The other thread I didn't want to hijack promoted me to stand before you today and bear...whoops...I mean made me think what the theological and more specifically Mormonlogical ramifications of doing the impossible were - making an exact copy of oneself.

The insight into our natures that this thought experiment provokes is interesting. We don't immediately think of gaining a twin when we think of cloning but duplicating ourselves which is in my opinion about as likely as time traveling.

But what about your souls? Oh, how lovely would be the morning that actual human duplication happened because it would be the next step in killing the concept of a soul. This concept of a soul distracts us from being oh so human. We think of ourselves as ethereal stuff and in some beliefs stuff that can inhabit host after host more like a virus than a human being.

And Mormonism! What would self duplication mean for forever families? Just keep sealing every copy? Treat exact copies as individuals? The mind reels at the ramifications to their perfect unitizing of human breeding.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2020 03:44PM by Elder Berry.

We can't even get an AI that can think for itself beyond the confines of games so this is a feat that would probably be a century away.

There is no evidence for a soul, of course, but it probably would take a discovery like consciousness duplication for religion to finally be extinguished.

If sentient aliens were discovered, that would probably destroy almost all belief in the Abrahamic faiths though since it would expose the lie that their supposedly "universal" gods are utterly unknown outside of Earth.

Celestial Coffee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If sentient aliens were discovered, that would
> probably destroy almost all belief in the
> Abrahamic faiths though since it would expose the
> lie that their supposedly "universal" gods are
> utterly unknown outside of Earth.

I'd love to see this happen and what those religions would do. It is so interesting to me that we use science and religion to expand their truth propositions to include everything observable or not. We simply have to know about things that we possibly can't even ever know.

EB, there is an anti-matter EB, and if the two of you ever meet, you annihilate each other and it will as if neither of you ever existed.

So watch your step.

I am the anti-matter EB, so that other guy better watch his steps.

+Elder Berry:

"The insight into our natures that this thought experiment provokes is interesting. We don't immediately think of gaining a twin when we think of cloning but duplicating ourselves which is in my opinion about as likely as time traveling."

==Time travelling is possible. We can do forward jumps. Particles with a half-life can be accelerated and their half-life is extended by an amount predicted by the equations of Special theory of relativity. This would also mean that the stuff in this universe does not have the exact same age.

The soul:
I don't know what religious people mean by a soul. Let's assume it exists and whatever that exists (a book, a video tape, a chair), can be duplicated. I don't see any reason why it should not be possible for a soul.
By extension, a god can make copies of itself. That would certainly kill off monotheism.

