Substrate-independent minds

[Kim323]

You're right, Steve, about the label of transhumanism regarding kerner. I tried mightily to read his book grey aliens and the harvesting of souls, but just couldn't and ended up sort of skimming around in it, which is just the opposite of how I approach books. I'm a start at the beginning and going right through it kind of reader, especially if the book holds me, but wow, kerner is way out there. Did you hear him on a podcast? I'm trying to think, and I thought I had, and thought him way, way out there. But I'm not sure, it was a while ago and I forget which show, but I think so. Kim

 

[tyder001]

I've heard him on Red Ice Radio and also the X Zone and Paranormal Podcast. I recently heard him on one of my favorites (including the Paracast of course) The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett.

 

[trainedobserver]

I've listened to Nigel Kerner and don't get the guy. Where does he say he getting all that from? If I heard him say I've forgotten.

Where do any of these people who claim to know what supposedly alien or other non-human beings are doing get their information from?

 

[tyder001]

Ya know I wonder about that myself. I'll have to either read the book or listen to another interview because I'm not sure either.

 

[mike]

I dont get him either, he thinks the shroud of turin is authentic.
I cited him as an example (there are many) of the idea the alleged greys, are actually engineered conciousness platforms.

The bottom line being if we do acheive this ourselves (and clearly we are trying to)
Then its logical to consider other sentient species might have taken the same path.

Survival is after all a powerful instinct.

Oddly enough the religious narrative is no different to the speculation posed here.
Albiet couched in the language, jargon and terminology of thousands of years ago.

But the basic premise has a number of parallels

That your unique "self" becomes biologically independant at death.
That you have extended conciousness in a new environment (heaven) a post biological population.

That you get a new body optimised and improved

Part of the Hope set forth in the Bible is that every saved person will receive a new, glorified body. Probably every person who has lived past the age of 40 has, at one time or another, wanted a “better” body. Every middle-aged person wants fewer aches and pains, more energy, more flexibility, more strength, 20/20 eyesight, better hearing, younger looking skin, fewer sags and wrinkles, and the list goes on and on. For everyone who at anytime has wanted a better body, the Bible has good news. God has promised every saved person a new and very much improved body

Lol File saved ?

That there will be a point (judgement day) when biological conciousness is no longer created via the birth process, and only a post biological population will remain..........

The only real bone of contention then, is does man do this himself, or does god do it for us ?.

I say we help ourselves to this technology, i hear he approves of that

 

[mike]

LOL when this technology is perfected you will be "saved" and given a new body.........................

 

[trainedobserver]

LOL when this technology is perfected you will be "saved" and given a new body...

To be saved from death and to be made whole is a universal human desire. That it is being expressed in modern mythological terms isn't surprising. It's the same story, different chapter.

 

[tyder001]

What dreams may come Although I certainly feel more hope in my faith than I do in a cyborg. I do think the point about being saved from death is indeed a universal human desire. Death, be it a transition or the end of everything is not unnatural. We will be there a lot longer than we are here. I have no faith at all in transhumanism nor in it's "science." But, as I've said about other matters. The truth will outlive all the myths. So, why worry and get agitated about it. I'm trying to learn to savor the moment. Easy to say and harder to do.

 

[Jack Burton]

Whopsie i made the mistake of browsing the forum without logging in and and caught kimbo's latest intellectual pants soiling.............

His ignorance is matched only by his pomposity and arrogance.
This from the man who insisted i live in england and that jesus , with a wave of his hands turned water into wine...



Yes we have heard this criticism before and a Mod has even pointed out the absurdity of the argument, this is the internet, we are discussing data found on the internet.
Kim would have you all stop cuting and pasting links for discussion, as they are irrelevant.
Instead buy yourself a few good books and a scanner, and upload the contents as scanned......
Since kim is sadly locked in the past and the musty old book paradigm, thats the only data source he considers valid.

