[ExI] Bodies

[Max More]

Commenting on the part of my paper that said "I would be hard put to 
name an Extropian who seems to reject the body and the senses."

Lee wrote:

>You can now name at least
>one Extropian who'll be very happy to leave his body behind, *once 
>there is something far better to host him*, supposing we ever get so 
>lucky as to attain that possibility.

I don't really have any dispute with what you say here or elsewhere 
in your comments. I, too, would eventually want to transfer my 
cognitive functioning to distributed hardware (or, if not 
distributed, have many backups created as frequently as possible). I 
don't think this is "rejecting the body" in the sense that I was 
commenting on in my talk/paper. The view I was tackling was the 
belief that transhumanists hate their bodies or are disgusted by 
them, or that they want to spend all their time in pure thinking mode 
with no sensations. (As suggested by, for instance, Erik Davis in 
TechGnosis.) A distributed person can still connect into various 
bodies -- preferably with enhanced senses -- or virtual bodies.

I'm not sure whether or not we feel differently about the value of 
actual, physical senses (as distinguished from "senses" that tell you 
what's going on in a virtual environment. I expect to want to keep 
senses that tell me about the physical world -- if no other reason 
than self-protection. Even distributed hardware could be damaged. One 
way to do that, of course, is to have a body or bodies, although a 
rich array of networked and distributed sensors would be superior to 
those set in a single physical body. However the senses are housed 
and organized, I would definitely want to be able to sense the 
external (physical) world.

I think you do see it the same way, since a bit later you write:
"I ought to have many sensors throughout the Earth, not just allowing 
me to check against threats..."

>I liked very much the parts of your essay, reading it again after 
>all these years, that denigrate mere wireheading and the relatively 
>mindless fantasy-living (experience machine).

That was the other main point that I wanted to emphasize in that 
talk: A desire to upload and become independent of a single 
biological body is utterly different from the desire to enjoy 
mindless pleasure forever. Transhumanists differ on the desirability 
of such a state. I am not and never have been a utilitarian, so have 
no interest in simply feeling good while doing nothing. I also 
suspect that, in many possible futures, locking yourself into that 
kind of state could leave you vulnerable to mischief and accident.

>Won't it be interesting to see yourself the actual code
>and chips that produce your very real feelings and thoughts?

Interesting and extremely useful once you can reconfigure the code 
and chips (or whatever we are running on then). BTW, when Natasha 
used the term "metabrain" I think she was using it in the sense that 
I used in my Extro-3 talk ("Mind Morph: Technologically Enhanced 
Emotion and Personality") (and later at the 2001 manTRANSforms 
conference), and not in the sense you found by googling it. (She used 
the term in Primo Posthuman.) That is, the metabrain is a label for a 
deeper and richer set of internal senses, that allow you to see your 
own wiring and improve on it.

Max