[ExI] Uploading Swindle (was Re: Finally!)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> About uploading: I smell a swindle. I would have big difficulty convincing
> myself that I should give up myself and become, basically, a process in a
> computer. Unless I will be able to control the computer. And I don't think
> I will give away my physical properties, however small, in exchange for
> living in a machine owned by some caring corporation.

Tomasz, one distinct possibility in the future is that the earth might
some day become uninhabitable for carbon based life forms. This might
be a side effect of a biological agent, an accident, or the sun
expanding into a red giant or the atmosphere being eroded by solar
wind as the magnetic core of the earth cools. In any case, it is a
possibility that it will happen soon, and a certainty in the long
term. And in that event, the choices being die or upload, I suspect
that even you might choose upload at that point.

This is just a thought experiment... there are probably other reasons
you might choose some day to upload... but Newton taught us that
thinking in terms of ultimate limits is sometimes helpful.

-Kelly