Name: Anonymous 2016-09-22 23:01
For humans to leave the planet we would have to shed our meatbags; this is an absolute certainty and no meaningful space travel can happen until we do. Presumably this would mean replacing the entire body, including brain (perhaps one neuron at a time to maintain integrity) and nervous system, with artificial replications, or else "uploading" our consciousness into a machine.
The latter may very well be impossible. It seems likely that consciousness, sense of self, is an emergent property of the entire body, and it is questionable whether you could "upload" that into another vessel. But that brings up an interesting question: how much of you is a product of sensation (much of the body seems designed to interpret the world outside yourself) and would you even want to keep that part of you? Would you want to replicate the body which was formed to perceive things for biological Reasons.
If you removed biological influence, would there be a "you" left? As you get older time seems faster because your brain is disregarding more and more sensation because it is used to it. Is that a biological mechanism? Would a mechanical you see a moment as years long, because mechanical you is perceiving the full spectrum of sensation? Or would years seem like a moment because your mechanical brain still wants to conserve energy by disregarding unnecessary repetitive information?
Further, are things like desire to create essentially springing from a biological source? As in, can every desire really be boiled down to the desire to procreate and ensure safe environment of offspring? Are our hobbies, etc. simply our brain interpreting that one innate drive in a flexible way?
Are we essentially robots "programmed" by biological needs? Or is there a sense of send that is not simply a delusion in service of encouraging us to procreate. If so, is our only role to develop the next step in "evolution" by creating a self-improving/self-programming AI that is unencumbered by biology? Would we even be able to recognize this thing as intelligence?
Remember what we learned above about the human mind perceiving time faster as we get older because the brain disregards more input as redundant? And that our brain only perceives a small spectrum of reality anyway? A true intelligent being might move so slowly as to appear frozen in time (maybe trees are intelligent). Or so fast we cannot see it (maybe radio waves are intelligent)?
These are the concerns that must be addressed before we can leave the planet, or not as the case may be.
The latter may very well be impossible. It seems likely that consciousness, sense of self, is an emergent property of the entire body, and it is questionable whether you could "upload" that into another vessel. But that brings up an interesting question: how much of you is a product of sensation (much of the body seems designed to interpret the world outside yourself) and would you even want to keep that part of you? Would you want to replicate the body which was formed to perceive things for biological Reasons.
If you removed biological influence, would there be a "you" left? As you get older time seems faster because your brain is disregarding more and more sensation because it is used to it. Is that a biological mechanism? Would a mechanical you see a moment as years long, because mechanical you is perceiving the full spectrum of sensation? Or would years seem like a moment because your mechanical brain still wants to conserve energy by disregarding unnecessary repetitive information?
Further, are things like desire to create essentially springing from a biological source? As in, can every desire really be boiled down to the desire to procreate and ensure safe environment of offspring? Are our hobbies, etc. simply our brain interpreting that one innate drive in a flexible way?
Are we essentially robots "programmed" by biological needs? Or is there a sense of send that is not simply a delusion in service of encouraging us to procreate. If so, is our only role to develop the next step in "evolution" by creating a self-improving/self-programming AI that is unencumbered by biology? Would we even be able to recognize this thing as intelligence?
Remember what we learned above about the human mind perceiving time faster as we get older because the brain disregards more input as redundant? And that our brain only perceives a small spectrum of reality anyway? A true intelligent being might move so slowly as to appear frozen in time (maybe trees are intelligent). Or so fast we cannot see it (maybe radio waves are intelligent)?
These are the concerns that must be addressed before we can leave the planet, or not as the case may be.