[ExI] Human extinction

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:41 PM 8/19/2008 -0700, Lee wrote of:

>billions
>of people have never heard of uploading, and many
>would completely fail to understand it if they did hear
>about it. In those cases, we'd upload them in a flash,
>if, say we knew that a Gamma Ray burst was imminent
>and this was the only way to save their lives, right?

This is magical thinking, isn't it? You posit a world in which an 
unknown technology not only can copy a complete consciousness into a 
different substrate "in a flash" but can do this to *billions of 
people*, and yet somehow those billions have remained ignorant of 
this technology during its development and deployment across the globe.

Worse, where is this uploading supposed to be happening that is proof 
against the blast of an incoming GRB? Deep under the crust? On 
superluminal starships that can tear off as soon as the instantaneous 
uploading of billions of the ignorant is complete, outrunning the GRB 
shockwave? This isn't a gedanken, Lee, it's a cartoon word salad. Seems to me.

Damien Broderick