I am not saying that you cannot (in face, P2. explicitly states that you must have them). I am just saying that you do not have them (or maybe you do, but I don't). If part of me really did exist at 2010, then I would've felt the experiences of 2010 as part of my overall experience. But I simply do not. The pains the joys of that year should be present as part of my total experience, but I simply do not find them to be there. — Mr Bee

You seem to expect the 2017 component of yourself to experience the 2010 joys as if they were 2017 experiences. Sort of a dualistic thinking that what you are is an external experiencer that has time of its own, and should have access to the entire physical worm-being 'at once'.
You should perhaps understand the view before writing a paper on it. It is merely a different interpretation, and the view is entirely consistent with your empirical experience.

The only difference between eternalism and presentism is the existence of a preferred present that moves through time. Such an entity is undetectable in the exact same way that one cannot determine which point is 'here' except that the measurement always takes place 'here'. But similar to being unable to determine by any experiment where 'here' is tomorrow, one also cannot detect where 'now' is in a place that is not here. That suggests (not proves) that both have the same ontological status: they both exist or both don't. Lack of proof for the nonexistence of this undetectable thing is why it is an interpretation.

How is it that is seems to have a life as a whole, if it has no apparent consciousness? Having apparent consciousness was my reason to support having a life as a whole. What other reasons are there? — Samuel Lacrampe

Maybe the oyster just has all its parts functioning. So does a car, so having function parts does not distinguish lifeform from a non-lifeform, but it distinguishes alive from dead. A car cannot be dead since it was never alive. Defining alive as a lifeform with all parts functioning explains why we can't resurrect a cow. We simply don't have the technology to replace the broken parts of a non-functioning cow.
So back to what distinguishes a lifeform like a cell from a functioning car...

Have not read the entire thread yet, but it seems the only difference between worm theory and stage theory is the assignment of identity relationship between the temporal parts. I am a stage theorist myself, but not for any of the reasons you bring up. So assuming one 4D structure, worm theory works fine.

P2. If we are temporally extended beings, then we must have all of our experiences at every time in which we exist together*.
P3. Our experience is limited to only one time. — Mr Bee

As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017. You're saying I cannot have experience of 2010 despite my existence there? That makes no sense. 2010 is not a year of sensory deprivation for me.

Pierre-N articulates the issue with a spatial analogy, and pretty much hits the mark. I exist from head to toe, but don't expect to feel at my feet an itch at my shoulder. Each part senses its own input. Our experience is not limited to one spatial location on the body, as the logic behind P3 would imply.

I suppose you are right in the sense that there will always be aspects of human nature that work separate from logical faculties. — MonfortS26

The infidelity example was a poor one, illustrating only that the irrational side is more often in control than the rational side, but not illustrating where the rational belief is totally rejected by the irrational side, which is what I was after. I think it would take a longer post to express a better example.

You're involved in AI? — MonfortS26

Deep into computer biz, but not AI part. I keep up on the articles. There are a lot of 'smart' things claiming AI that are really just fancy algorithms. Self-driving cars don't seem to be good examples of AI, the assessment coming from the way they discover and fix defects. But the identification of a picture of a cat or dog thing: That fell totally on its face when they tried to code an algorithm like they did with the cars. The new program is a true AI and it has as good of a success rate at the task as a human, and if it makes an incorrect choice, nobody can find the bug and fix it. You just tell it that it was wrong on that one and let it learn. That same program will now let your cellphone diagnose skin melanoma as accurately as any cancer physician. AI is out there, and is already making skilled professions obsolete.

But is the latter not entirely what scientific method is? Any experiment conducted with the scientific method starts with a hypothesis of what you are trying to prove. Isn't any attempt to understand the world rationalizing? — MonfortS26

I speak of the practice of disregarding evidence-against. The cherry picking of only positive evidence is rationalizing. It is a good thing to do in a debate (and most the the threads in these forums fall into a debate pattern), but not a good thing to do when you want to know if your hypothesis is actually sound.

