RE: Making a Mindclone of ourselves, is Steemit paving the way for Transcendence?
The scientific group doesn't even know what the mind is yet, so how do they even consider that their ability to clone the mind is only decades away?
From a metaphysical viewpoint, scientists are very silly and narrow minded when considering the brain. The subconscious and the unconscious are delved into by psychologist who cannot believe all the stuff they find down there.
Consider out of body experiences (or near death experiences). If the brain is where the thoughts are, then how are they being thought? Or, how are they experiencing elsewhere? In some examples, the EKG showed that they were dead. So, how is this possible?
They haven't even worked out ESP. Science does not want to accept that it exists. And when you put ESP in the lab, it almost always fails. However, you can find many groups that will have you believing something is happening just by the shear number of documented happenings. And if you stay in such groups, you will often experience enough of them yourself and find it hard to ever put your brain back into the "scientific" box.
So, will we ever upload our consciousness into a computer? Maybe, but the computers will be nothing like what we have today. Our computers are very very stupid. Our programs on them idiotic. If these weren't true, computer viruses and hacking wouldn't be a concern.
Another piece to add. You do not have a trillion cells with a trillion DNA. You have one DNA in a trillion locations.
It's not just the computers, the software isn't there either.
For the past few decades, people have been talking about Quantum Computers and the massive leap it brings in computing power. As programs become more complicated and clever, so do the people writing the viruses. It's a continuous cat and mouse game.
The philosophy of what is considered a mind is so debated, like for instance being self aware, a prerequisite of having consciousness. More so, I think people want to create the indistinguishable illusion that they are conversing with someone with the same intellect and responses.
In the same sense, any sufficiently advanced AI would be indistinguishable from the real thing.
This is a hard one for me to reply to.
I can answer the responses, but I can bring no evidence to bear. And the answer gets freaky weird quickly.
You write english very well. And I only read ancient chinese. So, I am unsure where your english lexicon ends. Forgive me if I lose you with these words.
Quantum computers are stupid. They are just an idea to push boundaries of size and state. Currently they are an evolutionary dead end. However, someone may be able to, forgive the pun, make a quantum leap onto a new track of computing.
It is because of how stupid computers are that we still have viruses.
A computer cannot tell if a particular memory location is used. The program that used it could be long gone, or forgotten about it completely, and the computer has no way of knowing. This is because computers and their memory are really really simple machines. Way too simple for what we want from computers these days.
A computer cannot tell if it is running a legit program or a virus. The operating system should be smart enough to tell.
Take this example. Your smart phone has an application that should only be using the screen. If it asks to use the microphone and camera, your phone should freeze it, and then ask you if you want to give it permission. (you can get this feature by using some of the new stuff from McAffee, the guy, not his old company) And you should be able to query the operating system and ask who in the last minute used the microphone, and get a list. These things aren't happening yet. The minimum I expect from current OS is to sandbox everything. But they don't even do that yet.
It is not a game of cat and mouse, its about programs/computers being in the dark ages.
Long before we get to AI, we should get to an OS that knows what a virus is. Humans can tell when a virus is messing up their computer. But virus software is still in the "image" recognition stage. I feel it is long overdue that we should have moved to virus software recognizing behaviour.
On magic vs technology. This is really a human thing. There are many advanced races that don't use technology at all.
There is also a point that both magic and technology are based on physics. Physics much much larger than the little box we put it in. We haven't even combined the fields of physics and metaphysics yet! When we do, we will find many things are possible; massless objects, spatial distortion, rejuvenating bodies...
Now, on magic. Do you define synchronicity as magic? Could you build a piece of technology that allowed you to be in the right place at the right time to meet the exact person you were looking for? (When you didn't know that you would be near that place today, and didn't know who you were looking for). These are the areas of magic. Fate and I-ching, both magic.