There are so many versions of ourselves. How others perceive us, how we perceive ourselves. The things inside we share selectively. Each changing moment to moment. We are ephemeral in every form.
Interesting idea - love it! Personally I think we’ll eventually figure out how to upload/store/transfer human minds into computational substrates - however the mind that arrives seems destined to rapidly deviate from ‘Human’ unless we also replicate the messy animal/instinctual elements previously provided by the body, through proprioception , emotion, physical pain and avoidance, etc.
Fascinating thought experiments and interesting to consider the non-human microbial matter and how it influences our thinking and actions.
Hits on the fundamental question of whether consciousness is an emergent experience from the activity of the brain, or whether there is 'mind at large' as Aldous Huxley describes in his Doors of Perception that is expressed through the brain.
My inclination is towards the latter but I have no certitude about this. I simply sense that there is more than just the material. If we were to take a copy all of the constituent atoms of a human being and precisely 3D print them into another location in space I'm not convinced the result would be another conscious human being. Obviously this is currently unprovable, there is so much we don't know.
I always have deep respect for your logic, you're way too brilliant, you've thought about these things far more than I have. But as you know, you and I have had different views on the importance of fidelity, and I think that will apply both to 'uploading your mind' (count me out, btw) or the purpose of virtuality.
I'm hardly a proponent of cybernetics, etc., but it seems to me that fidelity might NOT be the point, especially as we approach the need to adapt to new super-intelligences. Do I WANT to upload my mind, along with all of its connections to the world? Or just some substrate of it that can create new connections in virtuality?
Similarly, I have never thought that the purpose of virtuality was to achieve fidelity - we can fall in love, learn to deal with PTSD (as our work with vets proved), receive therapy, learn to collaborate, etc etc WITHOUT fidelity.
You write:
"Virtual worlds are populated with avatars controlled by people...puppeteering the avatars with strings leading back to the human world - back to our world. And yet we also want those virtual worlds to feel whole and consistent - with predictable and deterministic laws of physics. ...Maybe the inconsistency at the boundary of the avatar is deeply unsatisfying because it is impossible and inorganic."
I think it's so disappointing to still see this reference to 'puppeteering', something that was a common trope so long ago, and which has demonstrably been shown to be a vast over-simplification.
Having said that, I don't disagree about the experience leading to a 'schism' of sorts, because it is so inorganic. BUT, I don't know why you say it is *deeply unsatisfying*....to whom? To the millions of people who have made lives in the worlds you created? Again, it's such a vast oversimplification, and is stated as a truism which I would assume scopes wide enough to include kids in Minecraft or Roblox feeling "deeply unsatisfied"?
One thing about the reply from Lucio @lucio-pascarelli really jumped out (hey, can't you @ people?) :
"And this precludes the type of “chaotic” feedback loop that instead exists between real-life neurons and synapses. And as Jimi Hendrix knew quite well, it is not just the guitar that talks to the amp… the amp talks back, and in that feedback loop you create the magic."
In 2011 I wrote a piece inspired by Hofstadter, Godel and "I Am A Strange Loop", and saw in virtuality this venue for the playing out of strange loops. Hofstadter wrote:
"And yet when I say “strange loop”, I have something else in mind — a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by “strange loop” is — here goes a first stab, anyway — not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive “upward” shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one’s sense of departing ever further from one’s origin, one winds up, to one’s shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop."
Similarly, CASA wrote a paper about the recursive city, the layering of digital on the physical:
"Our message is that digital representation opens a cornucopia of possibilities in representation and communication through a variety of devices which in turn can be embedded in the city, Escher-like, and which indeed are rapidly becoming the city."
All of these things point out the recursiveness of these experiences, the strange loops.
I believe that as AI plays itself out, it will give rise to what I'm calling an AI-Mythos, which will look very similar to the belief sets that arose around avatars back in the day.
I mourn the future loss of my body's whole and physical connection to a world increasingly mediated by machines. I am NOT a solitary human, my mind does not end at the boundary of my body, and the machines will create a massive dislocation in my sense of self.
