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It is impossible to vote on the mobile version of CP and is usually not worth the trouble of switching to the full site just to vote. This is one occasion where the trouble is justified.
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Time Magazine: "The Rapture of the Nerds" [^], April 17,2014.
"A new religion has set out to store memories for centuries and deliver its believers into a world where our souls can outlive our selves." While some humans, as discussed here recently, debate the dangers and opportunities of a future in which robots become "like humans," other humans are interested, evidently, in "immortality" through transferring their "consciousness" into computational machinery, or saving it in some form that, in the future, could be re-constituted.
While this Time Magazine piece may be a thinly-veiled promo for the new movie, "Transcendence," and the "Terasem Faith" [^] some kind of strange teratoma erupting from the flesh of SteamPunk-America (note the magazine article never mentions how many people might be using Terasem's services), other, more serious, writers have long proposed that many modern people effectively operate as-if they "believe" in "science and rationality" in the same way other people believe in male Sky Gods.
“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.” Jorge Luis Borges
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BillWoodruff wrote: A new religion has set out to store memories for centuries I foresee huge halls where they can stare eons at their virtual belly-button lint, with a world completely uninterested in their memories.
BillWoodruff wrote: as-if they "believe" in "science and rationality" in the same way other people believe in male Sky Gods. You should see the threads where fans of various telephone-manufacturers come together. The problem would solve itself if they were allowed arms.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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The thing that everyone seems to forget (quite conveniently, haha) is that consciousness is deeply entwined with the unconscious. And since, by definition, we are not conscious of our unconscious, how can that be "digitized?"
Also, and quite interestingly, is the affects of hormones on the consciousness. Women who have taken testosterone have a feeling of being "on top of the world", "in control", aggressive, etc. Those are all conscious experiences that are directed not by thought, but by a chemical reaction with the brain. How is this to be captured?
Also, memories are not consciousness.
What's sad to me is that even a basic study of philosophy and biochemistry would reveal just how incredibly complex the concept of consciousness actually is. Yet again, education is clearly lacking, replaced by the misplaced euphoria of technological solutions.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: What's sad to me is that even a basic study of philosophy and biochemistry would
reveal just how incredibly complex the concept of consciousness actually is.
Yet again, education is clearly lacking, replaced by the misplaced euphoria of
technological solutions.
Let's just say that this already did not work very well in Star trek It was the same idea in 1966 and despite all that has happened since then it'ss still science fiction. Besides that, why would I want to have an immortal copy of myself?
Marc Clifton wrote: The thing that everyone seems to forget (quite conveniently, haha) is that
consciousness is deeply entwined with the unconscious. And since, by
definition, we are not conscious of our unconscious, how can that be
"digitized?"
Inaccessible for you, but not to the device that does the scanning and digitizing, obviously. Still, the complexity remains. Evolved systems can have a fearsome complexity. I would not be surprised if it was discovered that even quantum states play a role in some biological processes, together with biochemistry and electricity.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
I hold an A-7 computer expert classification, Commodore. I'm well acquainted with Dr. Daystrom's theories and discoveries. The basic design of all our ship's computers are JavaScript.
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CDP1802 wrote: I would not be surprised if it was discovered that even quantum states play a role in some biological processes, together with biochemistry and electricity The novel Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer[^], which I just finished reading a few days ago, addresses this approach.
Software Zen: delete this;
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BillWoodruff wrote: in "immortality" through transferring their "consciousness"
It's not a transfer, it's a copy. There is no immortality, original meat still dies. Why would anyone want a digitized copy of themselves running around?
And talk about narcissism. Here you go universe, I'm so awesome you're going to want a copy of this for all time. I'm sure the copy wont run out of interesting things to say... But who knows, I'll be long dead.
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thrakazog wrote: Why would anyone want a digitized copy of themselves running around? It might be useful to have a copy of Stephen Hawking to kick around.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Unless his work has flaws in it nobody else is smart enough to understand. Leading us down the wrong rabbit hole for eons.
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"Wait let me take a Selfie.."
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I love thinking about and discussing these issues and ideas.
However, the main problem I see is that there exists no commonly agreed upon definition of many vital terms:
- soul
- god/God
- consciousness
- intelligence
- spirituality
- faith
- religion vs. Religion
Is there some "essence" at the core of my existence that is of itself transferable to another vessel such as a mechanistic host such that the original vessel becomes "not me" and the new one "me"?
Or is it only possible to create a "mere copy" of the original, presumably neuronal, configuration - which precludes ACTUAL immortality?
But hey. It's fun to ruminate.
"Norman coordinate." Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeeeeeee.......
Cheers,
Mike Fidler
"I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
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Did the $7 each lesson run by the park rangers, it was good, The troughs of gravel are seeded, so you do get to see if your technique sucks or not. Then you can buy a plastic pan and go down to the river where Marshall found gold and started it all and try your luck there.
The ranger said its best to go deep, so, even without any tools; all you are allowed are hands and plastic pan, I went deep. And after an hour I got one fleck of gold! A real fleck, from the very same place Marshall did 166 years ago!
Anyway, its a lot of fun. If anyone is out there its worth spending a day in lovely countryside (really, it is stunning) and having a go panning while slobbing out with a nice picnic.
Next time I have to sneak a shovel in with me.....
"The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s." climate-models-go-cold
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I did something similar with a friend of mine some 6-8 years ago. We spent a few days driving up through the whole area on highway 49 and seeing sights from Oakhurts to Coloma (Clicky[^]). We walked around at the park in Coloma, but did not do the tour you mentioned.
Somewhere along the way, we drove down to one of the rivers deep in a canyon and tried our luck for a few hours. We were wading through shallow waters, panning the dirt. I think the stuff we found was Fool's Gold, but the sunburn on my back was real enough .
All in all it was a great drive through a significant historical area with beautiful scenery.
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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SoMad wrote: beautiful scenery
It reminds me a lot of NZ, really stunning.
"The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s." climate-models-go-cold
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Good for you; I did the same 50 years ago, though there weren't any rangers selling lessons. Luckily, my Dad taught me to pan on the East Fork of the San Gabriel River in the San Gabriel mountains just north of our house. I got a fair bit of gold, too, though I got more in our local river. These days I don't pan anymore, though there's plenty of gold where I live. Once in a while I did up a 5 gallon pail of dirt in the desert and bring it home, then pan it evenings. It always produces some material, but never enough to be commercially viable.
Still, it's a fun hobby, and once in a while - like Marshall - you get lucky. Good trip!
Will Rogers never met me.
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There was this program on TV where someone claimed you could make a living "mining" the sidewalks of San Fransisco for jewelry that people dropped. It was some game show where they had to guess which claim was true.
I couldn't endure it to the end so maybe it was a false claim after all. Sounds plausible though.
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it was a Penn and Teller thing, I think.
and it was true
At least, there was someone who earns a living finding scraps of jewellery on the sidewalk in NY
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I need to push the Page Down button (PgDn) a whole bunch. I believe the actual number is 354 times.
I searched for a piece of freeware to do this.
SEO is alive and at work across the internet. All searches led to pages with ads and stuff that had about nothing to do with the topic at hand.
The closest I could find were these sites...
WINSITE[^] CNET[^] and BROTHERSOFT[^]
I welcome comments from anybody who can direct me to a piece of freeware that will...
- press a given button on the keyboard
- wait a certain amount of time (5 seconds, maybe 10)
- repeat the loop X number of times
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AutoHotKey should work.
EDIT: It seems they have a different site here[^].
(I removed the original URL)
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
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It is down for some reason.
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I think it came back up.
Am investigating it now.
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