Summary of my preferred mind-uploading protocol
(Current abbreviated rephrasing of my views on how a person could survive a process of mind uploading, originally shared online in early 2000s)
In case humans face a future where mind uploading is possible, I suggest the only safe way to transition from organic substrate to inorganic one is to do it gradually to preserve a single instance of the person's awareness at all times. This could be done by gradually replacing organic brain elements with inorganic functional equivalents. I am not a collection of memories and facts, I am an instance of awareness that is generated by a brain process, an uninterrupted instance of a particular energy configuration expressed in time and space. This is why I would not consider myself to be alive once that instance ended, even if another instance with the same energy configuration were to be reproduced somewhere else and especially when two instances of the same energy configuration coexisted.
The simplest way to distinguish between a copy and an original is to find at least one thing that distinguishes one instance of something from the other. If such a thing is found, then two things are not equivalent to each other. Many people believe that a person would survive if the original died if recorded data while that person was alive allowed to recreate the same type of person in the future. People believe that preserving the type of the original person is enough to call it survival. Some even claim that preservation of someone's "legacy" qualifies as survival. In my view true survival is preservation of the original instance of person's awareness, the ability to continue to perceive and experience reality. Even if two instances of the same type of person existed, acting in sync, which would be indistinguishable to a third party observer, it'd still be easy to find at least one thing that distinguished one from the other, in this case their location. If original instance of that person dies, it dies irreversibly, meaning, the original instance of person's awareness no longer experiences the reality.
Sufficiently good way to preserve original instance of person's awareness would be through gradual uploading, either by replacing the organic brain elements with inorganic ones or by augmenting the brain with external hardware capable of continuing that person's awareness, then gradually shutting down the no longer necessary organic brain components that used to run that instance. In both cases, a single instance of person's awareness would be preserved during the migration from biological substrate to non-biological one.
posted by Heartland @ 9:32 PM
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