This is the second post regarding this topic. Whatever I write here has more to do with getting my thoughts straight than actually holding any arguments for or against.
Let's just say writing it down helps me keep track of my thoughts.
I remember complaining about people who believed in robots that would be able to do as humans do and perhaps overrule them one day. I believed the speculation to be ridiculous. Reasons for that were basically the fact that they needed to be programmed by humans in the first place. Programming is basically a set of calculated formulas or codes that give out orders for the machine to carry out. I find the word calculated to be crucial here. To me humans have too much of a free will to be calculated. That is not how we seemed to function to me until my brother mentioned that maybe we (humans) are programmed as well. In the beginning my reaction was 'what in the blazes are you saying we're programmed?' I'm trying to lead a reasonable conversation here. Then it dawned on me.... genetic coding? Are we genetically programmed to act the way we do?
And if that is true, does that mean that our free will (decisions and choices) is limited? Is there only so much we can wish for? Or is our free will infinite? Or we ourselves biological robots?
I could wish for anything that could randomly pop up in my head right now. But perhaps the only things that would pop up are memories already registered. I could wish to jump like a frog, or be burried underground deep under the ocean, or wriggle like a scubbledubble (whatever that is). Or I could try wishing for something no human wished for before by being creative..skwiggle like a skiddlefiddle. Just for the heck of it... just because I can. Or were those wishes programmed into me as well? Let's say my choices are finite and I would then not be able to wish for something I know nothing of... what I mentioned here were just word games and bringing letters together to form an unknown word. Again, nothing special.
We apparently don't get born with a blank page waiting to be filled with experience but rather as a negative waiting to be produced to bring out the picture. To me that does make more sense...What if that means that all the choices we make or don't make are all a set of probabilities? What happens in me when I say to myself "My mind tells me to do this but my heart tells me otherwise"..Is it a mystery or simply a complicated thought process all stimulated by the mind? Why do I sometimes feel sad and not know how or where it's coming from? Does that mean I can actually control who I love? Or am I genetically programmed to love only certain types of people who meet my genetically preferred criteria? Or would anyone else manage to make me love them if they find out what the genetic formula built in me is? Perhaps love is not unpredictable as people think.
Does a variety in choices and personalities necessarily negate this phenomenon? Or does it simply mean that the genetic coding in their bloodline developed differently from mine?
Does everything I do and say have a historical ancestory background? (Which means I would not be able to pull off anything my ancestors haven't pulled off before because it is not a part of my genetic code. And that the only evolution and progress I make becomes more apparent and developed due to the intermingling of different races (thus genetics)..which create new formulas, which render humans either more developed by time, but not in the meantime. Therefore we are a complex embodiment of codes.... codes that developed throughout millions of years. Civilisations lived and died to come to our point today.
If our codings and choices truly are finite.... then I find it not at all impossible to create a digital equivalent. only instead of using food for fuel it would be using electricity. And maybe... just maybe. Once a formula could be thought of that understands the concept of our free will (that is) probability... a robot might be given estimations of its own. Which is only theoretically possible if it undergoes growing up and learning in time...just like we do. Am I beginning to understand the concept? ... Are robots beginning to sound more human?
Suddenly I'm thinking it's possible. Though the fact of our very being, our existence, our individuality. If that could truly be preserved by uploading our minds as Calum Chace imaginatively describes. If my sense of existence only comes to life if my individual neurons remain actively intact the way they always were. ... then perhaps I could be digitally reborn. Perhaps my brain neurons are as unique to me as my fingerprints.
Perhaps there could be two of me.... this thought still needs to be processed in my head.