On the other hand, there is value in celebrating the strange loop-ness of what is to come, because instead of us being puppeteers, we will be co-pilots with adjacent intelligences; instead of "deeply unsatisfied", many of us will find new creative power in the loops, the ambiguities, the interplay with new virtualities; instead of losing fidelity, we will gain in an almost psychedelic connection with a hive mind, powered by intelligences that are ultimately unknowable.
Is this the world I want for my nephew? I'm not sure. I believe way more is lost by the shift to virtuality, and the idea of us all becoming disembodied virtual beings doesn't sound so great.
And so I am left with this:
"What if the idea of ‘you’ doesn’t have any meaning at all when referring to less than everything? What if we aren’t able to upload ourselves, but instead discover that we cannot exist separate from everyone and everything else in the universe?"
And ponder instead the fact that this question applies to my life *without* machines, which reaffirms the many many ways in which we agree: because ultimately, when we ponder these new frontiers, there is no escape from returning to the question of what it means to be human.
Thank you for this, and for that great thread as well! I agree with you that fidelity does not need to be the goal. But let me instead suggest that a similarly difficult goal may be to have many of 'us' together in a new space, with a correct tension felt between us as to our respective capabilities to influence the world and each other. When you move your arm, your avatars arm moves. But what I am hanging onto that same arm of yours, trying to keep it from moving? In our world, the laws of physics unite us. In a virtual world, there is some 'command' sent from outside to inside, and the commands may be in conflict. Putting it another way - virtual worlds are built to reify the experience of 'free will' - for example that you can always choose to log off, no matter what. My gut is that the more we probe at free will in the real world, the less we will be able to define it. Virtual worlds need to NOT offer us free will, in the same way the real world does not.
That’s a really intriguing point. Loops back to questions about free will in physicality, and social contracts (let’s assume we all have absolute free will, but social contracts place constraints on murder or, dunno, burping too loud in polite company).
Code *always* embeds constraints. What’s problematic about code is that it pretends to be neutral or a “tool” but the values systems of the designer are always present.
We’re seeing this now with safety systems on platforms like Midjourney where you can’t generate an image of an “Afghan” or “bust of a Greek statue”.
I think you’re striking at such a deep premise: let’s all agree that the experience of free will in physicality is a construct, but then agree on how constraints in virtuality should *also* be a social construct, one that isn’t opaque and has an underlying and transparent system and you’ve got me for life :)
You might find a post I wrote interesting, where I proposed that some of these issues around permissions and how we can navigate virtual spaces could be embodied in our avatars:
What was left I said was what the system of handshakes between world and avatar would look like. Codification of free will restrictions *should* be accepted, but I’ve never seen a protocol around these kinds of topics.
If we push back to the larger (and I think totally abstract idea) of “brain uploads”, then if that ever happens, the debates over how to restrict the free will of disembodied beings needs some work now, before we have a bunch of, you know, actual people running around in the singularity with unfettered access to cause harm. Virtuality is such an amazing test bed for so many things.
Well, you’ve had me from the first day I rezzed a prim, so am happy to follow wherever you go :)
As a pioneer in the idea(s) of "Virtual Immortality", and, the area you you are speaking about, I often refer to Sci-Fi Films (and other representations as such) to illustrate a number of your points. My interactions with Ray Kurzweil over the years has also resulted in realizations in this regard.
One film comes to mind in specific : "The 6th Day" This story seems to embody some of your points and there are other films to consider as well.
In my own work, I've focused more on the elements of one's "lived life" to create an "archive" (which I referred to as a "PersonaForm" which contains elements of ones scanned (or derived) physicality as well as their intellectual and personal information from which to re-simulate a person accurately and realistically via the technology of the day (VR/AR, etc.)