He cites the critical rebuttals of Susan Greenfield



And
Stuart Hameroff



But this, like his arrogant assertion i was english



Is like the rest of his feeble arguments, DESTROYED by this

I couldnt fit my entire library into the shot, notwithstanding all my technical manuals are in another room entirely

I can honestly state that the number of books in this pic i havent read could be counted on a single hand. and those purchased in the last few weeks or so.
From shakespere to the russian masters (tolstoy, chekhov, dostoevsky) to name but 3.
Comparative theology, and several shelves of ufology, botany psychology and law
From dog training to herbalism, History Art and otherwise.
Enhanced by an eidetic memory..............

And his argument contrary to people with credentials up the wazzo ?



Oh well , sounds legit. im convinced.......NOT

The internet is a far larger and more up to date source of data than his musty old, out of date books, but clearly suffering a bad baaaad case of mental diarrhoea he would suggest to the rest of us that cuting and pasting such data is worthless.

Dont bother posting (via cut and paste) links anymore folks, kim wants you to find some out of date perhaps even out of print book and refer to that as a source.

Because such Anachronisms are all he can relate to as valid.........

Speaks volumes doesnt it

That room right there is like a picture ripped straight out of my dream portion of my brain, Mike. Amazing. I am super jealous. Really cool.
Anyways, as I am reaching middle age I am fascinated by the singularity. I read GREYS by Whitley Strieber and in that book the aliens are little more than consciousness in a constructed frame. Sorry if someone else mentioned this.

 

[Jack Burton]

Quite possibly. But if so, why do they seem to have paid so much attention to "us" throughout human history? Or perhaps their presence here would be considered very slight on a cosmic scale. Or--does transitioning to a different medium have inherent tradeoffs leaving post-biologicals in need of something we still have? There is room for wide speculation.

I think the upcoming Ridley Scott movie Prometheus is kind of going to go down this road in a Chariots of the Gods sort of way. I believe they monitor us and will step in if things get too crazy. And then half the population will try to destroy them and call them "demons" or "fallen angels". Is this the right topic to lay down the seeding theory on?

 

[tyder001]

OMG! Geeks trash talking about the books they have read. There is a God! I was always kind of made fun of growing up because I was a book worm. Now Mike and Kim are laying the smack down with what and who they have read! Yes, I am now Da man cause if it rained down all the books I've read in my life it would smash ya to bits.

 

[Jack Burton]

OMG! Geeks trash talking about the books they have read. There is a God! I was always kind of made fun of growing up because I was a book worm. Now Mike and Kim are laying the smack down with what and who they have read! Yes, I am now Da man cause if it rained down all the books I've read in my life it would smash ya to bits.

I love to read but man, you guys are way, way more knowledgeable than I in this topic. I just found a new reading list. Incredible.

 

[tyder001]

I'm not as voracious a reader as I was when I was younger. But, ebooks have helped alot in my case. I can adjust the font and actually read without bright light. I actually turn the lights off and use my Kindle Fire these days.

 

[mike]

What dreams may come Although I certainly feel more hope in my faith than I do in a cyborg. I do think the point about being saved from death is indeed a universal human desire. Death, be it a transition or the end of everything is not unnatural. We will be there a lot longer than we are here. I have no faith at all in transhumanism nor in it's "science." But, as I've said about other matters. The truth will outlive all the myths. So, why worry and get agitated about it. I'm trying to learn to savor the moment. Easy to say and harder to do.

I must say i find that very strange.
That one could have more faith in an undefined supernatural mechanism, that offfers no nuts and bolts type explanation for its mechanism, over a technological mechansism that already showing promise and proof of concept results in laboratory experiments.

To me thats a bit like being offered a seat on a solid wooden lifeboat as the ship goes down, and saying no thanks, i have faith an angel will pluck me from the cold water and set me on dry land.

To me its logical the people in the nuts and bolts lifeboat will have a better chance of reading tomorrows paper than our faithful floater.

Its like saying no thanks to the technology of a heart transplant, and praying for a cure instead.

This grant funded a scientifically rigorous study of the effects of third-party remote intercessory prayer on patients following heart surgery. The project was a replication of the original intercessory prayer study performed by R.C. Byrd in 1988 and also included “relaxation response,” a larger number of participants, and the administering of psychological and social questionnaires. Unlike the original Byrd study, this study suggested that intercessory prayer had no effect on complication-free recovery from heart surgery.