I think of our brain as the hardware and our thoughts as software. Except that the design does not parallel the design of a PC and its software. We can easily transfer a software and its files to another PC. For our thoughts and such, there is no mechanism to do that.

~~~~iceman9090

iceman9090 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For our thoughts and such, there is no
> mechanism to do that.

Meme be you are missing the point?

The whole key has to do with self-awareness. The human soul is self-aware. The smartest super-computer can only see itself as a theoretical concept in a model, devoid of any real awareness of itself. It doesn't think. It processes information the same way a river flows.

For those who are familiar with how computers really work, you'll know that the world's smartest computers are no more self-aware than is an abacus, or a wrist watch. They run operational codes and operands to process information the same way a weaving loom makes cotton or silk cloths, or ancoin sorting machine sorts coins. These are no different in principal than cogs in a mechanical machine. There is no life force, no instincts, no happiness or sadness, no will to survive. Any self-defensive mechanisms they have are no different than the seat belt in your car. The seat belt doesn't care if you live or die. It just performs its designated function.

The soul is entirely different. We don't know how to create a soul outside perhaps, of procreation. And we don't even know how the soul part of that process even happens. We don't know whether procreation creates a soul or simply provides a temporary home for a soul to exist in this world. We don't understand what death does to the human soul, or how long our souls have been alive. All we have are theories with no evidence.

The idea to copy a soul probably originates with a question about what the soul is. If we can't create nor destroy it, can we copy it like a Xerox machine copies a page? Who would build such a machine to copy the human soul? This question is like the other soul-related questions, none of which we have answers to. It is almost pointless to speculate on this issue when we know that we can never know the answers to these questions in this life. Technology hasn't come any closer to answering this question now then it did before the invention of the wheel. Supercomputer intelligence mimics life without containing any real element of life what-so-ever.

I once saw a dog looking at another dog laying dead after just being hit by a car. This dog recognized death and what it meant. I could see it in his face. No one had ever taught him about it. He just recognized it and what it entailed. He knew as much about it as I do. He understood it more than any computer will ever understand it. This line of research is more likely to help us to understand the soul, far more than having an understanding of any computer.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2020 01:58PM by azsteve.

> The soul is entirely different.


This statement presents itself as if "The Soul" is understood.

Discussions (bullshit sessions) about the soul, it's composition and origin, can range both widely and wildly.

I sincerely believe that 'the soul', whatever it is, can and will create its namesake.

And very possibly without even understanding how it did it.

I think we are a deck of 54 cards!

Do you still have all your cards?

Mine are marked; face up or face down, it's the same.

He misplaced a couple but still has the jokers, so no one notices any change.

Now I know why he is so wild.

Quantum physics would tell you its in a superposition, therefore making it a supersoul.

outin76

Time is an experience, like life. I don’t think you can copy something that is beyond time. The Christ character understood the eternal nature of all life, especially himself, when he said “Before Abraham was, I AM”.

Everything is connected, or there would be no life, no evolution. There would be nothing. Whoever invented the Christ mythology was really dialed in. The authors of the Bible were on a whole different level than Rigdon and his co-conspirators.

Modern times are proving there’s something beyond the material. For example, NDE research. My wife, when she was alive, had an NDE as well as many esoteric experiences. Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe your distaste for religion stems from the discounting of this life in favor of “heaven”.

If the other place is so great, why are we here? Doesn’t it make more sense that “being here” is the point? Isn’t it stupid to mentally check out and wait to die and go to an imagined paradise when life is right here, right now? I had to have gone to a lot of trouble to be in “the now”. They want me to throw it away to enrich themselves? No thanks.

To me, soul is Marvin Gay and Stevie Wonder. Something real.

There is no "soul" in a human. We are all just clever machines. We THINK we have souls but really we are a collection of neurons and cells.

We do have the "spark of life" but so does everything living on this planet. When we die so does our "spark". Whatever we thought of as our soul goes too.

Evolution will bring about a new series of lifeforms that we created to become better than us. Based in computers, these beings will also become our caretakers. We will make great pets.

> Evolution will bring about
> a new series of lifeforms
> that we created to become
> better than us. Based in
> computers, these beings
> will also become our care-
> takers. We will make great
> pets.


The Stryx, uh-huh! (Find and read the 17 books in the Union Station saga by E. M. Foner to understand who the Stryx are. Available at your local computer via Amazon.)

If I became the pet of an as-far-as-I-was-concerned omniscient machine who didn't mind rubbing my belly, I'd do all kinda tricks!

I want to be the rich goddess’s Pomeranian that she carries around in her purse. EOD can be the chihuahua.

A while ago, I watched a YouTube video of a demonstration of a robot that looked like a dog. As the robot dog walked by, the guy in the video kicked it quite hard. It stumbled for only a moment, stuck one leg out to correct and prevent it self from completely falling, and then continued walking. It looked very much like someone kicking a dog. I felt bad momentarily, like I had just witnesses animal abuse. Then I remembered right away that this was just a robot. The incident still looked real enough that I didn't forget it and somehow the memory still bothers me. But the robot that got kicked couldn't have cared less about how it was treated. I think that's the difference between living vs non-living things. The robot will never feel pain nor empathy. It doesn't even know that it exists.