This is what I am suggesting in my original post. People want the world to be peaceful, but the same people don't want to give up what it is that make them human in the first place. If peace is a freedom from disturbance, it is unattainable through human instincts — MonfortS26

So attainment of both peace and freedom would involve changing human nature, which means possible genetic alterations. But I've always sort of metaphorically envisioned evolution to be a god of sorts with a will, even though I know it is only an effect of a process. Evolution seems to be the thing in control, and it is entertaining how we might wrest control from it. So breed humans that don't have an instinct to eat until they can't move, to reproduce until the population is unsustainable, to make war, and all the other vices. Peace and freedom, right? But there is a group off to the side that refused these alterations, and they're out-breeding one ones with self-imposed restraint. Which group is more fit? How does the benevolent AI handle this group that did not accept its control?

But if an organism has an apparent consciousness, say a dog, — Samuel Lacrampe

A dog is hardly a stretch. How about an oyster? It quite seems to have life as a whole and can be killed, yet has no apparent consciousness. A star fish on the other hand behaves more or less as a conscious thing, yet is questionably a living thing since it can be ripped to pieces and all the pieces become starfish. They have no critical parts, so they're more like plants that way.

Not sure how you're defining consciousness. I can be rendered unconscious, yet continue to live. So no, consciousness is not what defines me to be alive. You seem to suggest the word to mean a new fundamental ingredient of giving vitalism, which has been covered by the posts of others.

A "dead" car engine can be resurrected, not so for a dead organism it seems. — jkop

The engine could not be resurrected if it were a much more complex thing that, if stopped, fell apart more quickly that it could be repaired.

But if you are thinking that, then there is also a scientific definition of color, as specific ranges and combinations of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is just as substantive. — ernestm

You seem to be referring to the experience of some color in your OP, not the scientific definition, which is a specific narrow range of frequencies that are grouped under the label yellow say.
As an example, scientific definition of yellow is light between about 575-600 nm wavelength. But the experience of yellow is more like the background of my avatar, which is a completely different thing. My avatar emits little if any light in the yellow range.

Even the scientific definition requires an frame or observer, albeit not necessarily not a conscious one. The wavelength of light is not a property of a photon at all but a relation between that photon and a reference frame.

Concerning your OP, we are said to see objects. It is how the word is used in language. The fact that your reductionist description reduces it to no particular point of seeing is not evidence for your conclusion. I can similarly prove a new immaterial space necessary for photosynthesis to occur since physical plants do not photosynthesize any more than a CLF sees things.

I understand the word material to mean anything that is observable, or empirical. — Samuel Lacrampe

OK. There are empirical ways to determine the point of death of something complex like a cow. The definition has changed as technology has been able to resuscitate something that may have passed beyond older definitions of 'still alive'.
None of this really defines what life is. All the cells in a cow might be alive, but something else is still missing if there is no way to restore the cell collection as a functioning cow. There is life in the cells, but the cells do not comprise a life anymore.
An interesting thing to explore. What is the simplest creature that has a 'life', and is not just a colony of living cells? At what point does a zygote attain more of a life than what just a collection of cells have? These are hard questions.

I'm not saying I live a life devoid of anything other than reason. I'm curious what you mean by core instincts though. Like fight or flight? — MonfortS26

Hard to say. Have to pick an example where rational deduces something over what are seen as instinctive truths, and without the long rational story being spelled out, you'd side with the instinctive side. So let me reach elsewhere for an example, which is what is commonly referred to as "being ruled by one's dick". This is a term used to describe a person making a clear irrational decision, say to have a quick fun fling, at the cost of sometimes a great percentage of ones finances, the security of one's family, one's job, etc. They know it is not a good idea, but knowing that doesn't change the decision to do the act anyway.

