[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

ablainey at aol.com ablainey at aol.com
Sat Mar 29 16:03:09 UTC 2008


 -----Original Message-----
From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>


No doubt there would be something terribly wrong if you found yourself
uploaded but completely cut off from environmental interaction. So, if
you're considering being uploaded, you should make sure that you are
given sensor and effector peripherals, or at least a very rich virtual
environment.


 Personally I have got past the concerns with 'Self' in the uploading by insisting on an incremental transference of function for the upload process.
For me, the next step in the thought chain and a big problem, is how we deal with issues like time dilation due to run speed. As soon as you are successfully uploaded, your perception of time would be dependent on the computational speed of the platform you are running on.
Imagine an upload running at 1 million times faster than the normal human brain! You get uploaded and start running at this speed, just 1 second after the upload process completes, the technician who uploaded you asks if you are ok? This question would have come 11.5 days after you have been uploaded (from your perspective). And the question itself would take a couple of days to be asked! The world would effectively freeze at the point of uploading.
This could be very scary for the first uploaded human, It could seem like millennia before another subject is uploaded to join you. With this amount of run time, the first upload subject could go mad, or just decide to take over the world!
This could be very similar to a quick take off AGI scenario.

Alex


 


 









 


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