The atheist bus

[Avatar]

It all does eventually. That's why we start new topics. Until the same thing happens to them of course.

--A

[Cagliostro]

Getting back to the original topic of this thread:

I read today that the total number of people who objected to the atheist bus posters in London was 326.

326 - Nontotient, noncototient, untouchable number.

In the year 326, Helena of Constantinople discovers the so-called True Cross (traditional date).
The first church is built on the site of Vatican City, traditional place of Saint Peter's tomb.
Construction begins on the churches of Golgotha.
Christianity is introduced to the republic of Georgia by Saint Nino

[aliantha]

Getting back to the original topic of this thread:

I read today that the total number of people who objected to the atheist bus posters in London was 326.

326 - Nontotient, noncototient, untouchable number.

In the year 326, Helena of Constantinople discovers the so-called True Cross (traditional date).
The first church is built on the site of Vatican City, traditional place of Saint Peter's tomb.
Construction begins on the churches of Golgotha.
Christianity is introduced to the republic of Georgia by Saint Nino

What, you're vying for Sgt. Null's job??

[stonemaybe]

I saw one of the atheist posters last weekend when I was home in Ireland - strangely enough, as I was coming home from church with my parents!

Here's one of the buses...



There was an article in the newspaper last week, about a Christian bus driver who refused to drive one of them...

[Avatar]

It's not even a declaritive statement. It doesn't say "There is no god..." Just, "There's probably no god..."

--A

[Menolly]

*just sticking my head in to say congrats to Stone for this thread winning a Watchy*

[High Lord Tolkien]

I'm not sure where to put this.
But I thought many of us would like it.


*******************

"The best caller ever (The Atheist Experience)"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJxCFa8YmbQ&feature=related

[Sheol]

I can watch these for hours. Also check out the "Why people laugh at creationists" videos if you have time. Some of them extremly funny and educational. But the best of all is the Mr. Deity series.

[Orlion]

I can watch these for hours. Also check out the "Why people laugh at creationists" videos if you have time. Some of them extremly funny and educational. But the best of all is the Mr. Deity series.

"Why People Laugh at creationists" is an awesome series! I haven't seen the Mr. Deity series yet. Some videos in the same vain that I like are the ones by NonStampCollector and a lot of EdwardCurrent's videos...

[Sheol]

Mr Deity is great. Awesome quality and good jokes. It is well worth your time.

[StevieG]

Just saw my 1st atheist sign on a bus as I was driving to work this morning!

[stonemaybe]

Here's a scenario created by self-declared 'fundamental atheist' Iain M Banks in his latest Culture novel...

The setting is, thousands of years in the future, a utopian society, technology can 'save' your personality with all memories etc so that if you die, you can be temporarily 'housed' in a virtual world as a new body is created for you (or you can be downloaded into a drone or just about any 'object'). People tend to get bored of the 'real' world after a few hundred years so virtual afterlives are created instead. They can be your ultimate paradise designed in any way you (or vast artificial intelligences) can imagine.

Mr Banks' assertion is that these make religion redundant. Even those with very strong faith will decide on the 100% definite virtual afterlife rather than their 100%faith-based belief in an afterlife.

[Fist and Faith]

If that technology ever develops, we'll see if he's right.

Could be that technology is impossible, though. Could be personality cannot exist outside of the brain/body. Mind and body might be impossible to separate. A huge amount of our personality is determined by the unique hardwiring of our brain and the unique chemical balance in each of us. Personalities can be changed with medication/drugs, as well as traumatic brain injury. So even IF we are ever able to put a human's personality into anything other than that human's head, it would probably be a different personality when the process is complete.

[Vraith]

If that technology ever develops, we'll see if he's right.

Could be that technology is impossible, though. Could be personality cannot exist outside of the brain/body. Mind and body might be impossible to separate. A huge amount of our personality is determined by the unique hardwiring of our brain and the unique chemical balance in each of us. Personalities can be changed with medication/drugs, as well as traumatic brain injury. So even IF we are ever able to put a human's personality into anything other than that human's head, it would probably be a different personality when the process is complete.

I actually think a perfect digital replica of a personality is possible [will be, anyway]. BUT, as soon as it starts doing stuff, it will change just like real person's change, only more-so, because it will have accessible experiences a purely bio-person never would.
AND...I have to wonder if whatever it is that is "I" in the body will transfer...I can easily see the digi-person "remembering" and believing it is "I" continued. But would the "I" behind my eyes really go on? Or does it die?

[Orlion]

If that technology ever develops, we'll see if he's right.

