The above will look like crap due to variable-width fonts, but you get the idea.
The evolution of me has its own rules, which do not violate physics but may be said to transcend them, sort of.
Instead of a person, imagine its a computer we are talking about. All that circuitry is obeying the laws of physics, no doubt, but the evolution of the state of the processor from one cycle to the next is not well-described by physics, but by the abstract formalism the computer was designed to implement. You can talk about a computer in terms of physics, theoretically, but it doesn’t get you very far.
What is even more confusing is that the computation is the same whether the computer is made out of silicon or tinkertoys. So it doesn’t appear to have much to do with physics, does it? Considering that transhumanists seem to think they can upload their selves onto a different physical substrate, they must not consider themselves to be made up of physics, but Something Else.
Thou are not physics, although though art made from physics. There’s a difference.
The real diagram is something like:
me_now ---> me_future ^ ^ | | physics_now =-> physics_future
The above will look like crap due to variable-width fonts, but you get the idea.
The evolution of me has its own rules, which do not violate physics but may be said to transcend them, sort of.
Instead of a person, imagine its a computer we are talking about. All that circuitry is obeying the laws of physics, no doubt, but the evolution of the state of the processor from one cycle to the next is not well-described by physics, but by the abstract formalism the computer was designed to implement. You can talk about a computer in terms of physics, theoretically, but it doesn’t get you very far.
What is even more confusing is that the computation is the same whether the computer is made out of silicon or tinkertoys. So it doesn’t appear to have much to do with physics, does it? Considering that transhumanists seem to think they can upload their selves onto a different physical substrate, they must not consider themselves to be made up of physics, but Something Else.