If someone concludes that it's fine for them to eat cows because cows never invented computers, then there's not really much of an argument against aliens turning us into meat slurry because they have the 4-chambered quantum brains needed to invent hyperdrive and we don't, is there?

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
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    1 month ago

    It's especially funny to me because it betrays a lack of understanding of how computers (and physics) even work. Thinking you can build a perfect copy of a person from previous records of their existence is like thinking you can with absolute certainty 100% accurately reconstruct a 1000x1000 image from a 100x100 resized copy of it. Sure, you can make an educated guess what was in those missing 990,000 pixels, even make a pretty good extrapolation, but since there are a lot more ways to combine pixels into a 1000x1000 grid than there are to combine them in a 100x100 grid, then by definition the smaller image must map to multiple possible larger ones - and a .png is a hell of a lot less complex than a human being. Entropy says no.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
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      1 month ago

      I don't even go into the "it's fake" argument which tends to go into very dehumanizing ideas, like people now that have prosthetic limbs are somehow "less human" and the like.

      That said, I also argue that "that perfect copy is literally the original and if you disagree you are a mystic hippie that believes in souls and fairy dust" arguments also dehumanize people by way of suggesting that your existence, right now, is that disposably interchangable and a widget made at any point in the future (or a billion widgets) not only replace you but also effectively render your original self invalid in favor of the new "originals." I feel like it's primarily death-cheating cope fantasies from people that are (understandably, I admit) afraid of death and want to believe that pressing a button will bring their subjectively experienced current selves back from the dead.

      I mean that's exactly what happened with Raymond Kurzweil. His dad died, he really didn't handle grieving that well, and wouldn't settle for anything less than Singularity(tm) computer magic undoing that loss. It's a grand heaven promise, a religious one, but with the trappings of secular scientism all over it.