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[Bumber]

another way to understand this: imagine I teleported in "you from 10 minutes in the future" and then de-materialized now-you and left future-you in your place. Is that the same you or a different you? Logically, it's exactly who you physically would have become 10 minutes from now, so it is in fact the same you.

If you can be killed without "future you" paradoxing out of existence, then it isn't the same you, but a parallel universe version.

I would also say that stopping/pausing a machine consciousness might be considered killing it.

[Reelya]

Those are the exact type of questions that would need to be asked. The answers will challenge what we think we know about consciousness.

For example, if you take you now, then let 10 minutes elapse that's 10-minutes-future-you. it's the same you. I'm saying what if you take that you and push it back 10 minutes in time and erase "old you" at that point. Is that the same you or not? if not, why not? It was the same you before we did the time-travel bit, so why isn't it now?

You should also be able to pause an AI indefinitely, then start the simulation again and that shouldn't "kill" anything. For example say your running your AI at 1 billion updates a second, then slow it down to some lower rate of updates. That shouldn't change anything right? Even if the updates are 1 update a year right? So, then pausing the AI for a year shouldn't "kill" the AI either, as long as it resumes.

My point about the two machine stands however, let me reiterate that: if you're running a true-AI simulation on one machine and transfer the state over to a second machine then resume, that should continue running from that point, right? No break in consciousness, consciousness transferred to the new machine.

However, consider the situation where the second machine was already running an identical simulation, and you merely stopped the first machine running. Now from the point of view of the consciousness the situation is physically identical to the first scenario: the conscious simulation was running on machine#1, then it was stopped, then it resumed on machine#2 on the next update.

So, in this case where did the first machine's consciousness go? To the second machine or not? If not, why not? Do we say it couldn't have transferred over because the second machine was already "full" of consciousness? Saying there "was already a consciousness in the second machine so it couldn't transfer in this case" has no actual physical meaning or logic to it.

[Naturegirl1999]

This got me thinking, if your consciousness and body were cloned, but your cl9ne ended up in a different place than you, the one that started as a copy would gain new memories, so when you eventually met, you two would be different. I know this isn’t quite what you were think9ng but it made me think of that

[Starver]

This got me thinking, if your consciousness and body were cloned, but your cl9ne ended up in a different place than you, the one that started as a copy would gain new memories, so when you eventually met, you two would be different. I know this isn’t quite what you were think9ng but it made me think of that

Your situation is a fairly used trope. "Thomas" Riker in Star Trek is one that you might have heard of (a Transporter accident, of course... I'm amazed they ever work correctly).

There's a book I got from a discount/remaindered book store a few years ago (must not have sold as well as hoped in regular outlets) where the whole thing about the galaxy was various different 'cloning' methods. Main protagonist is a (slightly imperfect) clone created from a hard-copy record of his bodyplan (to atomic level detail) that some mysterious aliens found floating in space. Blown up and smashed but (almost entirely) reconstructable. If you have patience to scour the vicinity for the fragments and enough additional patience to piece it back together. Then decode it, and use that information to reconstruct the person they discover it encoded. That's basically the set-up, and now we have this 'clone', a veteran of many an intragalactic military action, no knowledge of how 'he' got encoded and why the encoding got 'destroyed' setting off to solve his own mystery.
Fairly soon (n.b. 'soon' is relative, there's no proper FTL, the galaxy is a big place, the societies in it work with that limitation, including the ones who share single consciousness between different bodies dotted many thousands of LY apart, "left hand not (yet) knowing what the right hand is doing" is one way to describe it) he reunites with his old squad, whose individuals seem to embrace their own unique way of living in this clone-heavy technosociety. One of them seems to prefer duplicating himself, letting all copies wander around for years at a time then, when two versions meet up they go into a room, something is decided between himselves, one of him leaves the room with the combined experiences of himself now reunited in the only surving body of the pair.

Almost the opposite, a much older book I once read features a 'side-effect' of teleportation being exploited. Normally the source-body would be destroyed in order that the destination body would be the only extant one. If it is not, there's moments of confusion as the experiences of the two selves (seemingly 'linked' in a quantum/soul manner) vie to be experienced by both selves at once. However, if you teleport whilst in a sensory deprivation chamber then the link remains one version (the copy) can go and do something very dangerous and ultimately fatal, at which point the consciousness in the 'home' version survives but with memories of how the copy died. Which was very important in the plot of this book (it requires exploration of an impossibly booby-trapped alien ship/artefact, where it's useful to know exactly how you died last time, each time you get your copy sent into it again) though needed something of a unique mental attitude to tolerate being subjected to such death/resurrection.

Of course, that's all fiction. Made to satisfy plot needs. In lieu of practical apllication and study, either of cloning or (sufficient) AI, it's more hypothetical philosophy than any natural philosophy.

[Reelya]

There's a book I got from a discount/remaindered book store a few years ago (must not have sold as well as hoped in regular outlets)

It's not necessarily that any particular book didn't sell well (in general) when they end up at those places.

