On 27 Mar 2014, at 23:33, LizR wrote:
On 27 March 2014 21:26, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 26 Mar 2014, at 23:26, LizR wrote:
On 27 March 2014 10:30, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Unless you allow brains to grow infinitely big, there are only a
finite number of possible brains even in an infinite universe.
With sufficiently advanced technology (e.g. uploading yourself to a
digital brain), the upper limit on your brain size is theoretically
unbounded, except perhaps by cosmological considerations. Prepare
to join the Overmind...
Hmm, I can understand that you put your physicalist hat (because it
is a day with a "T"!), but here you put both the physicalist hat,
and the comp hat.
Should I infer that every day with a "T", you are inconsistent?
Well this assumes physical supervenience I think, but so did
Stathis, I think, so I was responding in kind. One could posit not
"uploading" as such but adding more and more digital implants and so
on that eventually one can throw out the "organic core" when it
dies, and continue to exist in the implants. Whether this is "you"
or not being another question. But anyway, yes, I'm sure you can
assume I'm inconsistent some of the time!
Same for me!
I was just alluding that I have much doubt that the physical
supervenience can make sense when we postulate the digital mechanist
hypothesis.
Note that being immortal by having a growing brain might not be
funny, and once immortal, people will love "forgetting" and
resetting their mind. To much souvenirs might be heavy to support.
When human will be technologically immortal they might regret it and
have a strong nostalgia of death and amnesia.
The eternal sunshine....indeed. If brain size is finite then
resetting, or erasing memories at least, becomes necessary
eventually if one is to have (and remember) new experiences. To
quote some schoolboy, "please sir, can I stop now, my brain is full!"
The real art is in forgetting, and putting the less relevant
information in the trash, and keeping the most relevant one, instead
of the contrary.
The molting of the spiders is also quite intriguing in question of
dying and surviving. It is easy to conceive immortal creature with non
growing brain, and yes, they will come back an infinity of times on
all their experiences, without noticing it of course.
In buddhist term, terrestrial or technological immortality might
only be a manner to prevent the nirvana, and to pursue our staying
in the samsara forever. Then you can develop an infinite karma
making harder and harder to get the nirvana and a pacified soul.
Well that's true, in Buddhist terms... is there any correspondence
between Buddhism and comp?
Plotinus, and most of the neoplatonism, is close to the teaching of
some buddhism, and there are books on that subject.
Then I propose a lexicon between Plotinus and the machine's talk about
herself.
I think all mystics are close to what the universal machine discover
when "looking inward", certainly in some literal or formal sense.
It is, very roughly, the difference between Plato and Aristotle, or
between the mystics and the naturalists, or even between the
mathematicians and the physicists.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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