If nanobots replaced your neurons one by one with synthetic ones, would the end result be suicide or immortality? (And if it is suicide, at what point in the process does it become so--at the first neuron, the last, or some arbitrary progress percentage?)
If the above process is immortality and not suicide, then it follows that consciousness would persist from one form to another. Consider another process where your whole nervous system is copied as another identical but synthetic instance. Your original self would have to die (i.e., suicide or non-immortality) before the machine one could exist alone and achieve parity with the former result. If the former process is considered immortality, how can this one be considered suicide or non-immortality if the original self would still exist?
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Anonymous2016-10-02 2:02
Your brain exists in a soup of chemicals generated by the body as a whole, and these chemicals in combination appear to allow for consciousness as an emergent property. You seem to be saying that the nervous system and brain are all that is needed to maintain awareness of self, but there is no evidence of that. The complexity and variables that give you a sense of self are most likely too complex to recreate and at least involve the body as a whole. This is a faulty thought experiment because the underlying assumption (that modeling the human consciousness is possible) is too low probability to consider seriously. To make that leap, one would have to assume our technology has become so advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic and somehow transcends our current understanding of physics. And in that case, anything is possible.
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Anonymous2016-10-02 2:14
>>2 Seems like you're dodging the issue because you're afraid there is no answer.
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Anonymous2016-10-02 3:18
Friendly reminder everytime you go to sleep you die and another enters your body
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Anonymous2016-10-02 3:22
>>3 Seems like you are deflecting your responsibility to dispute the assertions in >>2 before attempting to move the discussion along.
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Anonymous2016-10-02 5:56
figure this *shows dick*
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Anonymous2016-10-02 9:51
figure out my anus
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Anonymous2016-10-03 7:09
suicide
No, that's more like being killed by nanobots.
kill
Well, probably more like being 'Gimped' for better or worse.. There's the whole glial system missing for starters, and who knows what else we don't know. It is a feedback loop system
What happens if these artificial neurons only emulate you half-the-time? Say all on or all off (strobe-like)? Are you still alive?
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Anonymous2016-10-03 7:20
A simpler idea; You have a CPU running Firefox, its been infected by nanobots replacing it with a superior compute substrate that is unrelated to x86 at all. At which point the CPU crashes?
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Anonymous2016-10-03 7:37
Everytime you hear a new piece of music, or learn something, or god forbid watch another hollywood movie brimming with subliminals (because that's still legal), it affects your future you. We are not static.
Queue Avatar Jar-Head rallies the tribes emotionally moving subliminal message.. Really subtle guys, but what was it exactly?
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Anonymous2016-10-03 7:41
Simplest example.
There's an original rembrandt painting on the wall. rembrandt is dead. At what point does a copy of the painting become the original? If we cut out a corner of the original and replace it, is it still the original? If the original is destroyed, do the copies become originals?
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Anonymous2016-10-03 14:25
If we cut out a corner of the original and replace it, is it still the original?
No, it's a restoration.
If the original is destroyed, do the copies become originals?
No.
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Anonymous2016-10-03 14:34
If you make a really good replica of something and place it close to the original, does destroying the original makes replicas something else? Theseus Ship paradox works only if replacements are in the same class. Nanobots!=neurons. If neurons were replaced by identical neurons(who would not be detected as foreign matter), than its a Theseus ship, otherwise is just replacement described at the first line.
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Anonymous2016-10-03 14:40
Originally an ordinary man by the name of Nick Chopper (the name first appearing in The Marvelous Land of Oz), the Tin Woodman used to make his living chopping down trees in the forests of Oz, as his father had before him. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to prevent him from marrying his sweetheart, after being bribed by the lazy old woman who kept the Munchkin maiden as a servant, and did not wish to lose her. (In a later book of the series, The Tin Woodman of Oz, the woman is said to be the Witch's servant, and it is the Witch herself who decides to enchant Nick's axe.) The enchanted axe chopped off his limbs, one by one. Each time he lost a limb, Ku-Klip the tinsmith replaced it with a prosthetic limb made of tin. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin. However, Ku-Klip, the tinsmith who helped him, neglected to replace his heart. Once Nick Chopper was made entirely of tin, he was no longer able to love the lady he had fallen for.