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cryonics links.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Sat, 23 Apr 2016 18:01:05 -0700
parents ba80a6a67b55
children 7a6b855cfb99
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45 ** A simple merge procedure for uploads
46 Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for
47 a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program
48 running on a suitable robotic body. Let's say that the program is
49 based off a detailed emulation of your brain -- no one really
50 understands exactly /how/ the program is doing its computations,
51 only that it faithfully recreates the original biological
52 computations. At this point, you might want to be able to exist in
53 multiple places at once while still maintining a coherent unity of
54 identity, but how do you do it? You /can't/ modifiy your mind to
55 handle multiple bodies at once, because this would require
56 extensive understanding of exactly how your program is doing its
57 computations in order to scale it to multiple bodies. But you can't
58 just copy yourself either, because the copies will eventually
59 diverge leading to a loss of unity of identity. You can't easily
60 merge copies together after they've "diverged" because again, you'd
61 have to come up with a coherent theory of mind to merge the
62 datastructures. One simple way to do merges is this: First, you
63 need to acchitect the robot bodies to record every single bit
64 that's passing through all sensory nerves throughout a small time
65 interval that's insufficient to create significant divergence. For
66 sake of argument I'll assume that you do this each day. This stream
67 of data represents the ultimate "life recording" and can be easily
68 accomplished either in simulation of physical reality by using
69 custom sensory organs, like in [[http://aurellem.org/#CORTEX][=CORTEX=]]. This set of information,
70 if played back to a copy of you in the exact mental state right
71 before the start of recording, would perfectaly match with the
72 choices of the individual and serve as an adequate replacement for
73 the world, even though it contains almost no information compared
74 to the world! Once you can do the "full life records," then the
75 procedure works like this: At the morning of Day 1 you "checkout"
76 the one copy of you from yesterday and make around 10 copies which
77 each live out their day. Each copy records a full "life recording"
78 for the day. Then one copy is chosen as the "trunk" and the rest as
79 branches. The trunk replays the life-recordings of the branches in
80 accelerated time over the night, and the branches are then deleted
81 leaving only one individual that remembers 10 consecutive days
82 spent in different contexts. Then you repeat the process for Day 2
83 and so on. I'll call this the "small delta-T approximation" method
84 for mind-merging. It works as long as the timeframe is not too long
85 an is limited by how fast you can faithfully replay life
86 recordings. You don't have to be "offline" for any amount of time
87 while doing this: You can also alternate two sets of 10, one for
88 the day and one for the night, and have the night and day trunks be
89 generated from the last day / night group's trunk,
90 respectively. This trades having to "sleep" for the day/night crews
91 not being able to remember what happened last night/day
92 respectively. The more you know about how brains work, the faster
93 you can integrate previous experience and the more copies you can
94 sustain. This methods means that you never lose any experience, but
95 if you're willing to lose some nonessential experiences, a more
96 extreme version of this might be to make a copy of yourself that
97 accomplishes a task and then reports anything of note in a written
98 report.
42 99
43 ** Earth, Air, Water 100 ** Earth, Air, Water
44 101
45 Probably all intelligent species name their planet "dirt" in their 102 Probably all intelligent species name their planet "dirt" in their
46 language, unless the're aquatic or flying, then they'd name it 103 language, unless the're aquatic or flying, then they'd name it
333 ** Microwave-Time 390 ** Microwave-Time
334 The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's 391 The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's
335 expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10 392 expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10
336 and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 == 393 and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 ==
337 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for 394 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for
338 some purposes! 395 some purposes! Dylan [[http://logical.ai/microwave/org/sawtooth.html][wrote a blog post on this subject!]]
339 396
340 ** Three Eyes 397 ** Three Eyes
341 If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently 398 If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently
342 draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look 399 draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look
343 hopelessly fake? 400 hopelessly fake?