I appreciate your deeper dive into the actual granular, physical manifestations of our corporeal existence, and, in your addressing the potential concerns in the creation of an actual after-life beyond the virtual one I have strived to describe and raise consciousness in the creation thereof. :)
Nice, brings Putnam's externalism to a whole new level, and I also understand where Neil Stephenson got the inspiration for Fall.
But back to the subject, while I am more in the “as-yet-undiscovered quantum-mechanical magic” camp, I do believe we will get to synthetic brains comparable to animal brains including ours.
The doubt I have with AI today is that we have so far created simulated neurons – that are processed numerically - not synthetic neurons. And this precludes the type of “chaotic” feedback loop that instead exists between real-life neurons and synapses. And as Jimi Hendrix knew quite well, it is not just the guitar that talks to the amp… the amp talks back, and in that feedback loop you create the magic.
In Fall, Dodge is eventually rebooted inside a Quantum computer, and maybe we might really need quantum level computers to create synthetic neurons - or maybe we will need neuromorphic hardware.
The second doubt I have is in the “scanning” process. While the “connectome” is important – and the connectome might be scannable from a dead brain - so is the electro chemical state of each neuron and synapse. How do you actually capture that as a coherent snapshot in time? Is relativistic timing important even within 15cm of a brain? And will the capture process affect the state? Heisenberg must certainly apply.
The third doubt is that neurons and synapses are processed by the fabric of space-time itself. A virtual world instead requires computers running somewhere which can be turned off and fail.
Regardless, I do think we will eventually get there, and I would certainly like to be part of the beta program.
someone like you
guided by those baby blues
create flourishing
thoughtful things
some here are reluctant scouts
& we are but memory
shuttling the edges
of inevitable gravity
would you worry
we "weigh three times" our body
heure plurality
nostalgic for ancestry
of crystallized biology
submit, submit
to hardcoded heuristics
we serfs
we surf
algorithmic waves
somesuch permutations
for each stream of experience
evidence of existence
without exits, endless entries
there is no root
no mother tree
you remember you
we remember
whee!
Accidentally discovered a sketch of a song to impetuously leave this note for you.
Does it seem familiar, could you hear the cadence melding into some extemporaneous, timeless melody?
References!
https://songteksten.net/lyric/2528/38987/john-mayer/clarity.html
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/cloud-capital-killing-liberal-individual-by-yanis-varoufakis-2023-04
https://youtu.be/b2wQtu9YnWk
There are so many versions of ourselves. How others perceive us, how we perceive ourselves. The things inside we share selectively. Each changing moment to moment. We are ephemeral in every form.
Interesting idea - love it! Personally I think we’ll eventually figure out how to upload/store/transfer human minds into computational substrates - however the mind that arrives seems destined to rapidly deviate from ‘Human’ unless we also replicate the messy animal/instinctual elements previously provided by the body, through proprioception , emotion, physical pain and avoidance, etc.
Fascinating thought experiments and interesting to consider the non-human microbial matter and how it influences our thinking and actions.
Hits on the fundamental question of whether consciousness is an emergent experience from the activity of the brain, or whether there is 'mind at large' as Aldous Huxley describes in his Doors of Perception that is expressed through the brain.
My inclination is towards the latter but I have no certitude about this. I simply sense that there is more than just the material. If we were to take a copy all of the constituent atoms of a human being and precisely 3D print them into another location in space I'm not convinced the result would be another conscious human being. Obviously this is currently unprovable, there is so much we don't know.
Amazing post Philip.
I always have deep respect for your logic, you're way too brilliant, you've thought about these things far more than I have. But as you know, you and I have had different views on the importance of fidelity, and I think that will apply both to 'uploading your mind' (count me out, btw) or the purpose of virtuality.
I'm hardly a proponent of cybernetics, etc., but it seems to me that fidelity might NOT be the point, especially as we approach the need to adapt to new super-intelligences. Do I WANT to upload my mind, along with all of its connections to the world? Or just some substrate of it that can create new connections in virtuality?
Similarly, I have never thought that the purpose of virtuality was to achieve fidelity - we can fall in love, learn to deal with PTSD (as our work with vets proved), receive therapy, learn to collaborate, etc etc WITHOUT fidelity.
