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Docpot13 t1_j20quw7 wrote

Reply to comment by anengineerandacat in 11 years ago Michio Kaku talked about mind upload into Machine - Big Think by keghi11

You and I appear to have different understandings of the brain and the nervous system. You speak of consciousness and memories as things in the brain. I view them as products of neural activity. The self is the functioning of the brain. If you can recreate all of the circuits and how they interact, you have recreated the self.

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anengineerandacat t1_j21137c wrote

I view them as neural activity too.

The newer you would have their own conscious and be free to make their own decisions and to be honest would already likely be pretty divergent because of the procedure alone.

Your consciousness is unique to your very specific brain, it's an activity from all the impulses that fire not something that you just map that region and copy.

If you asked both beings a very complex psychological question, you would likely get slightly different answers; the words used, the makeup of the sentence, perhaps even the tone.

This is why I stated it's really dependent on what the desired outcome is... if you wanted to become immortal to continue living "your" life then brain copying isn't the way.

If the idea is to preserve yourself for others, than yes it's likely a valid-ish strategy; your clone's self would have all the wordly experiences you did and even more (as you yourself won't know what it's like to be a clone).

This is a topic that's somewhat both scientific and spiritual to some extent and it's not exactly easy for me to articulate what is being lost but I hope this made it slightly more clear?

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Docpot13 t1_j212zrn wrote

Not sure there is any evidence to support what you suggest to be true. Sounds more like a desire to believe there is more to “being” than just basic biology, which is natural, but not supported by evidence.

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anengineerandacat t1_j21a64j wrote

Inner voice fMRI: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02019/full

Consciousness can't be artificially stimulated: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361923009003657?casa_token=71CCXG8979oAAAAA:B9dF0u65Zs-S2PVeN2gg_Ik4thZ56PP6Qtuglt7L5fanVKRBcPw4CQmqXx7BBb-6iHZPJQO54w

The thing is that your "inner voice" is a brain activity, not something that is biologically wired but instead triggered from outside stimuli.

The consciousness can even be triggered in individuals whom are in coma's:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02207-1

Very little research in this space sadly, it's all theory and conjecture which I mean the entire conversation is about that considering we have no means to verify any of what is presented.

Hell, some individuals can be missing 50% of their brain cells and still live very normal lives: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141216-can-you-live-with-half-a-brain

In short, you can copy all the neurons / receptors / chemical makeup all you want but the activity of consciousness and their inner voice is unique to the individual.

You as /u/Docpot13 would cease to exist, only your clone and whereas they might communicate in a very similar fashion for some time the "you" that went through the procedure is long gone.

Starting to think you might be one of the 7% that doesn't have a typical inner voice lol.

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Docpot13 t1_j21i5qc wrote

I definitely don’t agree with the idea that an internal monologue is consciousness. This would make the existence of consciousness dependent on the ability to use language. And you are correct, I am one of those 7%.

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anengineerandacat t1_j21ig1w wrote

Curious then, since I have never really met someone like that... how do you process situations? Like when you read a book, what is going on in your head? Do you even like reading books are they engaging to you?

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Docpot13 t1_j21j93i wrote

I read all the time. It’s a form of communicating information which is as useful to me as anyone else. What is puzzling to me is why someone needs to talk to themselves. Who is talking to whom? If you are truly talking to yourself don’t you already know everything you are putting into words and now just making thought more complicated by trying to represent with words things which may not be well captured by language? What’s the point of telling yourself something? In order to communicate it you already had to understand it so why then mentally speak it? Bizarre.

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anengineerandacat t1_j21u0r6 wrote

I am communicating with myself; when I read I basically verbalize in-my-head what I am reading (and what I am typing). It mostly sounds like my physical voice but sometimes it could be in another's voice depending on the context and situation.

As far as to "whom" it's like talking into a room with an empty audience, sometimes I can visualize an audience to talk too and make-up things / situations for them to say but most often it's just me.

I am genuinely curious how you actually plan-ahead without having an inner voice, do you just "talk" to people without verbalizing it internally?

As to "why" I can't explain, it's been there since as long as I can remember... perhaps the voice has gotten louder over the years as I have learned to do "more" with it; I work as a Software Engineer day-to-day so most of my day is spent building mental structures and models of applications in my head and walking through where I'll do certain things next or even talking with my inner voice about said things in a form of rubber duck debugging.

Even this post, and your post are basically read back aloud and if I knew what you sounded like I would likely read the post back in your actual voice.

Without my inner voice... I don't think I would feel like I exist as a person, the bones / muscle / flesh surrounding my body are just what give me mobility but that "voice" is "me".

Which is why perhaps when I say you could clone the brain, since you can't clone my inner voice "I" will cease to exist. To my friends and family I might still exist but it'll be a different "me".

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