PM)

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: DieCommie]
    #14390460 - 05/02/11 06:39 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Particles dont have position and momentum.

I'm not following you. One can know the state vector of a particle in the position basis. One can also know the state vector of a particle in the momentum basis. Probabilistically, yes, but that's what I mean.

The quantum state completely describes them

But you can't accurately measure the quantum state of each of the human brain's particles in order to copy them into the simulation given that measuring the same quantum state twice often gives you different results.

That's the problem I see in setting up the artificial consciousness to accurately reflect an existing (or deceased) one.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: Diploid]
    #14390531 - 05/02/11 06:52 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

But you can't accurately measure the quantum state of each of the human brain's particles in order to copy them into the simulation given that measuring the same quantum state twice often gives you different results.





Sort of like asking a politician the same question twice:

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."
- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01"


"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02


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OfflineNetDiver
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #14390999 - 05/02/11 08:22 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

OrgoneConclusion said:
A theory or mental masturbation? If it is a theory, then how would one possibly falsify it without dying?



The very nature of the theory is that it would only be observable from the point of view of the person in the experiment. That said, it's a thought experiment and the predicted outcome does not violate any known laws of physics.

Call it a "mental masturbation" if you want, but I think it's pretty interesting.


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InvisibledeCypher
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: NetDiver]
    #14392010 - 05/02/11 11:02 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

SlashOZ said:
I'm not sure if this new consciousness in the computer realm would be me. Wouldn't I have to, before death, meld my mind into the computer so in essence I was already within this AI before my body actually dies? Otherwise it would just be a computer program exactly like me but not me at all.




This seems to be the weakest premise IMO.  But think of it this way: our self changes constantly already.  From one second to the next, our brain is composed of different atoms, different cells, different synaptic configurations, different memories, and over longer periods of time even a different personality in that the way you react to events changes.  From one second to the next, our brain is in a different position due to the motion of our body and the rotation of the Earth/solar system/galaxy.  And yet through all these changes we still have a continuity of consciousness: the "I" is preserved.  Us it really so much of a leap to say that continuity of consciousness is preserved if we construct an identical copy of ourselves at the moment of our death at some distant point in the future?

Quote:

Cognitive_Shift said:
I'm confused on the "continuation of consciousness" part.  Why would this happen?  Would we have memory of our "past life?"




This relates somewhat to my thread on teleportation I made a month or so ago.  If motion at infinite speed from point A to point B is equivalent to destroying our body at point A and instantaneously recreating it at point B, then it seems plausible that we would have conscious experience up until point A and then seamlessly start experiencing at point B.  If this is true then it should make no difference whether we wait for a certain period of time before reconstituting our body at point B, and if that's the case then we should be able to wait until the AI can reconstitute our body at some distant point in the future and still have continuity of consciousness.  With regards to memory of our "past life", we would have all the memories of our body at the moment of our death: from our perspective it would be as if one moment we're lying in the hospital bed about to die and the next we're far in the future.

Quote:

Diploid said:
design a virtual environment wherein the growth to maturity of every possible DNA that represents a sentient being is simulated.  This also assumes that the perfect functional simulation of a human being down to the quark level would have an identical consciousness to the actual human being

I see two potential big problems with this.

1. The Uncertainty Principle precludes creating such a machine.




It might be impossible to create a perfect copy of a human body at the atom level, but what about creating a perfect copy at the neuronal level?  That way we don't run into problems of quantum uncertainty.

Quote:

Diploid said:
2. It may be that consciousness is a consequence of unreplicable aspects of quantum mechanics a la quantum cryptography where the act of simply reading a message (knowing its content without actually touching it) irrevocably changes its content. You couldn't simulate the natural time-progression of such a consciousness because the act of simulating it renders it's time-progression different from what you were trying to simulate in the first place.




Hmm... how plausible do you think this is?  This strikes me as reminiscent of Roger Penrose's idea that consciousness can never be simulated or produced in an artificial intelligence because of some special quantum mechanical properties of neurons; IMO this is a completely unsupported attempt to make human consciousness somehow special and artificial intelligence impossible.

Quote:

DieCommie said:
Quote:

At this point we've started a feedback loop that exponentially improves its own knowledge and wisdom: for all intents and purposes, a God. 




That is not well supported, and is in fact shown to not be possible given our current knowledge.  Its flim-flam.




Uh, how is this theoretically impossible?  It's not doable with our current level of technological sophistication but there are people who are currently and actively working on this very goal: see the Singularity Institute.

Quote:

Samurai Drifter said:
Quantum mechanics is used to support a lot of stuff that it shouldn't be used to support, yeah.

But it also really is pretty damn weird/amazing.

Quantum immortality, for instance, is a theory developed by quantum physicists (not new-agers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality




It's a badass theory indeed but since it's unverifiable without actually trying to commit suicide, there's not much one can do with it.  :lol:


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Offlineandrewss
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Re: The Afterlife... a possibility for reductionistic materialists? [Re: deCypher]
    #14392272 - 05/02/11 11:51 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

doesnt it just all come down to the "self"  :wtfsonic:


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