[ExI] Human extinction

[Jonathan El-Bizri]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:59 AM, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

> On another list I said.
>
> > >My best guess is that physical state humans will not exist long
> > >after the singularity--something I can't see holding off even half
> > >way to the end of this century.
> >
> > >Then the question becomes how our intellectual descendants deal with
> > >the problems. I suspect at best humans will have the status of
> > >cats--in some ways an unnerving prospect considering what we do to
> > >cats.
>
> A person responded with a statement that religious objections will keep
> people from uploading.  I said:
>
> I know at least 4 people that if they got their hands on the
> technology would upload the lot of the religious folks looking for
> the Rapture.  I know it isn't ethical.  Perhaps I should write a
> story about a police officer who enters a rapture simulation to offer
> a rescue to the people in it.
>
> Story background, the evil dweeb hacker from Perth Amboy saved a copy
> of their state vector when they were uploaded.  Their bodies are
> preserved.  The simulation runs at 100 times wall clock, so by the
> time (a week) the poor cop goes in to tell them they are in a fake
> heaven they have been there 2 subjective years.
>
> They are offered:
>
> 1) reloading into their bodies with existing memories.
> 2) termination and reloading of their memories prior to the uploading
> into their physical bodies.
> 3) continuation in their current uploaded environment with memories
> that they are in a fake heaven
> 4) same as 3 but erasing the memory of the cop's visit.
> 5) same as 3 or 4 but forked with the original body being put back on
> the street with no memory of two years in heaven.
>
> Did I miss anything?  What would you do with such an offer?
>

You missed the anti-hero following the cop in to do cheesy Matrix-esque
superhero battling, the religious people being uploaded into another virtual
environment that feels just like the 'real' world but isn't, and the
religious leader type discovering his true amoral atheistic nihilist side.
And a few crisises of identity on both sides, of course.

:>

Jonathan El-Bizri
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