[ExI] Uploading cautions, "Speed Up"

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:36 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
> ...
>
>>>...   Think about it this way, how many copies of Keith Henson could you
> put up with? Keith
>
>>...I don't mind a population of 90% Keiths. As long as you don't mind a lot
> of Anderses around... -- Anders Sandberg
>
> I stumbled over this concept some time ago.  If we discover uploading, the
> very natural next step is to want to create as many copies as you have
> memory and computing capacity to support.  Therein lies the trouble.  Do we
> then describe a virtual society by its Keith/Anders ratio?  And if others
> are replicating themselves and I am not, the spike/Anders ratio and
> spike/Keith ratio are actually declining, and that will never do, even
> though I think the world of these guys.  We have spent our lifetimes making
> ourselves into the person we want to be, and we like us.  I like me.  I want
> more like me, if I can create them.
>
> Now imagine your local megalomaniac, or the other guy who is even worse, the
> gigalomaniac.  He will be wildly enthusiastic about self-replication, when
> he is not busy maniacally selling his sexual services to women.

There is a reason that I'm the owner of the domain
multithreadedlife.com (even though there is no website yet) and this
is pretty much it. I want to run as many copies of myself as possible.
Not only that, but I want to merge the successful experiences in these
threads back into my main brain, and discard the unsuccessful or
painful experiences.

It has struck me that renting out copies of myself, in order for other
people to interact with me one on one, will become a major part of the
economy in the far future. Assuming that I somehow maintain control
over myselves, and uses of myselves, I should be able to charge for
that. The more interesting you are as a person, the more likely people
are to want to rent a copy of you. So being interesting (even now) is
a good investment in the future of your economic worth.

Having multiple copies of yourself running around in the same reality
seems odd to me. Seems like it would be a tip off that reality isn't
reality in that VR... kind of gives the game away. Of course, not all
virtual realities need be like the one we are in now ;-) and in some,
there may indeed be multiple copies of yourself working on a problem
together, and they may even know that they are in a virtual reality,
and are virtual entities. I have often thought though, that if I were
a virtual entity and knew that I was, I might not be so inclined to do
the work that the creator of that VR set out for me to do.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, but I don't really feel like
getting into it too deeply tonight... but needless to say, it is VERY
interesting to me.

-Kelly