Programmer Humor

Counterpoint, from a complex systems perspective:

We don't fully know or are able toodel the details of neurochemistry, but we know some essential features which we can model, action potentials in spiking neuron models for example.

It's likely that the details don't actually matter much. Take traffic jams as an example. There is lots of details going on, driver psychology, the physical mechanics of the car etc. but you only need a handful of very rough parameters to reproduce traffic jams in a computer.

That's the thing with "emergent" phenomena, they are less complicated than the sum of their parts, which means you can achieve the same dynamics using other parts.

We don't even know what consciousness is, let alone if it's technically "real" (as in physical in any way.) It's perfectly possible an uploaded brain would be just as conscious as a real brain because there was no physical thing making us conscious, and rather it was just a result of our ability to think at all.
Similarly, I've heard people argue a machine couldn't feel emotions because it doesn't have the physical parts of the brain that allow that, so it could only ever simulate them. That argument has the same hole in that we don't actually know that we need those to feel emotions, or if the final result is all that matters. If we replaced the whole "this happens, release this hormone to cause these changes in behavior and physical function" with a simple statement that said "this happened, change behavior and function," maybe there isn't really enough of a difference to call one simulated and the other real. Just different ways of achieving the same result.

My point is, we treat all these things, consciousness, emotions, etc, like they're special things that can't be replicated, but we have no evidence to suggest this. It's basically the scientific equivalent of mysticism, like the insistence that free will must exist even though all evidence points to the contrary.

Why would bits not be conscious?

This just makes it more realistic

Hey, just be glad I changed it from asdf_test_3, okay?

Just FYI content warning for Pantheon there is a seriously disturbing gore/kill scene that is animated too well in the first season. Anyone who has seen the show knows what scene I am talking about, I found the scene pretty upsetting and I almost didn't finish the show. I am still a little upset that the scene is burned in my memory.

The show got kinda screwed over on advertising and fell to obscurity because of streaming service fuck ups and region locking, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s at least partially because of its harsh criticisms of the tech industry.

Okay so I can't 100% confirm this, but the first season wasn't popular because it was on whatever the fuck AMC+ is. Amazon bought it because of the writer's strike to get something out.

Yes, I just finished watching Pantheon and absolutely loved it!

Totally agree that it deserved more attention. At least it got a proper ending with season 2.

Also, the voice acting talent they got was impressive. Paul Dano was fantastic as one of the leads.

I already know I will never play this game, could you elaborate for me?

If I remember right, the game The Talos Principle calls that the Talos principle

The tv show Pantheon figures it will work, but it will be very disturbing.

Plottwist: consciousness is : Copy

I guess you ask for C++. There Type* can be null while Type& can't be null. When it gets compiled Type& is compiled (mostly) to the same machinecode as Type*.

There's also a book with a similar concept. It's not the focus until later in the book though. It's called

It wouldn't be you, it would just be another person with the same memories that you had up until the point the copy was made.

When you transfer a file, for example, all you are really doing is sending a message telling the other machine what bits the file is made up of, and then that other machines creates a file that is just like the original - a copy, while the original still remains in the first machine. Nothing is even actually transferred.

If we apply this logic to consciousness, then to "transfer" your brain to a machine you will have to make a copy, which exist simultaneously with the original you. At that point in time, there will be two different instances of "you"; and in fact, from that point forward, the two instances will begin to create different memories and experience different things, thereby becoming two different identities.

The first line passes the argument by reference, ie, the object itself.

The second line passes the object by value, ie, a copy.