Terasem Colloquium, December 10, 2021: VIDEO and impressions
Randal Koene, Max More, Ken Hayworth, Martine Rothblatt, Robert McIntyre, and other participants discussed consciousness and how to preserve consciousness beyond physical death at the Terasem Colloquium on December 10, 2021, via Zoom.
Here is the full video of the Colloquium, with all talks and Q/As:
Susan Schneider was expected to give a talk, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to participate. So in the first 15 minutes I opened the Colloquium, introduced all participants and talks, said something about Susan’s ideas, and offered some thoughts on consciousness and its preservation.
Topics: the nature of personal consciousness and identity (See the dissertation “The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation” by Max), cryonics, brain preservation (aka cryonics for uploaders), next steps in cryonics and brain preservation, mind uploading, and Terasem’s cyberconsciousness approach (see “The Terasem Mind Uploading Experiment” by Martine).
I think all the consciousness preservation methods discussed at the Colloquium will work, IF enough information relevant to personal identity is captured and stored in a form that some kind of future ultra-tech can use to reconstruct the original person.
Of course the question is what and how much information is sufficient. The possibility to compress large audio and video files to a small fraction of their original size suggests that lots of information can be discarded without losing information that is worth keeping (of course, the concept of “worth keeping” is application dependent).
In a Q/A with Robert (2h 32min in the video), Martine makes an analogy with the sound track of a movie:
“Is the sound track the same as the movie? No. Is the sound track the guts of the movie? Kind of yeah!”
If I had to choose between watching a movie without sound and listening to the sound track without images, in many cases I would choose the sound track because it would give me a better understanding of the movie. Yet, the sound track amounts to a small part of the information in the full movie, and can be further compressed to a small fraction of its original size without losing what is really worth keeping.
Of course static data is not enough: as emphasized by both Randal and Max, conscious awareness is a physical process that can only happen in a suitable physical substrate. In Randal’s words, “Subjective experience is a process, not a momentary state.”
Ken remains persuaded that the mainstream neuroscience establishment has a moral obligation to embrace human brain preservation for future mind uploading, and is uniquely qualified to take the lead. I praise Ken’s scientific integrity, but I don’t think this will happen. Not a chance in hell. Far too many mainstream neuroscientists are still persuaded that, in Ken’s words, “people that believe in mind uploading are crazy, and death is good.”
I think it will be up to small fringe groups to promote and advance these technologies from the lab to the fabric of society. I think at this moment, and in the foreseeable future, the human brain banks discussed by Ken and Robert (Robert is actually running a human brain bank and his talk focused on operational issues) need to protect themselves from the establishment.
Here are the slides I used for my opening presentation:
If you are curious about my own take on consciousness and its preservation (slides 10–13), see my book “Tales of the Turing Church.”
If you are curious about Terasem, see “Terasem: My interpretation.” Note that recent organizational changes have merged the old CyBeRev project into LifeNaut.
Watch the videos of the previous two Terasem events in December 2020 and July 2021, both focused on space. The next event, scheduled for July 20, 2022, will be again focused on space. 2022 will be the 50th anniversary of the LAST time humans walked on the Moon. This is sad, but it is also a reminder that we must get started again on the road to the stars, and this time permanently and forever.
Pictures: Zoom screenshots of Martine Rothblatt and Max More, with other participants.