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): Replication and Expansion of the R.C. Byrd Study | The John Templeton Foundation

Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not Effective In Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery

HMS Press Release:

Now I know this probably won't sit well with you, and it may be hard to hear, but just because you may have had a strong, personal, emotional experience in which you prayed and your prayers were answered, the scientific evidence simply doesn't support its efficacy. Prayer may help you feel calmer, more centered, or even lower your blood pressure, but unfortunately, praying for something to happen has absolutely no effect on its specific outcome, whether it be for health, prosperity, or Tim Tebow to get that touchdown.

Prayer: What Does The Science Say? (VIDEO)

The reality is modern medical technology (which will one day include the topic of discussion)
Is a better bet than faith

Science really does trump mythology mate

 

[mike]

That room right there is like a picture ripped straight out of my dream portion of my brain, Mike. Amazing. I am super jealous. Really cool.
Anyways, as I am reaching middle age I am fascinated by the singularity. I read GREYS by Whitley Strieber and in that book the aliens are little more than consciousness in a constructed frame. Sorry if someone else mentioned this.

Thanks Mate,
Yes the Streiber narrative is full of similar references.

The story includes the "dead" being seen with the visitors on many occasions
They allegedly told him "we recycle souls"
That their bodies are "vessels"

But my all time favourite is from a friend of his who was at the cabin on a few occasions and allegedly witnessed some of the strange stuff.
Her name is Lorie Barnes and her story goes like this.
Long time experiencer/abductee
On one occasion while pregnant IIRC she woke to find the typical visitor in her room one night, as it reached out to her she yelled, "dont touch me, you are too ugly to touch me"
It responded "you shouldnt say that"
"why not ?" she asked
The answer...................

Because one day you too might look like me..............................

Both she and Whitley interpreted this in a general/generic fashion, ie what it meant was one day the human species might look like this, it wasnt until i pointed out the current research into uploading and the "we recycle souls" statement that they considered the message might have been specific and personal.

That Lorie herself might one day look like it..............

Presented with the usual caveat, these are ideas not answers.

I may have read the data entirely out of context, or stumbled on a disturbing truth.

milage will vary

 

[GeoShift]

Digital copies of ourselves? Remember always back up your data. There's only one of each of us. The real McCoy's if you will, and no digital copy will ever be what makes us uniquely us as individuals. The idea of these copies, machines or whatever giving us digital immortality is amiss. I suppose the data goes on, but from the point of our own mortality, its still only data in robots, a server or computer, a mere remnant of who we are. Digital copies of ourselves will never have the true essence of what it is to be us.

 

[mike]

As ive alluded to in this thread i dont think the line is strictly black and white.
Its a matter of perspective. from the point of view of the source its a copy, from the perspective of the target, its transfer. It will experience the same sense of continuity one gets waking up after an operation.
The star trek example is another, is the "beamed" down entity a copy or a transfer ?

What say we could transplant the hippocampus to a new body, would you wake up "you"
What if you were given an artificial hippocampus at birth ?
Your entire life and experiences stored on that instead of brain cells, would you still be you ?

You wake up in the morning and you feel like you, lets say hypothetically i had used some advanced technology in the night to transfer your conciousness to a duplicate body, how would you know ?
If no one around you could tell the difference, and more importantly you couldnt tell it had happened, would it be copy or transfer ?

 

[Burnt State]

As ive alluded to in this thread i dont think the line is strictly black and white.It's a matter of perspective. from the point of view of the source its a copy, from the perspective of the target, its transfer.

Firstly I want to really thank you & trainedobservor for driving this excellent discussion on transhumanism. Kim threw in some great bits of linguistic spice that was well balanced by Angelo's honest truths. I've been wanting to throw my .02 in but it kept getting said better by trainedobservor - I thought your points on the angst of being, & our response to the death/regeneration human cycle to really summ up my feelings on this. I still love analog life in all its diversity of forgetting & remembering. Our humanity lies in all our foibles, weaknesses & our choice to forget, act on emotion etc. There is good & evil here.

