To become even more immersive as we move forward. Check this out. a2
It may be some way off, but mind uploading, the digital duplication of your mental essence, could expand human experience into a virtual afterlife
www.theguardian.com
This a very intriguing topic that has been discussed either in Community or PRSI, but I forget which without searching. Not meant as a critical comment. The idea has been explored in popular culture, shows like Star Trek Generation, and it touches on spirituality and even the soul and boils down to this question, what makes you, you? The single most appealing idea with many religions is their promise of continued existence, the continuation of consciousness. I maintain you don't need religion to keep the dream alive, just the idea of spirituality and a spiritual plain.
If technology reached a point were they were able analyze your brain and capture everything about it, including intelligence, emotional responses, likes, dislikes, biases and memories, and placed those into a humanoid shell, or even let it reside on the Internet, would this be you, would you wake up in this new form, or are you still dead, and it would simply be an entity that has your memories and perceives the world the same way you do?
This might be a great comfort to loved ones, but not everyone, or even most people because an imitation is an imitation. And I propose it would do nothing for the individual who is dead. You are still going to die, and if there is any hope of the continuation of consciousness, your consciousness, it would be through the spiritual angle. However, it’s hard to define a spirit, which might just be a collection of memories?
I like the idea androids, synths, replicants, so identical to human beings, with the opportunity to create them minus human flaws. In my opinion, the most intriguing aspect is that with the technology your linked article describes, you could have androids waking up thinking they are you, getting your continuation of consciousness. Of course we just surmise that too, because although we experience consciousness, we don’t understand it and how it exists.
What is the difference between ourselves experiencing consciousness and a machine with really good programming and sensors, motor skills, that can mimic human behavior perfectly and can react to the world around it and be aware of the world in an intellectual manner. Does it have that bubble of consciousness centered on it brain or it just an complex A.I. program running? And are we just complex biological programs running?
Human memories appear to be very perishable. We know that a good knock on the brain, may erase them. But what we don’t know, as part of a speculative philosophical discussion, is if a quantum record is recorded, and if a spiritual entities could traverse though this existence/reality, each being unique and enduring or if our existence is a one shot deal, a shooting star that exists only once and is then lost forever.
As human beings some of us are reconciled to the shooting star experience, one time and done, while others like myself hold onto that hope that some part of ourselves will endure. Maybe we will become that collection of memories that wakes up in an Android. But is that you I’m talking too or a machine that thinks it is you?
www.oculus.com
