Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Raymond]

Would reconstituted Gertie even be alive and functional? That would seem a question so far beyond current capabilities that humanity will have to wait for their future AI overlords to work it out

It puzzles all who know me

Gertie would be gone all together. The particles making her up when she fell in the hole would all be changed into photons with no mutual interaction as the Gertie particles had (like ion currents running around on his neural network). Only a link to the last positions, momenta, quantum numbers, and other Gertie particles will radiate away in the photons, which are pure energy. All Gertie mass will be gone and only a diluting photonic memory of his final state will linger on. This will be the faith of all matter in the universe... only if all photons have diluted to infinity, a new big bang on the rD singularity will generate two new 3D universes, with new, fresh massive particles (quarks and leptons made up of two massless base fields). So Gertie will return...

[Gertie]

So Gertie will return...

dunn dunn dunnnnnnnnn...

[Raymond]

So Gertie will return...

dunn dunn dunnnnnnnnn...

o

[Sy Borg]

Would reconstituted Gertie even be alive and functional? That would seem a question so far beyond current capabilities that humanity will have to wait for their future AI overlords to work it out :)

It puzzles all who know me

Better to be a puzzling animated human than inert human stuff rebuilt from the BH's information! Meanwhile, the important quantum details would be lost to Hawking radiation, which gives no clue as to the source objects.

I always found the idea of lost information disappointing, how billions of people accumulate so much life knowledge and experience that is simply lost when they pass.

[Tegularius]

My argument was that, even if all the physical aspect6s of you were reconstituted, this would surely not include all of your hard won accumulated knowledge. If you fell into a black hole, I can't see how the quantum states in your brain would be replicable.

Thus, it seems that some information would be destroyed, and I don't know how this works with physics's claim that information cannot be destroyed.

I can't either, since I can't see memories or memory states as information. It depends on what "information" specifically pertains to in the physics domain. As I think of it, the kind of information which is imprinted on any one entity is not the kind amenable to recreation. There is no dynamic to a memory which may force it to reappear once it's shredded. Shakespeare's plays for example, though created by a person as a product of nature, are not themselves the creations of nature except indirectly and specific to a single individual. That doesn't preclude the ability of his brain, if reconstructed in a BH, to possess the same talent without any knowledge of prior plays. It's the same as being reborn, abilities intact, but without any knowledge of accomplishment before that hypothetical replication.

[Raymond]

The brain and body are not reconstructed near the horizon. Say that a memory of my childhood (not that long ago...) is engraved into an nice pattern of connection strengths (widened synapses) between neurons in my brain and that a neural electric process runs with least resistance on them. I remember the childhood scene when I fall into the hole. Nobody knows the true nature of physical charges (be it electric or color), so the conscious experience cannot be explained. So the experience is linked to a material process in my brain and body. The material process doesn't explain it though. It merely states that someone has the conscious memory of childhood. The moment you fall in, there is only an entanglement realized between all the particle making you up and virtual particle states on the horizon. What is not included though are the interactions all these particles have with one another. The virtual particles, once realized, do not have the causal connections that exist in you falling in.

Take the childhood memory. The vacuum just above the horizon is entangled with literally all particles involved in the memory. Once realized these virtual particles won't interact to form a brain. They are not produced at once nor with the same spatial relationships as yours. They get real by the strong curvature and annihilate with their anti's giving through the information to photons that escape.

Note that all virtual particle in the vacuum near the horizon are entangled. In agreement with the maximum information that can be contained in the hole. Or better, the maximum information contained on the horizon, as the stuff inside the hole is no literal information (though in formation), but that which the information is about.

[Atla]

My argument was that, even if all the physical aspect6s of you were reconstituted, this would surely not include all of your hard won accumulated knowledge. If you fell into a black hole, I can't see how the quantum states in your brain would be replicable.

Thus, it seems that some information would be destroyed, and I don't know how this works with physics's claim that information cannot be destroyed.