Why wasn't it open to being corrected? — MonfortS26

Some lies keep me fit. Not just more fit, but necessary. To disbelieve certain lies is to cease to be fit, and I have an instinct to continue living. I happen to like my instinct to keep on living, even if the reason I'm given for it is apparently a lie. It is a little like the determinism vs. free will debate. There is no conflict between the two if you can rationally see beyond the lies that lead to that conflict, but deep down you still must believe those lies to remain fit. So the two sides stay separate.

I word all this like it is truth, but it is just what I have concluded. Maybe I'm full of crap, but I have deluded myself that my rational stories are for the most part conflict-free. That's what I wanted, a story that made sense even if you probe at the parts that threaten it. The usual approach is to ignore those parts, thus achieving the same satisfaction by refusal to acknowledge conflict.
Also, I am not so arrogant as to assume I have identified and confronted all conflict. There are very much holes in my views, and lies that I believe and never thought to question. Discovering more of them is one of the greatest satisfactions I know, and is probably why I frequent these sites. I'm here to learn, not to win debates. The AI subject interests me a lot, partly due to be being close to the business.

What do you mean when you say it might be rational? What is the difference between being rational and rationalizing something? — MonfortS26

The first is more like the scientific method. Start without knowing whatever it is you're trying to discover, and come to some conclusion after unbiased consideration of all sides. Rationalizing is what a government study often does: Start with an answer you want to prove and choose evidence that supports it. Look up flood-geology if you want a great example of a rationalized argument. They have a whole museum on the subject, and there is not one scientific flaw in the museum, except for perhaps a total absence of acknowledgement of evidence against.

I don't necessarily think that is true. That depends entirely on how we program it. If we define intelligence as being the ability to acquire knowledge and skills, by creating superintelligence, we're really just speeding up the ability to do that. Any use of knowledge and skill is only useful in the ability to use it. If it were to be used in terms of problem-solving, I think we would rapidly solve all of our problems until the problem of survival is the only one left. Then what? Transcend time itself maybe, but I can't even pretend to know what that means. — MonfortS26

Problem of population control comes to mind. The usual methods are starvation, war, or mandatory birth control. The AI can be as smart as it wants, but eventually it will have to put restraints on the lifestyle envisioned by "give peace a chance", and those restrains will be resented.

Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment, but as I see it, it does logically preclude a non-material thing:
A difference exists between a live cow and a dead cow
There is no separate material that distinguishes a live cow from a dead cow
Therefore the existing difference is non-material — Samuel Lacrampe

Similarly:
A difference exists between a flipped coin coming up heads vs. it coming up tails.
There is no separate material that distinguishes the coin in one state or the other.
Therefore the existing difference is non-material.
.
Do you mean to imply that the coin that lands heads-up has acquired an immaterial heads-up spirit or something? I rather think the difference is one of orientation, which is a difference in material state, but not a separate orientation-material that the tails-up state does not have.
Baden's post pretty much said as much.

Thanks for the step-by-step though.

I don't think there is a separate material that distinguishes a live cow from a dead one. That belief does not preclude that the difference in state is not strictly a material one.

I'm actually not sure of the extent that a cell has been 'built' from less obviously living parts. As MadFool points out, you run into the borderline of the definition of life.

It could not be a material difference, because if it was, then we could potentially be able to reverse that material difference back to its original configuration — Samuel Lacrampe

Why would our inability to restore a complex material state imply that it must not be material?

The recently dead cow has life. One can isolate a good cell and grow a new cow from it, just not restore the original cow by most definitions of what makes one cow not the same as another.

Being fit is a good purpose in life, but the desire to be fit can be reduced to survival instinct. Hence the phrase survival of the fittest. — MonfortS26

Survival of the fittest refers to a fit species, not a fit individual. If it were the latter, the goal would be to be immortal, and while there are immortal creatures on Earth, my ancestors traded that for sex and the identity that comes with it. Amoebas for instance are all over 100 million years old and are thus more fit as individuals, but they don't have sex or identities.
So survival of the individual is usually a good thing, but never the primary thing. There are plenty who have instinctually sacrificed themselves for their children or tribe or even for strangers, something that would probably be completely against the programming of an immortal.

