[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[BillK]

On 4/5/06, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
> Why?   Why can't a "conscious being" create copies of itself and treat them
> as toys?  Where precisely do "basic rights" come from? [1] As spike points
> out there are all sorts of fun things you can do with the copies.
>

It's either a copy or it isn't.

If it is a copy, then it *is* you.  Nobody would know whether they
were killing you or a copy of you. So the copy has the same rights as
you have (whatever they may be). And they start to diverge into
different people as soon as they are created.

It is quite different if you are creating crippled (in various ways) beings.
e.g. A simple-minded version to clean house and take the garbage out.
A tough being with no pain sensation to clean up disaster areas. A
short-lived manic version for armies.

But really these tasks are better suited to robots, which will be
available by the time you are able to make copies of humans. In fact
there will probably be laws against creating crippled human type
beings.


BillK