[extropy-chat] Spanish Socialists considergivingapeshuman-level rights

[A B]

Hello,
   
  Historically, the most common impetus for political or social change has been the personal discomfort of those people who felt "wronged" by the condition of the time. Unfortunately, people tend to only truly care about a given problem when they believe it has a high probability of negatively effecting them personally. (Or, it has already negatively impacted them.) It's sad but true.
   
  Here is another potential reason, why IMHO, it would be in *everyone's* best interest to safely and carefully "uplift" conscious animals to human levels of intelligence, at which time, their wishes can be determined. All of this after the Singularity.
   
  I haven't seen any solid evidence or argument that it is *impossible* for a human who has died, to later "occupy" the consciousness of a lower animal. I'm not talking about reincarnation or any other dubious claim, the animal would be an animal not a human, but the subjective experience of the animal may be "occupied" by a "being" that was previously a human. Here's another way that I look at it : The fact that I exist right now is an existence proof that I can "occupy" the mind of an animal (a human animal) *at least once* in the history of the universe. What is to stop this from happening multiple times? If I happen to die, perhaps next time I will "occupy" the mind of a gorilla. In which case, I would definitely prefer to be uplifted and given equal rights, than say living out my entire relatively pointless life in the wild or in a zoo.
   
  I know that this post sounds *awfully* mystical, superstitious, and/or religious. But I don't intend it that way. 
   
  If anyone knows of any evidence that such a thing is impossible, *please* direct me to it.
   
  An "uplifted" gorilla would have the ability to decide its own future. If for some reason it made the decision that it would prefer to return to gorilla intelligence and live in the wild, it would be done. But, I find it hard to believe this would ever be its choice. The technical aspects of the transition should be trivially easy post-Singularity.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich   


		
---------------------------------
Get amazing travel prices for air and hotel in one click on Yahoo! FareChase 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20060501/f48cc890/attachment.html>