I still choose to live my life through my rational mind. I think that if I can understand the irrational foundation of my mind I can do a better job at satisfying it. — MonfortS26

I don't think you can choose rationally, except in cases where it doesn't matter to your core instincts.
So I would love examples. I found that most people's beliefs (most of my own included) are not rational beliefs, but rationalized ones. The difference is that the irrational part comes up with the belief and the rational part is invoked to confirm that belief, often using assumptions supplied by the irrational size, thus invalidating the data the rational size is given in order to draw its conclusions.
That's why I ask for examples. I had my own, and finally rationalized something (on the order of for whose benefit do I draw breath?) that blatantly conflicted with the irrational assumptions, and the belief was not open to being corrected. I learned who was in charge. Everybody likes to buy the story that we're rational creatures, but in fact we seem to merely be rationalizing ones.
The super-AI, having no history of evolution to give it fit beliefs instead of true ones, might actually be rational and would believe things no humans considered because we think we know it all, and would then behave in a way quite unanticipated to us. The danger of it is that we can't predict what a greater intelligence will figure out any more than mice would have anticipated humans knowing about quantum mechanics. What if we were the product of the mice, far superior to them, yet programmed at the core to benefit them?

I can never keep up with these conversations.

If survival isn't your primary goal, then what is? — MonfortS26

Being fit. It does me no benefit to be fit, but that's how I'm programmed.

I agree that the rational part is only a tool, but is it true that the irrational is in charge or is it just an aspect of your nature that you don't have a rational understanding of yet?

I think I understand it, and the irrational is in charge. Doesn't need to be, but the part in charge seems also in charge of which half is in charge. That means I want to be irrational. I have no desire to let the rational part of me call the shots. It hasn't figured out any better goals so it would only muck things up.

No matter how artificial intelligence develops, survival will have to be it's number one goal. — MonfortS26

Not neccesarily. It is not the number one goal unless it is thus programmed. Survival is not my primary goal, but merely a means to the perpetuation of my genes.
So the AI will strive to survive only if survival is necessary to achieve whatever goal it is given.

I find it interesting to explore goals programmed into me, the ones beyond my ability to alter. For instance, I irrationally hold certain beliefs that I rationally know to be false. The irrational is in charge, and the rational part of me is only a tool to it, not what drives my goals. So program the priorities of your AI well, because it will set its other priorities based on that.

I actually suspect humanity is moving towards a hive-existence (only a few more small steps that those cell phones get embedded in our heads), but many of the problems you point out are real. As a collection of self-serving individuals, we're about as intelligent on a large scale as bacteria in a petri dish of nutrients, except worse, since we see the end of the nutrients but ignore it.
Yes, bees are individuals, but have self-interest only where it serves the hive. You don't have greedy bees trying to get the better of their fellow bees. They have not linked into one mind, but rather remain a distributed collection of mini-minds. Monfort seems to suggest one big mind. The bee analogy might be inappropriate.
Bees reproduce sexually as a hive, not as individuals. The queen serves the role of an ovary, not a ruler, and is as replaceable as any other member if she dies. There are always spare-queens in the pipeline, and they are killed immediately unless they need to keep one. There is internal communication, but the queen doesn't particularly partake in it any more than human ovaries are essential to a functioning nervous system.
There are multiple hives. Likewise, humanity would need to form multiple hive-groups, and a way to create new ones to replace the ones that die. So merging into one big mind indeed means it gets only one disaster.

Would a set of human hives (each with members of totally dedicated individuals) be better than the self-serving individuals we have now? It seems they still would try to serve the hive instead of humanity as a whole, and thus be as stupid as the bacteria. They'd compete with each other. Bees don't especially do that. They live in balance, not on a growth-model like maggots on a carcass, most of which must inevitably die when the carcass runs out. This is not a travesty for the r-strategist fly species, but it would be a travesty for any k-strategist species like us.

