[extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?

Robert Bradbury robert.bradbury at gmail.com
Sun Mar 18 18:25:59 UTC 2007


I choose "Plan C" (unique individuals).  Which means I would need to fulfill
being a copycat of Hannibal.  Of course aspiring to be a copycat of Clarice
has its merits but that would likely require a sex change operation (and of
course I have to get someone to take on the Hannibal role).  Interesting of
course to note that Hopkins cited the HAL 9000 as an inspiration for his
portrayal.  Now there's a spin exercise for you, to become remanifest as HAL
9000 interpretation of RJB, or maybe the RJB interpretation of the HAL
9000.  Hmmm....

Of course, on a somewhat more serious note, unless you invoke "magic
physics" the looking back in time exercise is probably a pipe dream.  What
you can hope for is an allocation of resources sufficient to recreate a
million (or maybe even a billion) variants on entities who leave behind
enough information that one can get "reasonable approximations".  So anyone
with a significant "dataprint" stands a chance of being recreated.  Whether
any future intelligences would bother to do so is an open question.  We have
the complete genome sequence of C. elegans, various Drosophila species, even
Pufferfish (Fugu rubripes).  We could, with sufficient funding, create them
from scratch in a lab.  Would we choose to do so?  I doubt it.  IMO, only at
such time as there are no forward progress vectors available will people
turn around and wrestle with the large scale recreation of the past.  I
doubt there will be a lack of forward progress vectors for a very long
time.  (Mind you we may close out the theoretical progress vectors in the
not-so-distant future, but that does not eliminate the engineering progress
vectors.)

So, the questions you should be asking are not whether you are appealing on
a universal basis, but whether you can make oneself appealing (for
recreation purposes) to a circa 2200, 2300, 2400, etc. era historian,
archaeologist or anthropologist who may have resources, but only of a
limited nature, at their disposal.

Robert
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