I can't either, since I can't see memories or memory states as information. It depends on what "information" specifically pertains to in the physics domain. As I think of it, the kind of information which is imprinted on any one entity is not the kind amenable to recreation. There is no dynamic to a memory which may force it to reappear once it's shredded. Shakespeare's plays for example, though created by a person as a product of nature, are not themselves the creations of nature except indirectly and specific to a single individual. That doesn't preclude the ability of his brain, if reconstructed in a BH, to possess the same talent without any knowledge of prior plays. It's the same as being reborn, abilities intact, but without any knowledge of accomplishment before that hypothetical replication.

There's no mistery there, physicists think that all our memories, knowledge etc., no matter how "dynamic" they are, are made of physical stuff.

[Raymond]

My argument was that, even if all the physical aspect6s of you were reconstituted, this would surely not include all of your hard won accumulated knowledge. If you fell into a black hole, I can't see how the quantum states in your brain would be replicable.

Thus, it seems that some information would be destroyed, and I don't know how this works with physics's claim that information cannot be destroyed.

I can't either, since I can't see memories or memory states as information. It depends on what "information" specifically pertains to in the physics domain. As I think of it, the kind of information which is imprinted on any one entity is not the kind amenable to recreation. There is no dynamic to a memory which may force it to reappear once it's shredded. Shakespeare's plays for example, though created by a person as a product of nature, are not themselves the creations of nature except indirectly and specific to a single individual. That doesn't preclude the ability of his brain, if reconstructed in a BH, to possess the same talent without any knowledge of prior plays. It's the same as being reborn, abilities intact, but without any knowledge of accomplishment before that hypothetical replication.

There's no mistery there, physicists think that all our memories, knowledge etc., no matter how "dynamic" they are, are made of physical stuff.

I'm a physicist, and indeed a memory is made up of particles. If you think a memory, collective, parallel currents run on parallel paths of least resistance. The paths are "dug" by previous experiences that strengthened the connections between the neurons involved. It's a dynamical process of which only a static image is replicated at the horizon. The only information conserved is a link between your last state inside the BH and the outside so unitarity is not broken.

The conscious experience of a memory is not explicable by material particles, for who knows what particles are? No physicist in the world (not even me...) can explain what charge is. But you can feel it...

[Atla]

There's no mistery there, physicists think that all our memories, knowledge etc., no matter how "dynamic" they are, are made of physical stuff.

I'm a physicist, and indeed a memory is made up of particles. If you think a memory, collective, parallel currents run on parallel paths of least resistance. The paths are "dug" by previous experiences that strengthened the connections between the neurons involved. It's a dynamical process of which only a static image is replicated at the horizon. The only information conserved is a link between your last state inside the BH and the outside so unitarity is not broken.

The conscious experience of a memory is not explicable by material particles, for who knows what particles are? No physicist in the world (not even me...) can explain what charge is. But you can feel it...

I agree of course, everything including memory, can probably be seen as physical. ("Physical" and "matter" are of course in the end empty concepts too, they just mean "that which exists".) So in theory, a human could be 100% replicated, and could be "processed" by these quantum fluctuations at the event horizon, just like everything else. It's just that on a philosophy forum we can't fully rule out various forms of dualisms either.

[Raymond]

There's no mistery there, physicists think that all our memories, knowledge etc., no matter how "dynamic" they are, are made of physical stuff.

I'm a physicist, and indeed a memory is made up of particles. If you think a memory, collective, parallel currents run on parallel paths of least resistance. The paths are "dug" by previous experiences that strengthened the connections between the neurons involved. It's a dynamical process of which only a static image is replicated at the horizon. The only information conserved is a link between your last state inside the BH and the outside so unitarity is not broken.

The conscious experience of a memory is not explicable by material particles, for who knows what particles are? No physicist in the world (not even me...) can explain what charge is. But you can feel it...

I agree of course, everything including memory, can probably be seen as physical. ("Physical" and "matter" are of course in the end empty concepts too, they just mean "that which exists".) So in theory, a human could be 100% replicated, and could be "processed" by these quantum fluctuations at the event horizon, just like everything else. It's just that on a philosophy forum we can't fully rule out various forms of dualisms either.

