[ExI] Ye Olde Lightbulb Joke.

[Alan Grimes]

How many uploaders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?






FIFTY!!! (And it will take them that many years too).



They'll spend the first twenty years arguing in favor of the equivalency
of screwing in a simulation of a lightbulb with the act of screwing in
the lightbulb. Then they'll visciously dismiss the fundamentalist
ludites who insist on real hardware-based lightbulbs. They'll argue that
if you make a perfect atomically precise copy of a lightbulb and then
smash the original, you'll still have a lightbulb (completely ignoring
any reminder that we're talking about screwing it in rather than copying
it).

Then, for the next 15 years they'll research every fascet of the
lightbulb, it's mass, it's materials, the friction coeficient of it's
base, the temperature dependent resistance of the filament, the spectrum
of it's emission at various temperatures. It's warmup time and specific
heat. Then they'll get into the electrostatics of the filament with the
free-space charge and how that will affect the loss of tungsten atoms
off the filament, and the changes of the characteristics of the filament
over the bulb's lifespan (or they'll make a super trans-lightbulb that
doesn't burn out).

Then they'll simulate a room and figure out all the muscle-kenetics of
taking the bulb out of the package and screwing it into the socket. They
will do extensive studies to exactly simulate the neural interractions
one would feel when screwing in a lightbulb.

Finally, they will present you with the simulation and say "See! here's
your lightbulb, all screwed in!" And if you complain that you are still
in the dark, they'll upload you so that you can experience the light. If
your copy persists in complaining, they'll force you to screw in virtual
lightbulbs until you stop complaining about there not being any actual
light.



Meanwhile I will have converted to LED lighting. ;)



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