X-Message-Number: 33401
From: 
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 02:37:50 -0500 (EST)
Subject: again, debunking uploading

Gerald Monroe asks why I think uploading is nonsense. Once more, here's the 
 gist of it.
 
First, most of Mr. Monroe's points are irrelevant, addressing a different  
question. viz., that of reproduction of a brain.  I don't claim that a  

brain cannot be copied or reconstructed, or that such a copy wouldn't be alive.
The nonsense enters when we focus on  uploading in the sense of a  

simulation of a brain (or simulation of succession of states) in a digital  
computer.
 
First, fix firmly in mind the fact that the computers in question already  
exist, except for speed and storage capacity.  The deficiency of a  

simulation is  not a matter of speed or storage capacity, but of the  intrinsic
nature of a simulation. A simulation is a description, and a  description (in 
general) is not the thing.
 
Either of two mantras ought to do the trick, for those accessible  through 
logic.  Either "The map (with unimportant exceptions) is  not the territory" 
or "A blueprinjt of a house (no matter how accurate and  detailed)  is not 
a house."
 
There are many extensions and variations of the argument. For example,  
suppose I write down, with pencil on paper, the quantum mechanical 

specification  of a hydrogen atom in its ground state, which isn't difficult. So
I've 
written  it down, and now I have some pencil marks on paper. Does that mean I 
have  created a hydrogen  atom? If you  believe that, next stop  Bellevue.
 
A computer does not acquire magical properties by virtue of more speed or  
more storage capacity. The simplest computer--conceptually, a Turing 

tape--can  in principle perform any calculation that any digital computer will 
ever 
be able  to do, albeit more slowly.
 
A computer massages data--something in, something out. It converts an input 
 set of symbols into an output set of symbols. All you have in the computer 
is a  succession of sets of symbols, which through an appropriate code can 
be  interpreted to signify something. Or not. 
 
Yet again, it is crucial to remember that adding speed or size buys you  
essentially nothing except convenience. A coded description of a thing in a  
computer is not that thing, any more than a painting of a person is a person. 
If  it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it may still be just a 

decoy. A  page full of words, or a  computer full of files, is not a person, or
 indeed anything at all other than a set of symbols. 
 
Robert Ettinger

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