If the digital realm is what lies beyond good & evil, where memory has a failsafe, & we never erode, certainly there will be less of a challenge to the experience of our evolving personality that is hindered by the glory of our fragile biology.

The digital promise is perhaps more than just the same old myth retold in a new chapter. Still the Icarian, Promthean myths remind us of Frankenstein's monster for a reason. I've often thought that technology is inherently evil, or if not evil then maybe something to be pretty suspicious of. I think about Wim Wenders movie, "Until The End of the World" where the technology to record one's dreams & memories creates a new digital addict, obsessed with their own simulacrum.

Whether I am a copy or a transfer is not a concern; chasing immortality through technology, just because we can, is. It's also totally mindripping! That our species can see to the beginning of time & make neurological prosthesis is phenomenal. That we still haven't figured out how to stop using religion & greed as reasons to kill each other with great vigour is both perplexing & a sad commentary on our childish state as a species. I just wish, before we let the digital tsunami wash out the past & deposit us on new shores, that these types of discussions were happening more often & involving more of the world's populous. Too busy killing, maiming & poisoning each other I suppose.

 

[mike]

The Neural prosthesis aspect is pretty amazing.

Lets imagine for a moment its perfected to such a degree that your biological memory can be uploaded to a new storage site , and that at the age of 40 you are fitted with this Neural Bypass.

All your new experiences are rerouted to the brainframe storage assigned to you, rather than in your brain tissue, Do "You" die when your native bioform stops working ?

I can see this scenario being the most likely of the ones postulated here,

The world's first brain prosthesis has passed the first stages of live testing.
The microchip, designed to model a part of the brain called the hippocampus, has been used successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue kept alive in a dish. The prosthesis will soon be ready for testing in animals.
The device could ultimately be used to replace damaged brain tissue which may have been destroyed in an accident, during a stroke, or by neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. It is the first attempt to replace central brain regions dealing with cognitive functions such as learning or speech.
To achieve their result, Theodore Berger and his colleagues at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US, had to develop a system that would "read" real neural signals from healthy tissue, process them just as the lost brain tissue should, and pass on the resulting signals to the next brain area.

Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.
And it's no longer a question of "if" but "when." The six teams involved in the multi-laboratory effort, including USC, the University of Kentucky and Wake Forest University, have been working together on different components of the neural prosthetic for nearly a decade

These implants can actually enhance your memory

In addition, the researchers went on to show that if a prosthetic device and its associated electrodes were implanted in animals with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device could actually strengthen the memory being generated internally in the brain and enhance the memory capability of normal rats.

Scientists Successfully Implant Chip That Controls The Brain; Allowing Thoughts, Memory And Behavior To Be Transferred From One Brain To Another « mindcomputers

As a marketing point, its a good one, this prosthesis will not only restore your memory function but enhance it.

Which raises the question if the second half of your life's experiences are written directly to this new medium, would transplanting it (the prosthetic)into a new body when your original wears out be a copy or a transplant of those memorys ?

(Though i postulate the storage will eventually be "offsite" so to speak, the neural bypass acting as a modem to a brainframe storage system elsewhere)

 

[mike]

I predict once these prosthetics become accepted, they wont just be installed in those who have a medical problem like Alzheimer's, once it becomes more cost effective to intall a neural bypass prosthetic than to actually study for 5 years at university, the uptake of this technology will become prevalent in younger and younger people.
Why study for 5 years to become a doctor, when the neural patterns can be purchased as an app and integrated into your "mind".

The advantages of switching to brainframe memory storage are huge.

Its funny how societys views on technology can change.
When i was a lad, calculators became cheap and small enough to carry around.
But taking one to school was not on, that was cheating. You had to memorise the times tables.
Later calculators were acceptable in maths class, but not in exams.
Now they are allowed even in exams, the rationale being its more important to know "how" to work the equation than it is to actually do the legwork and calculate things in your head.

I predict the same with this technology, the advantages of rerouting your memory to a non biological platform will be so great, very few will chose not to capitalise on them.

Oh there will always be those who prefer to walk rather than drive a car, but most people will chose to embrace the advantages of the technology, just as most people own a car today rather than walk everywhere.