[ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload.

[Alan Grimes]

chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:
> On Sep 18, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Alan Grimes wrote:

>>> my uploader credentials go back over 15 years and I certainly don't
>>> think the POV of a person, or of a upload, or of a person who is an
>>> upload, is irrelevant.  

>> You do too believe that the POV-self is irrelevant iff you are a
>> destructive brain uploader. You can't have it both ways.

> There is only one way to have it, subjectively. Subjectivity is all
> important and objectivity is trivial. And please don't tell me POV is
> just an illusion because illusions are a perfectly legitimate subjective
> phenomenon. 

WTF? Are you trying to argue my side of the debate?

> Your difficulty and the error of all uploading opponents I
> have ever encountered is that you fell hook line and sinker for the
> Bullshit that your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a
> pronoun when in reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter
> behaves when it is organized in a Alangrimesian way.

!!!

That is precisely the position I accused you of having! =P

> My brain of a year ago has been destroyed and been replaced with last years
> mashed potatoes, but the POV of John K Clark remains because those
potatoes
> were organized in a Johnkclarkian way; and if it all turns out to be an
> illusion I really don't care.    

Therefore it necessarily follows that if you then replace all the atoms
at once with a completely different substance that bares no resemblance
(never mind temporal or spatial connection) to the original in either
outward appearance or the mechanism of its operation, it can not be
anything other than the exact same person!!! =PPP

>> Actually, most of them exude an aura that strongly indicates that
>> they think that everything after becoming an upload will be nothing
>> but buttercups and daisies.

> I don't. There will still be competition from things smarter than you,
> AI's as well as other uploads that started out smarter than you and
> haven't gotten dumber with the passage of time; and there may be
> competition from things not nearly as bright as you too, like viruses.

Now, remind me again how you think you will be able to survive as an
upload? Also remind me why you would prefer to try to survive as an
upload rather than using medical nanites and other more direct means to
obtain physical immortality?

> But the biggest snake in the garden of Eden may be drug abuse, if you
> could open the "preferences" panel in your mind it would take an iron
> will not to move the happiness slide switch just a little further to the
> right, and then a little more, and then a bit more [...] I hope not but
> drug abuse could be the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all
> the trouble of actually accomplishing something when you can get the
> same agreeable feeling of pride and fulfillment without all the bother?     

Correct.

>>> If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from
>>> your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has
>>> suddenly jumped forward a billion years.

>> That would be stupid because you would be effectively dead during that
>> time and someone would likely come around to make you fully dead

> Maybe, and maybe I'll get hit by a bus when crossing the street to get
> to the uploading center, but neither triviality effects the fundamental
> philosophical point.

Perhaps I missed the point myself. The actual point being that in your
example it is the same instance of you that is being restarted. In the
procedure of uploading, it is something completely different from you
only blessed with a magical incantation and a label saying that it is you.

>> Actually it depends on what you mean by "restarted". If you clear out
>> too much state then you are rebooting a new POV-self. 

> Yes, if you don't use enough information the resulting matter will not
> behave in a Alangrimesian way.

If it is *not me*, then I really don't give a flying f### what it
behaves like. It could be the most perfect copy conceivable and I still
would not care. I would not care about such a being with the same vigor
and passion that I don't care about the latest celebrity gossip the
local news radio station thinks I can't get enough of (or is being paid
to distract me from real issues)... Actually I often find myself
screaming at my car's stereo "I  DO  NOT  CARE!!!!" But the "glass
enclosed nerve center" doesn't care. That stupid radio station also
works tirelessly to remind me that it is a "glass enclosed nerve
center"... So naturally I think of some giant brain in some glass vat
and get rather repulsed by the image. =P

> I know, I had this same discussion over on the Singularity list not long
> ago. I pointed out that "AGI" is a cultish term invented by members of
> that list and used virtually nowhere else except to a (mercifully)
> limited extent this list. It's an unnecessary word with a better and
> shorter alternative, it's a word that is certain to make professionals
> in AI look at you funny. Think I'm exaggerating? 

No, but then I share lord GOERTZEL's disgust with the trivial little
programs that the term AI has been attached to and agree with his
motives to do all he can to distance the work of true AI researchers
from that of the pretenders.

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