Sapient software in the afterlife?

(2/2)

After the final time the simulation is executed, the consciousness embedded within is effectively dead. I would assume that this consciousness is now eligible for the afterlife.

What if multiple copies of the simulated consciousness are run? Would each one arrive in the afterlife? Could the consciousnesses be merged into one mind? What if each one was run for such a subjectively long time that and be given to such a wide range of experiences that they are effectively different people? What if some of the simulations came to their relationship with God only after the mind upload? How much difference would be needed for different organizations of consciousness to be considered unique individuals?

Suppose supercomputers in this future could simulate experience at a rate far faster than flesh humans experienced. For example, for each second of computation time, perhaps a year of subjective experience is simulated. It's fair to say that we are not the person we used to be five years ago. Given minutes of computation time, could we create a machine that manufactures and destroys unique individuals?

Let's say we upload the mind of a devout person who will surely go to heaven. Let's say we copied the initial state of the connectome data, let it live in a randomly selected, aperiodicly evolving environment for five subjective years, and then terminate the execution and remove the resultant connectome data. Has heaven gained a new member?

Let's run this new manufacturing program in serial, every five seconds. Would this suggest that heaven receives a new person every five seconds? Let's run this program in parallel, constantly spamming the afterlife with an unlimited set of permutated people. What shall become of this?

Would we be guilty of mass murder?

Have we created God's clone troopers?

>>>/x/

The problem is that the entry requirements and entry procedure for the afterlife are practically undocumented. There's only claims that it exists (which are disputed), plus some very vague descriptions (which are inconsistent). We don't know what part of you goes to the afterlife, nor how this happens.

Assume there is an entity <You> that will go to the afterlife after death. In order to have a copy of <You> enter the afterlife, we must copy <You>, not just the physical shell <You> inhabits. You say that your recorded data, the <State>, experiences consciousness when a program operates on it. However, this may be a false premise; just because it looks and acts like the physical shell of <You> does not mean it actually has a consciousness in the same way as <You> (see the Chinese room thought experiment). The <State> may only appear to have a consciousness, and the consciousness may be what passes on to the afterlife.

Assuming there is a God who created reality, it is unlikely the laws on his Universe would allow the consciousness itself to be copied. The practical result of such a duplication, then, would be that <You> pass on to the afterlife, while in the perception of everyone else, you remain in the world as the <State>. Eventually, the <State> will meet its end, but it doesn't "die" any more than the Furby you owned as a kid.

Personally, I think that 'consciousness' which allows people to experience impulses are separate from the brain's handling of those impulses, and possibly not even present in this reality.

Compare it to a client and server model, where my consciousness is a client connected to the 'reality' server in the same way my computer connects to an MMORPG server. Through this connection, information is supplied to my consciousness/computer, and I am made to believe I am myself/my MMO character. All kinds of things happen in reality/in the game, and all information required to experience these events is synchronized with my consciousness/my PC. However, the server never has direct access to my PC outside of its communication protocol, and in the same way the world cannot tamper with my consciousness outside of providing experiences.

In this model, cloning the consciousness is not possible as the consciousness does not exist in the scope to which the cloning process applies. (The server can clone my character, but it cannot clone my PC - it can't even clone my game installation, as the protocol does not provide this possibility.)

>>8953979
It sounds like there is no physically measurable difference between <You> and <State>, then. To me, that is essentially the same as saying there is no difference.

For both >>8953979 and >>8953990, an essence must separately exist from the physical. Yet given all we know about brain science (and brain injury in particular), there seems to be a 1:1 correlation between conscious output and physical constituency. If all behavior seems to be explained by the physical, then what room is there for some other essence? What does this essence even do?

That is why, despite a belief in non-empirical entities, I still believe that humans and the rest of the empirical world are best described in terms of philosophical physicalism (materialism). ... even if it may be the case that the empirical world is ultimately governed by forces ethereal. But again that is a digression.

The requirements and procedure for the afterlife is certainly a difficulty in this thought experiment. One of the ways I had originally been getting around the problem is by way of the application of morality laws. Different species have different laws of morality to which they are held, and these different laws cannot be applied outside their subject. For example, you cannot hold a cannibalistic fish to the moral commandments of a human, nor can you judge a human for being a bad ape. Perhaps in the same way, sapient software is given different moral imperatives than flesh humans (even if they don't know it at first). It's kind of a lame out, but it made sense to me for a while. But then it didn't, which is why I didn't mention it at first.

