I follow this general theory and mostly agree with it, though I admit it isn’t fully adapted into my thoughts on consciousness generally.
What I don’t see, exactly, is how “good enough” copies could work. (I also don’t see how identical copies could work, but that’s a practical issue, not a conceptual one.) Recreating someone who’s significantly more like me than most seems rather categorically different from freezing and later reactivating my brain, particularly since people who are significantly more like me than most probably already exist to some degree. At what degree does similarity cross some relevance threshold, if ever? Or have I misconstrued the issue?
At what degree does similarity cross some relevance threshold, if ever?
That’s precisely the issue at the heart of the current discussion, as I see it. And it’s on that issue that I’m uncertain. A copy of the cellular structure and activity of my brain is definitely good enough to carry on my conscious experience. Is a best-guess reconstruction of that structure from my written records good enough? I strongly suspect not, but it’s always dicey to say what a superintelligence couldn’t figure out from limited evidence.
I follow this general theory and mostly agree with it, though I admit it isn’t fully adapted into my thoughts on consciousness generally.
What I don’t see, exactly, is how “good enough” copies could work. (I also don’t see how identical copies could work, but that’s a practical issue, not a conceptual one.) Recreating someone who’s significantly more like me than most seems rather categorically different from freezing and later reactivating my brain, particularly since people who are significantly more like me than most probably already exist to some degree. At what degree does similarity cross some relevance threshold, if ever? Or have I misconstrued the issue?
That’s precisely the issue at the heart of the current discussion, as I see it. And it’s on that issue that I’m uncertain. A copy of the cellular structure and activity of my brain is definitely good enough to carry on my conscious experience. Is a best-guess reconstruction of that structure from my written records good enough? I strongly suspect not, but it’s always dicey to say what a superintelligence couldn’t figure out from limited evidence.