X-Message-Number: 11741
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 11:40:14 -0400
From: Daniel Crevier <>
Subject: uploading and zombies  

Since we are being accused of irrelevance, I will point out that  

uploading is a subject of interest to cryonicists. For example,  

cryonicist Charles Platt, who is also a science fiction writer, wrote a
novel entitled The Silicon Man, in which a frozen patient is revived by
having his brain scanned and simulated in a computer. After  

suitable complications of plot, he lives there happily everafter,  

interfaced with a virtual reality. In Platt's scenario, virtual life is  

even more enjoyable than real life.  

The reason for our interest is that the future revival of a frozen body
requires a breakthrough like nanotechnology, which is still an unproven
concept. Brain scanning, on the other hand, is just an extention of
existing technology. What Ettinger, Donaldson and I are discussing is
whether a simulated person would be conscious. Ettinger and Donaldson   

claim not, and I believe it would be. I think I have proven my point by
considering that it would in principle be possible to upload a brain
piecewise, and let at each step the subject verify the accuracy of the
simulation and the integrity of his/her consciousness. To which Robert
Ettinger replied that since computers can't be conscious,  

consciousness would be lost somewhere in the process.  

I you believe that Mr. Ettinger, you have to explain away a major para-
dox, which is the following. We said that we could replace a piece of the
brain by a simulation with the same input-output  

properties. It's pretty hard to argue against that, since what happens in
any part of the brain are physical processes, and a computer can simulate
any physical process. Now if we can do it for a piece of the brain, we can
do it for the whole brain: just do it for all the pieces, connect the
resulting simulations together, and voilą.  

The resulting simulated brain would therefore have the same input-output
properties as the real brain. For a brain, the input is what the senses
tell it, and the output is motor signals determining the person's words
and deeds. The simulated person would thus react in exactly the same way
as the real person. In particular, if you ask her whether she is  

conscious, she will answer yes.  

If consciousness was lost, we would therefore be faced with a being that
would behave like you and me, present all the outwards appearances of
consciousness, and yet wouldn't be conscious. Philosophers Zenon Pylyshyn
and Daniel Dennett have called such a being a zombie. Its  

existence seems to contradict evolutionary theory: if you can have all  

the survival advantages of consciousness, like perception and reasoning,
and yet not be conscious, why did evolution bother to endow us with  

consciousness? Another issue is that zombies are a direct invitation to
solipsism: if consciousness is such a fickle phenomenon, how do you know
that I am conscious, or that anyone aroud you is?  

To Tom Donaldson: roger on the fact that virtual realities have to be
complex to be interesting, and that this is better achieved with  

parallel machines. What I meant is that this is an engineering detail that
has little to do with the principle of whether a virtual being can be
conscious. But yes, computers of the future will be massively paral- lel.
The computing power that a dollar can buy is now doubling every year,
which means that in twenty years it will be multiplied a million fold. The
visual effects that you now see in the movies, which are quite impressive
but achieved off line, will be doable in real time, with a vengeance.  

Daniel Crevier  

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