>>8954027
For entry procedures and requirements, I meant in a more mundane manner; does an AI go to heaven or is it ineligible because you must have been born as a flesh-and-blood being (or perhaps even only born humans are eligible)? For the procedure, does your data get copied (as you said in OP) into heaven, or is some elements transferred (such as the consciousness)? The <State> may not meet the requirements, or the procedure may not be possible (in this case because <You> was already transferred).

>>8953946
>From the subjective perspective of a volunteer, you'd be in the medical scanning facility one moment and teleported to your simulated destination the next.
No you wouldn't. Simulation or copying is not magic teleportation. The person in the scanning facility would remain in the scanning facility. The uploaded mind would a) not be conscious at all since a simulation only simulates the effects of whatever you are assimilating to observers and not the similar itself or b) would only remember being in the scanning facility. Mind uploading simply does not work.

>>8954036
Ah, I meant to address that but instead only alluded to it. Yes, perhaps the afterlife entry requirements are restricted to (or only give to) a certain subset of moral laws. For example, the moral law given to flesh humans includes A, B, and C, and promises X, Y, and Z for its adherence. Perhaps the first uploaded mind will be given a different set of instructions with different promises. Seems strange, but who knows, we don't make the rules.

>>8954043
If the simulation has self-awareness, then the first simulated thought would be a realization that its surroundings had changed from a scanning facility to a new environment. Maybe this scanning facility requires the patient to be asleep during the procedure, in which case the simulated consciousness would remember falling asleep in one place and walking up in another. It's like a video camera recording a scene, then being shut off, disassembled, and replaced with a virtual input device attached to a computer-generated scene. The playback would suggest that the camera had teleported.

>not be conscious at all since a simulation only simulates the effects of whatever you are assimilating to observers
The simulation would be of high-fidelity brain activity itself, not just the external emoting of some person. All of the neurons and supporting cells would be perfectly represented in the same configurations as in the flesh human. Thus, running the simulation of the brain equates to running an emergent consciousness.

For that to work, of course, this assumes you believe that brain activity is sufficient to present consciousness. If it is not, I would like to know what is.

>>8954065
As I recall, the fun popsci solution to this is that you completely replace a person's brain with digital components slowly while keeping them awake.

>>8954141
After the transition is complete, make copies of the digital components. Have those running as well. Now kill them all and make more copies. Spam heaven.

File: immigrationpolicy.jpg (79KB, 495x700px) Image search: [Google]

79KB, 495x700px

alternative possibility
test the limit of hell's immigration policy

>>8953946
>simulate every relevant aspect of consciousness and experience
and there is your mistake
"relevant" is relative and there is no method to decide what is and what is not relevant and simulating every possible aspect is literally impossible because the possibilities of stimulation are infinite.

come again when you have a theory without logical flaws.

>>8953946
>>8953947
Nigga this all depends exactly on how the religion you pick chooses to deal with this shit. You haven't defined it either way nor can we find it out scientifically, so there's really no sensible answer.
It's like asking "if magic potions were real would they be green or blue?"

>>8954043
Assuming the simulation is accurate, why wouldn't the simulated person be the same person? The only thing that might pass for an "identity" or something is just in the structure of the brain, not in the specific molecules themselves. So if you could perfectly replicate that structure, you'd functionally have the same brain.

>>8954570
To accurately simulate emergent consciousness via brain chemistry, presumably "relevant" here means accurate simulation at the biological level, along with meaningful sensory input. To contrast, it's very unlikely that quantum physics calculations will be necessary to carry out this simulation. Instead, the brain cells, or parts of cells, can likely be simulated to a fidelity at which consciousness emerges.

Although we won't know for sure until we either develop the technology or verify models of brains that confirm it.

Really, the bound of "relevant" is the similar to the bound of computational feasibility. If we cannot simulate trillions of synapses alone, then we cannot simulate every relevant aspect. When we can, then perhaps we may. Computational models and experiments will tell us how much further we have to go until the experience is sufficiently thorough for an uploaded mind to survive.

"Relevant" is empirical, not relative.