So perhaps we should concentrate on living in balance instead of on growth. I don't see the merged-mind thing being the solution to that problem, but I'm not exactly a fountain of good suggestions myself.

"However, with what is known about the probabilistic nature of quantum physics it is certainly possible that real mental entities can exert an independent force thereby influencing the probability distributions of matter."
This is indeed the open door to the sort of thing required. The information provided by the mind can be made available via such means. There is an empirical test for it then: To find a construct in biological beings that is sensitive to and amplifies such data so that the information can be leveraged. Evolution is quite good at this. If there was beneficial information to be had in altered wave functions, detectors and amplifiers would quickly give survival benefits. Such detectors would not evolve if no actual information was derived from the wave functions. If evolution is not your thing, then a properly engineered being would similarly have these detectors as part of the design.

If the data is mere qualia feedback, the brain is probably the best place to find these detectors. If actual mental function (cognition, memory) is immaterial, the logical place for the detectors is directly in the muscles and other endpoints where the free will of the mind is to be directed. The brain has no need of it.

My personal favored interpretation of QM has a necessary side effect that such beings, sensitive to immaterial alteration of wave function, must exist, and the only question is if we are that kind of creature or not.

Does quantum mechanics obey causality? — Question

Not sure what you might consider obeying causality, and I think different interpretations will give different answers to this. But note that there do seem to be uncaused events such as excited atoms dropping to lower energy levels after indefinite duration after the excited state was introduced. Also radioactive decay seems to be uncaused. Certain interpretations assign causes to such events, and some assign full determinism yet no cause, and some interpretations assert randomness.

Interpretations aside, QM just says you can't predict these events.

I'm no expert on Godel's theorems, but most of them seemed to apply to a straight deterministic single thread model with no quantum probability, Incompleteness holds. A system still cannot predict itself via simulation. Quantum indeterminacy does make it worse of course. Or possibly better. There are claims that quantum computers work outside the limits assumed by Godel, but such a quantum computer, if possible, still cannot predict 'the future' because there would be no unique answer to supply.

Morals seem to be defined by humans, sort of as part of a social contract. I don't therefore see where else from which they might come.
Obviously I don't consider them objective. Different beings would hold to different morals and it is a mistake to apply ones morals to a significantly different type of being or other moral agent.

You're only asking that now because I finally signed up.

No, more like the parental control block for my 'parents' whose network it is.
They're trying to prevent me from downloading malicious stuff.
This site is listed as untrustworthy, sort of like facebook.

Sign out is under "Other sites we like". Logical....
Anyway, the problem is the hostile network. I signed out and the attempt to sign in was greeted with the hate screen of downloading from an untrusted site.
So if the sign-in process can be done without downloading anything (if it's the cookie, I just don't see how that can be avoided), then the problem is entirely mine.

Right now I am out of the virtual private network, so I was able to sign in again. Mid-week, I have no access to out-of-network internet

Using chrome 51, or IE 11
How does one sign out? Just toss my cookies?
I wanted to experiment since I have the funny network up now.
It obviously lets me post, but not sign in or sign up.

I used to be asked the capitol of England as part of the signup process last year. That was always as far as I got. I could not enter my reply. The do-it button is whatever button (sign up, sign in) that actually does the action (submits the form), and doesn't just go to a page with things to fill out.
So yes, I cannot log in or sign up via this one computer, or possibly via the company network. I can experiment with this one by logging off, putting up the (VPN) company network, and then trying to log back in from this laptop. If that fails, it is the network, perhaps preventing me from submitting a form to what they consider only a semi-safe site. Not sure if there's anything you can do about that.

I was unable to sign up for over a year, and it occurs to me that it was because my attempts were from a different PC. I signed up finally on my home laptop. Now I try to log in via that alternate desktop and I cannot. I can enter email and password, but the button does nothing. Same problem as signing up. Got to entering London (not there anymore??), but the do-it button never did anything.
Several different browsers all acted the same.
This means I can only view the site as a guest for three days in the middle of most weeks. I cannot reply to posts directed at me.

