[ExI] The Great Silence again

[BillK]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Richard Loosemore  wrote:
> For this (main) reason.  If we had the power to speed up our consciousness
> to such an extent that one day RealTime became a million days VirtualTime,
> we would run the risk of becoming bored if we simply spent all that VT as a
> continuous consciousness.  Much more likely, we would choose to establish a
> system of periodic rebirths, involving the archival storage of the current
> set of life experiences and the beginning of a new life in which we could
> experience everything as if for the first time.


We've discussed the problem that very long lifetimes might lead to
boredom before and most on the list appeared to be horrified at the
thought.  I am more inclined towards accepting the possibility.

But your suggestion seems unlikely to me. Certainly future uploaded
civs could create as many new intelligences as they wish, but the same
point applies as travelling out to space. If they start anew or leave
Earth, they are cutting themselves off from the Matrix of the
trillions of intelligences in the computronium world.
And this would feel like suicide to them.

These are uploaded transhuman civs, remember, Not apes with a few
superpowers.  ;)


>
> Moreover, people would not necessarily want to experience all of their
> lifetimes at VT speed, but would sometimes want to come back down to normal
> speed.  And in fact, the lifetimes could, of course, be interleaved, so that
> several lives were being experienced at once, all at different speeds, but
> in packets.


VT speed will be *normal* speed.  The outside world is effectively
frozen to a standstill.
Why would they want to enter stasis?


>
> And (finally) one aspect of this would be the possibility to set up
> interstellar trips in which the consciousness was suspended for the
> duration.  Or, where many different lives were led during the trip, but all
> within computronium VWorlds.  That way, a community could go to the stars,
> arrive there with the subjective experience of having only just left, and
> then explore the remote worlds before going on to the next star.


So a whole community would have to choose to leave the Matrix and to
dull the pain go to sleep for virtually trillions of years to wake up
in a desert place with no Matrix?
Future transhuman civs will find it unthinkable - even impossible - to
leave the Matrix.


BillK