Re: Interested in thoughts on this excerpt from Martin Rees

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 11:31:29 +0200

Le 08-août-06, à 05:49, W. C. a écrit :

>
>> From: Stathis Papaioannou
>>
>> ...
>> Classical teleportation cannot copy something exact to the quantum
>> level,
>> but rather involves making a "close enough" copy. It is obvious, I
>> think,
>> that this is theoretically possible, but it is not immediately
>> obvious how
>> good the copy of a person would have to be (what Bruno calls the
>> "substitution level") in order to feel himself to be the "same"
>> person. But
>> as mentioned above, I don't think we need to insist on perfect
>> duplication
>> to the quantum level, because this doesn't even happen from moment to
>> moment in everyday life.
>>
>
> Thanks for the info. although I still don't think substitution level
> exists.
> If teleportation of human beings is real (I hope I can see it in my
> life),
> I think all biggest questions (such as consciousness, soul? Creator?
> the
> origin of the universe, meaning of life ... etc.)
> of this universe should have been solved.


I just said you were deadly wrong here, but rereading your post I find
it somehow ambiguous.
Let me comment anyway.
Human classical teleportation, although possible in principle, will not
be possible in our life time (except for those who will succeed in
some lucky cryogenisation process). Artificial brain will first be
developed with graft of genetically engineered animals neurons, through
progress in harnessing the immune system and prion diseases (that will
take time). Only latter will come "purely" artificial digital brain,
and even this will be a matter of piece by piece progress (artificial
hypocampus, artificial limbic system, .... until artificial cortex
(this one will take perhaps a millenium), and pionner of immortality
will have hard time for many technical but also social and ethical
reasons.

But where I think you are wrong is that articial brain and body, even
if it needs a millenium of work to succeed with some reasonable
probability, will not really help us in understanding the brain and its
functioning. It just happens that, even if it is *very* difficult, the
copy of a brain is almost infinitely easier that the understanding of
how a brain work (even assuming some high substitution level). To be
sure here comp says something rather negative: humans brains will never
completely understand the human brain. It is true that the 3000 AD
humans will perhaps eventually understand the basics of 2000 AD human's
brain, but only true their own bigger "brain" (including
self-developing machine) which will be beyond their comprehension. A
little like bacteria and amoeba "learns" to reproduce themselves
without any higher level understanding of what is going on.

Of course if comp is correct we can understand very fundamental
principles which are at the "logical origin" of the realities ....
(that's what we are discussing now).

Bruno





http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Tue Aug 08 2006 - 05:33:36 PDT

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