You write:
"Virtual worlds are populated with avatars controlled by people...puppeteering the avatars with strings leading back to the human world - back to our world. And yet we also want those virtual worlds to feel whole and consistent - with predictable and deterministic laws of physics. ...Maybe the inconsistency at the boundary of the avatar is deeply unsatisfying because it is impossible and inorganic."
I think it's so disappointing to still see this reference to 'puppeteering', something that was a common trope so long ago, and which has demonstrably been shown to be a vast over-simplification.
Having said that, I don't disagree about the experience leading to a 'schism' of sorts, because it is so inorganic. BUT, I don't know why you say it is *deeply unsatisfying*....to whom? To the millions of people who have made lives in the worlds you created? Again, it's such a vast oversimplification, and is stated as a truism which I would assume scopes wide enough to include kids in Minecraft or Roblox feeling "deeply unsatisfied"?
One thing about the reply from Lucio @lucio-pascarelli really jumped out (hey, can't you @ people?) :
"And this precludes the type of “chaotic” feedback loop that instead exists between real-life neurons and synapses. And as Jimi Hendrix knew quite well, it is not just the guitar that talks to the amp… the amp talks back, and in that feedback loop you create the magic."
In 2011 I wrote a piece inspired by Hofstadter, Godel and "I Am A Strange Loop", and saw in virtuality this venue for the playing out of strange loops. Hofstadter wrote:
"And yet when I say “strange loop”, I have something else in mind — a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by “strange loop” is — here goes a first stab, anyway — not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive “upward” shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one’s sense of departing ever further from one’s origin, one winds up, to one’s shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop."
Similarly, CASA wrote a paper about the recursive city, the layering of digital on the physical:
"Our message is that digital representation opens a cornucopia of possibilities in representation and communication through a variety of devices which in turn can be embedded in the city, Escher-like, and which indeed are rapidly becoming the city."
All of these things point out the recursiveness of these experiences, the strange loops.
I believe that as AI plays itself out, it will give rise to what I'm calling an AI-Mythos, which will look very similar to the belief sets that arose around avatars back in the day.
I mourn the future loss of my body's whole and physical connection to a world increasingly mediated by machines. I am NOT a solitary human, my mind does not end at the boundary of my body, and the machines will create a massive dislocation in my sense of self.
On the other hand, there is value in celebrating the strange loop-ness of what is to come, because instead of us being puppeteers, we will be co-pilots with adjacent intelligences; instead of "deeply unsatisfied", many of us will find new creative power in the loops, the ambiguities, the interplay with new virtualities; instead of losing fidelity, we will gain in an almost psychedelic connection with a hive mind, powered by intelligences that are ultimately unknowable.
Is this the world I want for my nephew? I'm not sure. I believe way more is lost by the shift to virtuality, and the idea of us all becoming disembodied virtual beings doesn't sound so great.
And so I am left with this:
"What if the idea of ‘you’ doesn’t have any meaning at all when referring to less than everything? What if we aren’t able to upload ourselves, but instead discover that we cannot exist separate from everyone and everything else in the universe?"
And ponder instead the fact that this question applies to my life *without* machines, which reaffirms the many many ways in which we agree: because ultimately, when we ponder these new frontiers, there is no escape from returning to the question of what it means to be human.
Thank you for this, and for that great thread as well! I agree with you that fidelity does not need to be the goal. But let me instead suggest that a similarly difficult goal may be to have many of 'us' together in a new space, with a correct tension felt between us as to our respective capabilities to influence the world and each other. When you move your arm, your avatars arm moves. But what I am hanging onto that same arm of yours, trying to keep it from moving? In our world, the laws of physics unite us. In a virtual world, there is some 'command' sent from outside to inside, and the commands may be in conflict. Putting it another way - virtual worlds are built to reify the experience of 'free will' - for example that you can always choose to log off, no matter what. My gut is that the more we probe at free will in the real world, the less we will be able to define it. Virtual worlds need to NOT offer us free will, in the same way the real world does not.
