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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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My BloggingHeads discussion with Will Wilkinson was posted today. We talked about overcoming bias, cryonics, social status, self-deception, disagreement, and more. I obviously need a better camera setup and more reliable phone line. Oddly I guess, an hour seems a short time to talk – I could enjoy going on like that for a whole day.
BloggingHeads Hanson & Wilkinson
I think online chat (IRC or similar) would be the ideal medium for this sort of thing. They used to do that at imminst.org, but that was with everyone talking to one guest instead of two guests talking to each other.
I don't consider my brain to be the "essence" of me. I do not think that I am my mind. Rather, my mind is a tool constructed by my genes to deal with variable environments.
If the environment didn't vary behaviour could be hard-wired in - and there would be no need or room for the mistakes of a trial-and-error-based learning system.
If it is working correctly, the brain can be expected to compensate for unusual aspects of the environment, and still promote the underlying interests of the genes that constructed it - since its primary function in living systems is to do exactly that.
As potentially-immortal essences go, the brain has pretty poor potential. The scope of the engineering project required to allow it to live forever is enormous - and it is not clear why people would devote much in the way of funds to it once we have AI.
What do qualify as potentially-immortal essences are ideas. Most of these are not bound up with brains. They can already replicate themselves independently of the minds that originated them - and appear to be doing so in enormous numbers.