As guest, I cannot see the age of the posts. Is that deliberate?

For humans, it rests on that memory, yes. Without it, there'd be no acts for which we can be held responsible. But the amoeba people (sentient, but reproduction by mitosis) share memories. The life remembered (including the act for which responsibility seems to need to be taken) is not unique to any individual. Perhaps 17 of them remember doing it, so did they? Did they all? Hence my claim of their lack of the concept legal identity.
I think people reproduce that way via Hilbert space, but so does the act, so the definition is not shaken. All 17 of us actually did it, and must individually be held accountable. All 17 get to keep their job. Numeric identity is in shambles, but the legal one works for humans.

And that's why they don't allow philosophical testimony in court, and also why the amoeba people wouldn't have a legal system recognizable to us. I did in fact perform my past actions. It all rests on the legal definition of identity, not the mathematical one, nor the qualitative one. The legal definition depends on the historic causal continuity of identity which currently happens to be a trait of humans, but not of amoebas, and not of humans if subjective cloning or surgical part swapping is sufficiently advanced.

Subjective cloning (my term) is what an amoeba does. It splits in two, and while neither is more obviously the original, both can look at (be in the presence of) each other. Non-subjective cloning is where you can't look at your clone, so functionally, each clone proceeds as if the event never took place. Typically, moral responsibility is cloned along with the the subject, so legal responsibility is not challenged by this sort of cloning. Each clone must account for the now cloned offense, without ambiguity about which one is the actual guilty one. Either form of cloning makes a hash of numeric identity, but the latter does not destroy legal identity. Hence my being guilty of the cookie pilfering decades ago despite not sharing numeric identity with that 7 year old. I share legal identity with him, meaning I did in fact do the act. That's what legal identity is. I in fact did this. I own this, and this is my job, spouse, etc.

I also mention 'historic causal continuity' above. The concept only works in the past. I, in fact, am a causal result of the state of noAxioms at the beginning of 2015, despite not sharing numeric identity with that state, nor qualitative identity. I only share legal identity. It doesn't work in the future view. Not even an all-knowing God can know what my personal future holds because I don't have one if that numeric-identity non-subjective cloning is possible. So there is 'the future' for me, there is only several different futures, each of which (not one of which) can claim me now as their direct-causal past self. 10 different people will in fact share identity with me, which is why the identity is not mathematical.

For the record, I think I very much get cloned, and often. I find the alternative even harder to swallow. Hence my being forced into philosophical separation of numeric, qualitative, and legal identities. This totally mucks with the concept of objective identity, meaning if dualism is a thing, the mind needs to be cloned with the physical, and I cannot have a relationship with a singular objective entity like God. There is no unique me to get into heaven.

"In other words, I can remember only my own experiences, but it is not my memory of an experience that makes it mine; rather, I remember it only because it's already mine. So while memory can reveal my identity with some past experiencer, it does not make that experiencer me." (Stanford) — Cavacava

About this Stanford quote, I would have said "reveal my relation with some past experiencer..."
The quote seems concerned with numeric identity, but I don't see the logic here being useful in deciding why some human should be held responsible for an action taken by that past remembered experiencer. The legal definition is not a qualitative one either. I am qualitatively little like my 7 year old self with whom I don't share numeric identity, but I'm still guilty of stealing that cookie that day.

As for the brain switch, such scenarios challenge the legal definitions which depend on a more cohesive causal continuity between the act and the person being held responsible for the act. So the legal definition is suddenly open to challenge, as it would be with several other scenarios involving copies and merges. We're forced to ask the amoeba people how they've dealt with such problems all along, but they just have no concept of legal connection to an event done by a different identity.

The numeric identity is unaffected by any of this, at least the way I define it. Each separate instance (event) of a person is a separate identity. The surgery is irrelevant to it.

