[ExI] A dispassionate examination of being an upload.

[John Clark]

On Sep 19, 2010, at 11:19 AM, Alan Grimes wrote:
> 
>> Unfortunately I very much doubt my preferences will make the slightest
>> difference. I don't think Mr. Jupiter Brain will allow stupid and
>> primitive humans to live at the same level of reality as his precious
>> hardware; he's bound to be a bit squeamish about that, it would be like
>> a monkey running around an operating room.  If he lets us live it will
>> be in a virtual world behind a heavy firewall, but that's OK, we'll
>> never know the difference unless he tells us.
> 
> What a shocking statement! At first I was about to pick it apart like I
> normally do but then I quickly became overwhelmed by how disgustingly
> pathetic a mentality must be in order to think such a thing! Can I even
> be reading you right that you are cheerfully looking forward to
> accepting the tenuous existence within a cubic centimeter prison

Right now you are confined to a 1273 cubic centimeter "prison", assuming your skull is of average size, and it doesn't seem to be cramping your style. And I said nothing about being cheerful or what I thought my personal fate will be, but now that you bring it up I would say it is probably not as an upload or any other potential immortality, but most likely oblivion. However I will say that almost certain death is preferable to absolutely certain death. 

> I'd be tempted to put a bullet in you out of the same feeling that I would feel around a victim of something that had lost all of his limbs, was bleeding out with his guts on the floor, with his face
> torn up and screaming in agony. Worms as low as you deserve NOTHING, and will probably get it.

And I love you too.

> You are trying to substitute the laws governing a single thought in
> place of those that govern an entire living/conscious/feeling being.

Your error is in assuming that you have thoughts when in reality you are thoughts.

>> I am of the opinion that if tomorrow there is an entity that remembers
>> being the John K Clark of today then I will have survived for another
>> day. I mean, what more could you possibly mean by "survival"?
> 
> I mean that there is a continuous trajectory of consciousness between
> where I am and where I will be.

But in your previous post you seemed to agree that subjectivity is much more important than objectivity, and consciousness always seems to be continuous, it's the external world that stops and starts and jumps around.

> But the me that's sitting here in this chair right now doesn't want to
> experience being destroyed and coppied

The you sitting here in this chair right now may have already been destroyed and copied, and yet it doesn't seem to have caused you any harm.

  John K Clark





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