From: x@x.org   
      
   On 3/17/25 05:36, Ed Cryer wrote:   
   > x wrote:   
   >> On 3/16/25 14:21, Ed Cryer wrote:   
   >>> oldernow wrote:   
   >>>> On 2025-03-16, Ed Cryer  wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>>>> The internet cuts peoples' heads off on a regular basis,   
   >>>>>> leaving people running around spewing liberal nonsense   
   >>>>>> between screams of "HITLER!" and "FASCIST!"....   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> Well, I have a head to cut off.  From your posts, I gather   
   >>>>> that you don't.  Maybe that's got its benefits. Your   
   >>>>> lonely isolation in your ivory tower safeguards you from   
   >>>>> the natural shocks that flesh is heir unto.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Indeed is identification with the idea of a free-willed   
   >>>> being lonely isolation!   
   >>>>   
   >>>   
   >>> You seem to me to be fighting for a widely held philosophical idea;   
   >>> that mind is on its own, uncaused, unattached and free as the wind   
   >>> swell.   
   >>> OK, so I won't take you up on that. As John Milton put it "the mind   
   >>> is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of   
   >>> heaven".   
   >>>   
   >>> But that seems to be the end of your campaign. A battle in the realm   
   >>> of metaphysics; a battle to establish the autonomy of mind.   
   >>> Me, I love battling. But I'd never battle to be alone. I fight for my   
   >>> rights; my convictions; my political goals. They keep me in the   
   >>> world, attached to other people.   
   >>>   
   >>> I won't fight for empiricism, I won't fight for idealism, I won't   
   >>> fight to grind myself into a corner. Philosophy is interesting, but   
   >>> it's a hobby, not an ideology.   
   >>>   
   >>> Ed   
   >>   
   >> If you had the power to mind upload someone's neural engrams to   
   >> computer, and you purposefully denied it.   
   >>   
   >> Would you be murdering someone?   
   >>   
   >> What do you think?   
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >   
   > I doubt your uploading hypothesis   
      
   Yea I think it would be very reasonable   
   to call it a 'hypothesis' at best.  I   
   think the 'brain' is a physical object,   
   but such an idea has little basis beyond   
   that.   
      
   > would work with the human brain. Or at   
   > least not adequately enough to be able to reconstitute the brain and   
   > persona whence the backup came.   
   > I've often replaced hard drives; clone it, take out the old and put in   
   > the new; it works perfectly.   
   > But that functional view of mind would need testing and testing and   
   > testing with a living brain before I'd even consider it feasible.   
      
   I am guessing that 'living' and 'testing' would mean   
   that after the uploading happened, the original brain   
   would still be alive and working viably in a similar   
   manner to before.   
      
   This might be more difficult than it might seem.   
      
   I have taken just a very small bit of classes on   
   the subject, but I am thinking that when you prepare   
   nervous tissue for examination in a microscope, that   
   you first exchange water in the tissue in several   
   steps with a more organic solvent and then wax.  The   
   wax or resin then allows the tissue to be sliced into   
   thin pieces that are thin enough for light in an   
   optical microscope to shine through the tissue, and   
   then it is back exchanged into a liquid to remove   
   the more opaque wax when put it into the slide.   
      
   It might be possible that if you were to try to do   
   something with living brains that could determine   
   microscopic structure that the high energies for   
   the fine resolution could also be a major problem   
   but maybe I am way off.  Perhaps there are phenomena   
   like MRIs that can go into the microscopic range, I   
   am not sure.   
      
   > Would   
   > consciousness be restored? Would personality be restored? Are these just   
   > emergent properties of neuronal bit-settings and weightings?   
   > This seems to be the question at the heart of recent scares over AI; the   
   > dawn of consciousness in a silicon brain. The recent sudden appearance   
   > of bots driven by a new algorithm has fired this old chestnut;   
   > especially their ability to mimic human communication and language.   
   >   
   > Ed   
      
   You know, several years ago I went to some exhibits   
   where they did something called 'plastination' on   
   an array of bodies and organs, and showed the interior   
   of the bodies or organs to some extent.  I am thinking   
   someone named 'GUnther' came up with the technique.   
      
   One exhibit I think I remember was that they showed   
   a lung of a 'smoker' and it appeared to be significantly   
   blacker or darker than a lung of a 'non-smoker'.  I did   
   not have much of a basis for comparison because I do not   
   see inside people's bodies too much but the one lung   
   did appear darker than the other one.  They also showed   
   the heart of someone that they said had something like   
   a 'heart attack' but who they said lived an array of   
   years later.  You could see where some of the heart   
   had muscle that was replaced with scar tissue.   
      
   Anyway, while going there or afterward, I came to the   
   idea that the sort of thing is often done less severely   
   with less strange a name.  That is called 'embalming'.   
      
   I guess I am getting older.  Maybe I should go to some   
   cemetery or funeral place and see what type of sales   
   pitches they give for different types of 'embalming'.   
   There is also something called 'life insurance' and   
   it is difficult to say exactly what that is supposed   
   to be for.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)