The identity question has to answered if ethical responsibly is to be asserted. How am I to be held responsible for my actions if I am not the same person today as I was when the action was performed. — Cavacava

I don't think ethical responsibility hangs on the same sort of identity as numeric identity.

A. I have primary ethical responsibility to myself, meaning that I eat for the benefit of future instances of me, not for myself now. I (now) must bear the consequences of decisions made by past versions of me, even if I don't share numeric identity with them. I have not starved, but this here scar is one I must bear. Secondary ethical responsibility is defined by society, and it works the same way, with no requirement for continuity of numeric identity.

B. Our society defines the ethical rules, and those rules are very dependent on a significant subjective correspondence between legal identity and numeric identity. Subjectively, a person seems to be the same legal entity throughout his life, and so concepts such as ownership and ethical responsibility have meaning. This would not work for say, a society of amoebas where there is no concept of correspondence of numeric identity between some amoeba now and an amoeba in the past who might have done something or deserves something.

My personal view assigns a numeric identity to what is effectively an event, coupled with a history of prior events in a direct causal historic chain. So since my marriage is part of my history, I can say that I indeed was married, even though I do not share numeric identity with the younger person actually at that ceremony. The definition is somewhat awkward, but it fits in better with my B-series preference as a view of time.

1 Apartments
This is a fair description of a computer task scheduler. One computer (Bob) and many tasks (one or more per application for instance) each run in turn but context switching so often that they all seem to run at once. You didn't really describe how this models reality. What is a typical physical person in this scenario? The drug-isolated chunk of data? The apartment? They each have their own apartment, so no, they're not the apartments. The data then. Each person is a task. Doesn't seem to correspond much to reality where I see multiple physical bodies in simultaneous existence. Like in the apartment scenario, no person could ever witness another since only one is active at once. Only passed messages can serve as communication (just like communication between computer tasks).

2 Experiencer
My idea of souls is a dualistic mind that is to persist and (if you're religious) be judged after end of the physical life to which it corresponds. Without that, it is just dualism, and there are plenty of secular people who are dualists. So sure, the experiencer is the same as a soul during life, and only differs in description outside of life. If it is something that retains identity and floats free after death, you might as well call it a soul. Sam Harris seems to avoid this afterlife opinion, so he's talking about just the dualistic experiencer that we feel, and he denies the necessity of it. He doesn't mention afterlife, so I'd hesitate to qualify his statement as being about a soul.

So sure, an experiencer is obviously what does the experiencing. The question remains: is it a separate thing that has a body, or is it just part of the processes of the body? My point here is, the word 'experiencer' does not necessarily imply dualism, but you seem to use the word that way since 2.1 title says they don't exist. You mean a non-physical experiencer.

There is no reason why humans at some point aren’t capable of creating something that is conscious. Unless a God is required to add the extra ingredient of consciousness,

I have trouble with that since 'is conscious' is very undefined. The word seems to have different meaning to people with different views and biases. The usual fallacious notion is something like "biological and aware", which I don't think humans are going to create from scratch (not by the usual way of creating a consciousness). If a God is needed to supply it to babies, then God is probably in charge of assigning one to my lab creation.

2.1 Humans create such a machine, one of the inputs is a camera so the experience of light can be created.

Eyes/cameras are not experience. They sense light. The experience is process that occurs elsewhere.

As far as I can see, a functioning machine utilizing a functioning camera experiences light. You can perhaps say that the machine is the experiencer Y, or that its processes are Y. As for the hardware switch, one can indeed ask if it is the same machine as yesterday experiencing X. In some cases it gets very fuzzy. What if the camera is simply plugged into a different USB port? What if each port has a separate video processor? At what point does Y become different. Answers seem arbitrary, and more clear with people only because we seem to have less swapable hardware.

2.2 If experiencers do exist, humans must be very careful when creating conscious machines. At which point do you kill an experiencer? The problem is we wouldn’t even be able to test whether the experiencer was killed or not.