Could be that technology is impossible, though. Could be personality cannot exist outside of the brain/body. Mind and body might be impossible to separate. A huge amount of our personality is determined by the unique hardwiring of our brain and the unique chemical balance in each of us. Personalities can be changed with medication/drugs, as well as traumatic brain injury. So even IF we are ever able to put a human's personality into anything other than that human's head, it would probably be a different personality when the process is complete.

I actually think a perfect digital replica of a personality is possible [will be, anyway]. BUT, as soon as it starts doing stuff, it will change just like real person's change, only more-so, because it will have accessible experiences a purely bio-person never would.
AND...I have to wonder if whatever it is that is "I" in the body will transfer...I can easily see the digi-person "remembering" and believing it is "I" continued. But would the "I" behind my eyes really go on? Or does it die?

I believe it's different, just because you could have the digitized version running while you are still alive. I'm assuming you wouldn't have two simultaneous sets of perceptions, so that makes for two different perceptions with much the same set of experiences up to a certain point.

[Vraith]

What I'm excited/scared by, and expect will be near-possible at least before I die was hinted at by Asimov [Robots of Dawn? Maybe] and developed as a secondary plot in Barnes...ummm..."Mother of Storms"...I think...[a book I found fascinating btw, recommend it...if it's the one I'm thinking of, anyway...]
The electro-chemical bridge between brains and computers. True cyborg/hybrid.
[yea, I know, they're not the only ones who've done it...but Asimov is most well known writer, and the story of it in Barnes was the coolest version of the happening]

[Avatar]

If it thinks that it is the "I," has all the memories and thoughts of the "I," then I think any difference is moot.

Whether it will remain that way after additional experiences and memories though, is open to question.

--A

[Vraith]

If it thinks that it is the "I," has all the memories and thoughts of the "I," then I think any difference is moot.

Whether it will remain that way after additional experiences and memories though, is open to question.

--A

I agree that to the world and "it-I" the difference may not matter.

But what about to "me-I?" I don't think anyone knows that answer now, I wonder if ever will...

[Zarathustra]

I actually think a perfect digital replica of a personality is possible [will be, anyway].

You can never have a perfect digital replica of an analog phenomenon. Just take music. No matter how fine you slice up an analog waveform into discrete values, it will never contain all the information in the original. That's because the original isn't digital. A replica is never perfect. "Close enough" doesn't change the fact that it's exists on fundamentally different level than what it is replicating. You could simulate a personality, but you could never replicate it without replicating the brain itself. Consciousness may very well be a phenomenon that arises out of the quantum nature of matter--something that digital or algorithmic processes could never replicate.

AND...I have to wonder if whatever it is that is "I" in the body will transfer...I can easily see the digi-person "remembering" and believing it is "I" continued. But would the "I" behind my eyes really go on? Or does it die?

Well, if you ask people like Daniel C. Dennett, we don't really have an "I" behind our eyes that is viewing things anyway. (I think he calls that the "Cartesian theater.") But people like him, functionalists and hard AI people, take the machine metaphor for the brain too seriously. They think the brain is basically a Turing machine ... which it's not. Which is precisely why you can't make a perfect digital replica. If you could, that would mean we're not really conscious to begin with. We just talk as though we are.

[Vraith]

I actually think a perfect digital replica of a personality is possible [will be, anyway].

You can never have a perfect digital replica of an analog phenomenon. Just take music. No matter how fine you slice up an analog waveform into discrete values, it will never contain all the information in the original. That's because the original isn't digital. A replica is never perfect. "Close enough" doesn't change the fact that it's exists on fundamentally different level than what it is replicating. You could simulate a personality, but you could never replicate it without replicating the brain itself. Consciousness may very well be a phenomenon that arises out of the quantum nature of matter--something that digital or algorithmic processes could never replicate.

AND...I have to wonder if whatever it is that is "I" in the body will transfer...I can easily see the digi-person "remembering" and believing it is "I" continued. But would the "I" behind my eyes really go on? Or does it die?

Well, if you ask people like Daniel C. Dennett, we don't really have an "I" behind our eyes that is viewing things anyway. (I think he calls that the "Cartesian theater.") But people like him, functionalists and hard AI people, take the machine metaphor for the brain too seriously. They think the brain is basically a Turing machine ... which it's not. Which is precisely why you can't make a perfect digital replica. If you could, that would mean we're not really conscious to begin with. We just talk as though we are.

yea...which is part of why I found the Barnes version interesting. It creates a union of digital/analog. Or at least parallel massively interpenetrating system. [actually, doesn't get that much into it in the book, but that's what it seems to imply, I think]
I think there will come a self-conscious digital intelligence...but I don't think it will be anything like our consciousness...and I'm not sure we have any hope of knowing what it will be like.