Read my last words regarding physical charge (electric, color, supercolor).

We can't be replicated and this doesn't happen on the horizon.

[Atla]

Read my last words regarding physical charge (electric, color, supercolor).

We can't be replicated and this doesn't happen on the horizon.

Replication and the horizon aren't related, I just mentioned them both.

Not sure what your point about charge is. No physicist can explain what any qualia is, including the "feeling?" of charge.

[Raymond]

Read my last words regarding physical charge (electric, color, supercolor).

We can't be replicated and this doesn't happen on the horizon.

Replication and the horizon aren't related, I just mentioned them both.

Not sure what your point about charge is. No physicist can explain what any qualia is, including the "feeling?" of charge.

Qualia are made of structured particles in the brain. Particles are charges interacting with other charges. Already at the fundamental level, love and hate struggle. Love between opposites, hate between like. It's so weird that that's in the world!

[Atla]

Read my last words regarding physical charge (electric, color, supercolor).

We can't be replicated and this doesn't happen on the horizon.

Replication and the horizon aren't related, I just mentioned them both.

Not sure what your point about charge is. No physicist can explain what any qualia is, including the "feeling?" of charge.

Qualia are made of structured particles in the brain. Particles are charges interacting with other charges. Already at the fundamental level, love and hate struggle. Love between opposites, hate between like. It's so weird that that's in the world!

[Gertie]

Would reconstituted Gertie even be alive and functional? That would seem a question so far beyond current capabilities that humanity will have to wait for their future AI overlords to work it out

It puzzles all who know me

Better to be a puzzling animated human than inert human stuff rebuilt from the BH's information! Meanwhile, the important quantum details would be lost to Hawking radiation, which gives no clue as to the source objects.

I always found the idea of lost information disappointing, how billions of people accumulate so much life knowledge and experience that is simply lost when they pass.

If you could make a functioning, living replica of Gertie before she fell in the black hole, the specific neural connections which correllate to Gertie's specific memories would be preserved, and she would presumably be able to recall Gertie's memories in the same way Gertie did.

So while a complete physical description of Gertie (all the material physical information about Gertie) won't capture what Gertie is experientially thinking or feeling or her memories which she can bring to mind, a physical replica will still capture that experiential information.

It's just that physics has no place, account of, or descriptive informational representation for conscious experience.

We can note mind-body correllation, and theoretically potentially 'decode' the patterns of neural connectivity in Gertie's physical brain's memory system (and other brain systems) to know what Gertie's memories are, but only because of that correllation. But we don't know why the correllation exists (the mind-body problem). So we can only assume destroying the material brain processes (eg by jumping in a black hole) destroys conscious experience, and the ways that conscious experience can be described (its information). But physics has no direct way of tracking that conscious experience itself, only the correlated physical brainstuff.

[Tegularius]

My argument was that, even if all the physical aspect6s of you were reconstituted, this would surely not include all of your hard won accumulated knowledge. If you fell into a black hole, I can't see how the quantum states in your brain would be replicable.

Thus, it seems that some information would be destroyed, and I don't know how this works with physics's claim that information cannot be destroyed.

I can't either, since I can't see memories or memory states as information. It depends on what "information" specifically pertains to in the physics domain. As I think of it, the kind of information which is imprinted on any one entity is not the kind amenable to recreation. There is no dynamic to a memory which may force it to reappear once it's shredded. Shakespeare's plays for example, though created by a person as a product of nature, are not themselves the creations of nature except indirectly and specific to a single individual. That doesn't preclude the ability of his brain, if reconstructed in a BH, to possess the same talent without any knowledge of prior plays. It's the same as being reborn, abilities intact, but without any knowledge of accomplishment before that hypothetical replication.

There's no mistery there, physicists think that all our memories, knowledge etc., no matter how "dynamic" they are, are made of physical stuff.

There's a big difference between physical stuff and that which is recorded by physical stuff. A ram module is not the same as the information recorded on it.