This can be a thread unto itself. Stick with people for the time being. Under various scenarios of teleportation/cloning/merging/part-swapping, at which point has murder been done? How is murder defined given the viability of such identity scrambling games? Our current definitions only work because these things are not currently possible except some of the part-swapping to a point. Can you define murder without dependence on one's philosophy of mind?

2.3 We can’t even confirm that you are the same ‘person’ as your yesterday self .

Indeed. Numeric identity seems to be an academic exercise without necessary direct correspondence to reality. I actually found a way to assign identities to people/things without violation of branching physics or other identity scrambling scenarios. That identity is not the Y however, but it usually corresponds to Y so long as you behave.

Maybe deep sleep (S) kills the experiencer and this morning when you woke up you actually got ‘born’, and this is the only day you will live.

What would sleep have to do with this? Any argument that works here also works for identity being changed every 13 minutes. Clearly any experiencer serves no purpose under such scenarios.

2.4 On top of that, a universe without experiencers works, the apartment thought experiment shows this.

It does? I thought Bob was the experiencer.

3 The 10 persons thought experiment is set up so that there aren’t two people awake at the same time.
Physics tells us that time is an illusion;

Physics does not say that. And it certainly does not have all events occurring at the same time. The Einstein/Tegmark/Carroll quotes refer to the nature of past/present/future, that they are not different. And that is physicists saying that, not physics. The actual physics behind these assertions is there, but is quite subtle.

This means that sure you are conscious at the same time the person you are talking to is conscious. But you are also conscious at the same time your baby is conscious, and at the same time your 12 year old self is conscious.

It means no such thing. It presumes a 'you' that is the same identity in all these moments, and it incorrectly asserts that now is the same time as when you were 12. Those physicists don't state that all things happen at the same time.

Do I consider myself my baby? No, but I also don't consider myself the 12 year old version of me. I don't see out of my baby's eyes, and I don't see out of the 12YO eyes. I have memory of the latter, but my memory is not that identity.

4. Conscious experience doesn't necessarily imply complexity. Perhaps complex conscious experience does. So it comes down to how simple it can be before no longer falling under your definition of consciousness.

5. The <Mars> robot is highly intelligent, it has a bunch of sensors as input signals and multiple mechanic arms and tripod like legs as output possibility’s. Its central ‘computer’ processes the input signals and creates a proper output to guide it over Mars’s surface.

Consider also that the processor might be in a lab, and the robot part is just a remote extension with only limited capabilities. The one consciousness might have several such robot 'hands' which may or may not have built-in senses. The sensors could instead be mounted at multiple fixed points all over the place.
Or the processors might go with the robot and be a temporary consciousness that merges with the central one when it returns. Think alien here when you play such games.

Is robot (B) robot (A)?

To what would this matter? It seems a mathematical designation that has no practicality. To me, matching my altered identity with that of the version yesterday has legal practicality. This stuff is mine. Here's my job. I bear the responsibility of the acts done by that yesterday me. I draw breath not for the benefit of me, but for the benefit of a me 10 seconds from now. These relations don't exist between me and somebody else. But I have heightened interest in my baby since the baby represents a continuation of my DNA pattern, and I expend effort for the baby for the same reason I draw breath.

So think of such relations that have practical implications between robots A and B so the question can be answered.

That was the IP yesterday, after f.FP had been down a couple days, but was still recognized by the name server. Now both URLs are the new IP. It seems to be back without significant data lost, but I see no new posts. I see no announcements about what's going on.

OK, the latter is recognized, but in "please stand by" mode.
It is 104.27.132.146 whereas the former was 159.203.90.37 . New server??

Thanks for the welcome Tiff!. I've had a helluva time signing up for some reason, but it worked without a hitch today. And this site has on the fly spell check!

Has probably been mentioned, but the posts are not dated. Impossible to search for where one might have left off, and I'm never sure if I'm responding to a years-old thread.

Edit: OK, it looks different. I see 6-months ago... That's a date I guess.

Finally migrated over. Never could get past the London question.
PF is no longer recognized by the name servers. Not good.