Human-To-Host Transfer

Published May 14, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey gents,

I know it’s rather early in the week for a telegraph question, but mine actually originates with last week and more specifically your discussion on the Telegraph (was it an email from a guy named Ken maybe?) about the exact nature of consciousness transfer. This is possibly the biggest question I’ve been driving myself a bit nutty over since Ford’s S1E1 monologue about calling forth Lazarus from his cave.

Can you guys PLEASE go further into this this week, as having just watched Ep 4 it turns out to be majorly topical in the context of James Delos’s resurrection (or cloning?). This is how I would phrase the question you guys were ruminating upon on Friday: IF a person has their mind and memories recorded into code, and IF that is implanted into a host, IS IT actually a continuation of the life of the original human or simply a cyber-genetic clone? I love the philosophical debate this show sparks, but I’m on Team Ford when it comes to there being no inflection point, that we are simply carbon-based computer systems at our essences. So in this context I’m focused more on neurology and psychology.

*** To wit, if I’m about to die and I fall asleep on the operating table and have a little ice-cream-cone code-brain manufactured, do I ever wake up again? Or do I DIE (permanently) and there’s simply a robot out there that’s subsequently born with my memories as its backstory and cornerstone? The latter result seems pretty irrelevant to me in this scenario, as I’m long gone and my decision to undergo this procedure required an all-consuming narcissism in the first place. (I didn’t do it so my loved ones could hang out with my clone while my body is six feet under and my consciousness lost to the ether.)

I’m afraid the answer may be less simple than the one of which I’m so desirous, i.e. it may come down to which part(s) of an organic brain hold and process our illusion of consciousness, and whether that can be put into computer code and hardware, but I’d reeeeally love to hear more of your collective SoTV take. My head has been hurting for about two years now trying to parse this one out, so please, boys, allow me to humbly suggest that it’s deserving of some more deep diving.

Keep up the excellent work.

Best,
Karl D

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