That’s a really intriguing point. Loops back to questions about free will in physicality, and social contracts (let’s assume we all have absolute free will, but social contracts place constraints on murder or, dunno, burping too loud in polite company).
Code *always* embeds constraints. What’s problematic about code is that it pretends to be neutral or a “tool” but the values systems of the designer are always present.
We’re seeing this now with safety systems on platforms like Midjourney where you can’t generate an image of an “Afghan” or “bust of a Greek statue”.
I think you’re striking at such a deep premise: let’s all agree that the experience of free will in physicality is a construct, but then agree on how constraints in virtuality should *also* be a social construct, one that isn’t opaque and has an underlying and transparent system and you’ve got me for life :)
You might find a post I wrote interesting, where I proposed that some of these issues around permissions and how we can navigate virtual spaces could be embodied in our avatars:
https://outofscope.bureauofbrightideas.com/avatars-permissions-and-the-well-lit-room/
What was left I said was what the system of handshakes between world and avatar would look like. Codification of free will restrictions *should* be accepted, but I’ve never seen a protocol around these kinds of topics.
If we push back to the larger (and I think totally abstract idea) of “brain uploads”, then if that ever happens, the debates over how to restrict the free will of disembodied beings needs some work now, before we have a bunch of, you know, actual people running around in the singularity with unfettered access to cause harm. Virtuality is such an amazing test bed for so many things.
Well, you’ve had me from the first day I rezzed a prim, so am happy to follow wherever you go :)
As a pioneer in the idea(s) of "Virtual Immortality", and, the area you you are speaking about, I often refer to Sci-Fi Films (and other representations as such) to illustrate a number of your points. My interactions with Ray Kurzweil over the years has also resulted in realizations in this regard.
One film comes to mind in specific : "The 6th Day" This story seems to embody some of your points and there are other films to consider as well.
In my own work, I've focused more on the elements of one's "lived life" to create an "archive" (which I referred to as a "PersonaForm" which contains elements of ones scanned (or derived) physicality as well as their intellectual and personal information from which to re-simulate a person accurately and realistically via the technology of the day (VR/AR, etc.)
I appreciate your deeper dive into the actual granular, physical manifestations of our corporeal existence, and, in your addressing the potential concerns in the creation of an actual after-life beyond the virtual one I have strived to describe and raise consciousness in the creation thereof. :)
This is beautiful <3
Thank you!
Nice, brings Putnam's externalism to a whole new level, and I also understand where Neil Stephenson got the inspiration for Fall.
But back to the subject, while I am more in the “as-yet-undiscovered quantum-mechanical magic” camp, I do believe we will get to synthetic brains comparable to animal brains including ours.
The doubt I have with AI today is that we have so far created simulated neurons – that are processed numerically - not synthetic neurons. And this precludes the type of “chaotic” feedback loop that instead exists between real-life neurons and synapses. And as Jimi Hendrix knew quite well, it is not just the guitar that talks to the amp… the amp talks back, and in that feedback loop you create the magic.
In Fall, Dodge is eventually rebooted inside a Quantum computer, and maybe we might really need quantum level computers to create synthetic neurons - or maybe we will need neuromorphic hardware.
The second doubt I have is in the “scanning” process. While the “connectome” is important – and the connectome might be scannable from a dead brain - so is the electro chemical state of each neuron and synapse. How do you actually capture that as a coherent snapshot in time? Is relativistic timing important even within 15cm of a brain? And will the capture process affect the state? Heisenberg must certainly apply.
The third doubt is that neurons and synapses are processed by the fabric of space-time itself. A virtual world instead requires computers running somewhere which can be turned off and fail.
Regardless, I do think we will eventually get there, and I would certainly like to be part of the beta program.
Fantastic comment...I tried to @ you in my own, sorry I couldn't figure out how!
Excellent trip down an exquisite rabbit hole!
Thank you!