[ExI] Uploading cautions, "Speed Up"

[Kelly Anderson]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 4:05 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I tend to think except for a very few choice individuals allowed by
> the state and public to have multiple copies (brilliant scientists,
> key special forces commandos, some politicians, some captains of
> industry, some generals, astronauts, a few artists), that xoxing will
> be viewed as highly unethical and made illegal, with stiff penalties.
> And it's possible that making multiple copies, biologically or
> virtually, may be totally banned, with absolutely no exceptions
> allowed.  Think about it, mere biological cloning of whole humans is
> currently illegal, and we are talking about the extreme of making
> *multiple* copies of minds/individuals! lol

I could not disagree more. Creating copies of individuals for use in
virtual reality may be (and probably should be) legislated to avoid
some of the more nasty scenarios, but I think you'll be renting out
copies of yourself to be extras in the cast of advanced video games,
if you can. I can't see the government having any interest or ability
to enforce such schemes, and if my computing environment is completely
off line (weird) then I could do simulations without anyone finding
out, even if it were illegal. You just can't make something illegal
when so many people will want to do it.

The first thing I'll do is make a fork of myself, and send it up into
a (hopefully sped up) virtual reality to learn Chinese and perhaps
other languages, then reintegrate those experiences into my main
brain. Then I'll be able to speak those languages. I'll rent the
brains of a few nice smart Chinese teachers to make the experience a
nice one for my thread...

> But if it is allowed in a very liberal way, I think it would be a much
> better world with lots of Spikes and Anders running around!  : )  I
> suspect I might be very disturbed to be around adult copies of myself,
> because it would be like staring into a mirror, and not always liking
> what I saw...  On the other hand, I would love to raise a clone of
> myself, who has my genome, but not my downloaded mind.  I would give
> him the love and support I needed, but did not receive during my
> childhood.  I suspect it would be very therapeutic experience for me,
> though it might be seen as narcissistic by some.

I envision a day when I'm simultaneously having a conversation in real
time with every other person on earth, and perhaps several
conversations at the same time with those that are more interesting. I
see this as a way to preserve some of the weird corner cultures, at
least in VR. Being a member of the Yanomami tribe could become very
profitable some day, because those are the sorts of experiences
everyone would like to interact with (given infinite computational
power at your disposal).

The moral of the story for me is that the best investment you can make
in the future is to be a very interesting person in the here and now.
Assuming of course that I'm not already in such a "reality"... LOL.

-Kelly