The best part is, unless that function name is misleading, it doesn’t matter how the data is passed; a copy is being sent out over TCP/IP to another device regardless.
There’s a cool computer game that makes this point as part of the story line… I’d recommend it, but I can’t recommend it in this context without it being a spoiler!
Kil’n People by David Brin - it’s a futuristic Murder Mystery Novel about a society where people copy their consciousnesses to temporary clay clones to do mundane tasks for them. Got some really interesting discussions about what constitutes personhood!
The joke is that there are some people who think that by uploading themselves into a machine “to live forever,” their consciousness will also be transferred, like when you travel by bus from one city to another. In reality, you “upload yourself,” but that yourself is not you, but a copy of you. So, once the copy is done, you will still be in your original body, and the copy will “think” it is you, but it’s not you. It’s a copy of you! So, you continue to live in your body until you die, and, well, for you - that’s it. You’re dead. You’re not living. You’re finished. Everything is black. Void. Null. Done - unless you believe in the afterlife, so you’ll be in heaven, hell, purgatory or whatever, but the point is, you’re not longer on Earth “living forever.” That’s just some other entity who thinks it is you, but it’s not you (again, because you’re dead.)
This is represented by the parameters being passed by value (a copy) instead of by reference (same data) in the poster’s image.
It wouldn’t be you, it would just be another person with the same memories that you had up until the point the copy was made.
When you transfer a file, for example, all you are really doing is sending a message telling the other machine what bits the file is made up of, and then that other machines creates a file that is just like the original - a copy, while the original still remains in the first machine. Nothing is even actually transferred.
If we apply this logic to consciousness, then to “transfer” your brain to a machine you will have to make a copy, which exist simultaneously with the original you. At that point in time, there will be two different instances of “you”; and in fact, from that point forward, the two instances will begin to create different memories and experience different things, thereby becoming two different identities.
This prospect doesnt bother me in the least. I’ve already been replaced 5 times in my life so far. The soul is a spook. Let my clone smother me in my sleep and deal with the IRS instead.
I’m sorry I understand those words not in those orders though, are you saying the soul is an olde timey anti-black racial slur or that it’s inherently scary?
Spook is from the german “spuking” which means haunting. Its use in this context comes from the german philosopher Max Stirner who is infamous for the memes where X is declared to be a spook.
Understanding what exactly spooks are is somewhat challenging, and plenty of people get the wrong ubderstanding about what is meany by spooks. But at least in the meme way of using the word, a spook is anything you think is a fairy tale, or nonsense that you don’t care about.
Makes me wonder how many times I’ve been replaced. Also makes me wonder if I just died yesterday and today I’m actually a new person. I have no evidence that yesterday happened except for a memory of it, and let’s face it, since it was a public holiday, that’s a pretty foggy memory
I wonder about that. During the deepest part of sleep does your brain have enough activity to maintain a continuous stream of consciousness? If you go through two sleep cycles in a night does yesterday you die, and you from the first sleep cycle who only dreamed die, and you’re a new consciousness in the morning?
yeah, went down this rabbit hole recently: what if I’m the .001% that lives until <max age variable for my genome>? or what if ‘me’ is an amalgam of all the ones that die, and I get to live all those lives until the variable runs out.
Damn dude. Was each time a death? I think a someone’s following me around and snuffing me out. Mandela Effects keep happening. Also I’m getting elf ears? Reality is weird.
If anyone’s interested in a hard sci-fi show about uploading consciousness they should watch the animated series Pantheon. Not only does the technology feel realistic, but the way it’s created and used by big tech companies is uncomfortably real.
The show got kinda screwed over on advertising and fell to obscurity because of streaming service fuck ups and region locking, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s at least partially because of its harsh criticisms of the tech industry.
Just FYI content warning for Pantheon there is a seriously disturbing gore/kill scene that is animated too well in the first season. Anyone who has seen the show knows what scene I am talking about, I found the scene pretty upsetting and I almost didn’t finish the show. I am still a little upset that the scene is burned in my memory.
Luckily the writers were able to finish it the way they wanted with a second season, and it’s fantastic. AMC almost did axe it before the second season released but after it was already finished but fans were able to get them to release it.
The show got kinda screwed over on advertising and fell to obscurity because of streaming service fuck ups and region locking, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s at least partially because of its harsh criticisms of the tech industry.
Okay so I can’t 100% confirm this, but the first season wasn’t popular because it was on whatever the fuck AMC+ is. Amazon bought it because of the writer’s strike to get something out.
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