[ExI] Bodies

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Thu Mar 18 04:59:15 UTC 2010


James wrote

> Lee wrote: 
> 
>> SURELY I speak for at least some, here, who see the benefits
>> of achieving uploading wholly in these other terms:
>>
>> * increased security
> 
> Security from what/who?

As Stathis explained, "physical" security :-)

The idea is that if you are being computed at thousands of
different places simultaneously throughout the Earth's crust,
then you're pretty safe even from enormous meteor impacts.

> I think that the belief that uploading will somehow reduce
 > the impact of competition and corruption is a pipe dream....

Evidently, you aren't talking about the same thing as some of
us who've been on this list for a very long time. We all need
to occasionally check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
every so often. I hope you do.

Understand that all this is *extremely* hypothetical, even if,
as many argue, inevitable!

As Stathis also said,

 >>> * brain tampering
 >>
 >> How would one know? Trust the hash algorithms indicating
 >> cohesion? Who wrote those programs? Who wrote the compiler
 >> and tool chain to implement them? Who loaded them...
 >
 > I think Lee meant tampering in a positive way: directly modifying your
 > own brain to be the sort of person you would like to be.

Quite right. The questions you raise of course cannot be
answered at this time. We're in the positions of Romans
wondering what the world would be like if energy was
freely available from the walls. I wouldn't blame Romans
for having fun with those ideas even if the exact "how"
was not going to be resolved for millenia.

>> Are you finding yourself curious about enough things?
>> Or curious enough? Curiosity itself is [simply] a certain
>> kind of brain behavior. As for me, I'm not sufficiently
>> curious about knitting or kayaking, though it would be
>> neat to experience going off Niagara Falls in a kayak,
>> now that I think of it. And there are lots of things
>> that don't begin with the letter "k" which I intend
>> to become curious about if I make it.
> 
> Mental solipsistic masturbation.  So the ultimate goal
 > of this grand socio-technical experiment is so we can
> spend our time in a dynamic mountain cabin exploring our 
> every whim of insanity.  Pass.

What insanity? Wanting to have new, different, or various
experiences? You can't mean that. Perhaps you just refuse
to entertain the idea that you yourself could ever leave
your physical body and still enjoy life.

As Keith hinted, you have no way of knowing for sure that
it hasn't already happened.

Lee



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