What other bookstores do is they periodically clear stock to make room for new releases, so they sell large amounts of extra stock to those remainder places. You can't really return unsold books to the distributor to sell elsewhere. With the economies of scale of a retail book shop it doesn't actually make sense to keep every book in the store until they totally sell out. The same regular people are coming into to your store, so you need fresh stuff for them to look at.

My friend worked at one, they got pallets with a cubic-meter sized box jammed with books and it was his job to go through and sort them as to what they actually got (basically they were bought sight unseen, and it was a fucking mess inside those boxes). So they'd get between one and a dozen or so copies of any particular book. These pallets are not from the wholesalers, they're random junk crammed in there from when they clear retail bookstores but can't be arsed to sort them themselves: the point being paying someone to sort them out would be more costly than just cramming everything into a huge box then selling it, by weight.

[Starver]

There's a book I got from a discount/remaindered book store a few years ago (must not have sold as well as hoped in regular outlets)

It's not necessarily that any particular book didn't sell well (in general) when they end up at those places.

The other intimation of my assumption was that the story set down its complex scene-setting tale all the way up to the end of the book, setting out something (several things) biiiig as a potential galactic-scale plot arc, then ends. A search at the time revealed no second volume of the suggested series, so it probably failed to excite anyone enough to get the author to continue (or they were unable to, not for want of such a firm foundation), despite my own potentially continuing interest.

But this isn't the What Are You Reading? thread (it was once my "bag book", the one I had in a given bag to dip into while travelling, as opposed to the book by the sofa, atop the WC cistern, by the bedside, by the microwave, etc). Sorry. Forgot for a moment.

[McTraveller]

I think Elon Musk's recent tweets and the associated media storm are more confirmation of my theory that he's this generation's Howard Hughes.

[Starver]

Doesn't he have past form with 'deliberately' tweaking the share price?  (Yes, this is the thing I remember, maybe I'll check what parts of it he complied with since then when I have a moment or two more.)  I personally think he's playing premeditated games with the market, rather than actually going full meltdown as he seems to want us to think.

Possibly a bit of Willy Wonka on top of Howard Hughes?  Pre-Charlie Bucket, that is.

[Iduno]

I think Elon Musk's recent tweets and the associated media storm are more confirmation of my theory that he's this generation's Howard Hughes.

I was thinking Dr. No, but sure.

[Reelya]

Interesting issue here.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-tech-morphing/germany-bans-digital-doppelganger-passport-photos-idUSKBN23A1YM

Using what are probably adversarial training techniques, they've come up with photos of "you" that face recognition software is tricked into thinking you're someone else, who they already have a photo of. But these manipulations are invisible to the human eye. Endless possibilities for that sort of thing. Any sort of automated ID reader could be fooled easily.

[McTraveller]

Why does every electrical tool out there that uses Li batteries now have proprietary battery packs?

I just had to replace my cordless drill, because its battery pack died and the drill is so old (maybe 15 years? Hardly old for a tool to be honest. I have hand tools that are 40+ years old) they don't make that pack any more.  The drill otherwise functions perfectly.  What a waste!  (I *might* be able to disassemble the old 14.4v battery pack and replace the cells... but I haven't tried...)

I'm thinking about getting an electric lawnmower, but they all have proprietary battery packs.  My gas mower is like 20 years old - it threw a wheel bearing but is otherwise operable.  In 100 years, assuming you stored it properly, the engine would still work if you poured in gasoline.

But will I be able to get a replacement battery pack in 10 years for the current batch of electric mowers?

This is actually a concerning thought about electric cars.  Today you can run a car that is 50, 75, 100 years old.  But will even Tesla be willing to make battery packs for today's Model 3 in 50 years? Will factories still be capable of making the form factor for the cells used?

[Reelya]

If there's something you can't get, then you can look at that as a problem, but also as an opportunity. For example say you could 3D print an adapter for that battery pack that let you put in a standard battery replacement? Then, you got a real market there. There have to be a lot of people who are also like you chucking those old power tools out for the same reason, and you could refurb then.

[McTraveller]

Heh - I almost concluded my post with "who's with me to start a company to make standard battery packs!"  But then I realized I'm lazy and would rather just complain and hint that "they" are part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence and vendor lock-in for rechargeable battery packs.   

[Starver]

I'm alright, Jack, I've got a load of AAAs sitting around!

[Naturegirl1999]

Heh - I almost concluded my post with "who's with me to start a company to make standard battery packs!"  But then I realized I'm lazy and would rather just complain and hint that "they" are part of a conspiracy of planned obsolescence and vendor lock-in for rechargeable battery packs.   

Why not? First we need to get 3D printers, and samples of what is to be made, so we can better tell the computer how to make them. I’ve never used a 3D printer before, question: different ones use different materials, right? I’ve heard of attempts to 3D Print organs using tissues, which would likely be a different type of 3D printer than the ones we’d use for making battery packs, unless a 3D printer can use multiple materials?