[extropy-chat] Bainbridg today in Transvision06 on personality capture vs info-resurrection

[Robert Bradbury]

On 8/18/06, david ish shalom <davidishalom1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bainbridge in his gloomy but bright lecture today in Transvisiono6 raised
> the issue of personality capture, in his own words: "record an individual's
> personality and genetic code, send them to distant planet and reconstitute
> the person there to begin a new life" [snip]


 If this is what Dr. Bainbridge actually discussed then he does not
understand what happens when the singularity slope gets really steep.

The first question involves what is meant by a "distant" planet?  If he
means within the solar system then it isn't "distant".  It is highly
probable that any intelligence interested in its own survival will already
be widely distributed [1] throughout the solar system within the next 30-50
years -- long before there could be any "receivers" for such information or
landings of nanotechnology based information carriers (sent through space at
some large fraction of the speed of light) on planets tens of light years or
more distant.

Once ones intelligence has become distributed throughout the solar system it
is next to impossible to transmit it to a relatively distant location unless
you intentionally constrain it to some minute fraction of its potential.  An
analogy that doesn't even begin to capture the disparity would be like an
intelligent dog sending an "intelligent" flea to live out its life in some
remote location.  The dog will have no interest in what happens to the fleas
once it has rid itself of them.

 "archive personalities, transfer them to computers, robots, and information
> systems and I find that rather than speculating or dwelling on developing
> philosophical ideas about it, I
> rather be practical, start where the already social sciences  ..know how
> to measure aspects of personality and continue from there.


 Yes, we may know how to measure the "personalities" of fleas.  But that
does one little good in measuring the personalities of dogs.


> [snip] I  have posted  to WTA-talk an article named "Info-resurrection" a
> way for your personal survival besides cryonic preservation. it started a
> thread in WTA-talk and I thank the many participants.


I have no argument with the concept or its potential feasibility.  On my
good days I even try to make a point of preserving those aspects of myself
and my history that are the critical path "crystals" would exist to
constrain a multi-RJB "info-resurrection". [2]  On my bad days I question
the usefulness of such activities.

my argument is that in front of the existential risks awaiting in the next
> 20 years
> or so, and being unable to tell if cryonic preservation will really work,


Cryonic preservation will work.  The much better question to ask is whether
anyone will bother to reanimate those preserved?  "Oh, look mom, I've
resurrected Marvin Minsky."   "That's nice George W.  Now why don't you go
outside and do something really useful like directing the disassembly of the
recently discovered pluton UB31397."

I  define info-resurrection as: capturing your critical self identity
> information , including  your life goals, and transformation goals,
> your personal genotype {your DNA} thus for future converging
> technologies to be able to reconstitute your personality either as a
> clone of yours containing also your life experience and self identity,
> or in purer information technology - your conscious artificial
> personal intelligence, android robot of yours, etc, to the effect of
> your survival.


There is little doubt in my mind that info-resurrection will be feasible.
However much more important than any external information (other than a full
real time sensory I/O archive) would be the preservation of as much of the
neural network as can be retained as possible. [3]  There is no doubt that
the external information could be used to resurrect many of us.  The
question should be which of the resurrections would be the *real* me?

There are days that I ask myself whether or not Sasha came to understand
some of these things some years before the rest of us.

Robert

1. I pointed this out at Extro III nearly a decade ago in slide 16
"Super-longevity Requirements" and slide 17 "Distributed Intelligence".
2. I may have watched too much of "The Charmed Ones".
3. I suspect that even a fraction of a brain in poor condition would provide
significantly more information than a very large amount of external data.
In our current world perhaps the only way to guarantee robust
self-destruction is to require ones body to be reliably cremated.  Even then
it is very difficult to eliminate all traces of and/or the possibility of
reconstructing ones genome as a foundation for resurrection simulations.
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