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

[Tomasz Rola]

On Sat, 5 May 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> > On Thu, 3 May 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> > Ho ho! When this day comes and I am still alive, I will
> >
> > A. be able to upload on my own terms
> 
> So, if I understand your objection Tomasz, your real objection to
> uploading is that you want to upload to proprietary equipment with a
> self sufficient security system, and you feel very uncomfortable
> uploading to the cloud... does that about sum it up?

I wasn't horrified right after I have first heard about cloud and, a bit 
later, with "computer from a grid, like electricity". But I was horrified 
few minutes later, once I started playing scenarios in my head. In one 
sentence, they all ended with some form of hive. And I don't like insects 
enough to become one of them.

I will not give my data to the cloud. Well, ok, I will. I just need to be 
bribed. How about... an hour-worth of free music from some distributor. 
And a Stone Wars haxalogy in colorful box? Um, not physically, I get a 
picture of the box in a browser and ability to view contents for about, 
say, 10000 times, free of charge. If I wanted to buy 10000 SW boxes on 
com.zonama, I would have to put almost a million out of my pocket, so this 
sounds like a real bloody bargain.

> So it's not uploading itself that you really have the huge problem
> with, it's the details of where the physical computing device is.

This is too simplistic. My real objection is about physical control of 
device. Not just its location, but access and principles of its working 
(including whether it contains backdoors and bugs). Also, I object to 
people fooling with the device, possibly changing what I am going to think 
and remember.

Another subject is, what is going to happen with my material posessions? 
Say, if I own a car, should I stop caring about it later? Sure, if I am 
not going back. What if I upload while sitting in a car, to a device 
laying below the driver's seat? Ok, so, maybe I should sell my posessions 
before I upload. I am sure there will be plenty of buyers, because when 
everybody uploads, someone will have to own the Earth. It is not going to 
be pleasure but hard work, this owning. Hence we should not treat buyers 
as greedy lousy beasts but as heroes. Um, nope, back. There will be 
virtually no buyers at all which will drive prices down to, literally, 
bucks for a house. And even more so buyers will be greeted as heroes, who 
dispose of their money to help those in need of selling their goods.

The fact that nobody rises such objections (at least, I don't remember at 
the moment) only assures me there is going to be a lot of abuse happening 
around uploading.

For example, a well kept up lawyer approaches a not very wealthy, not too 
well educated young man with meager income and darkening economically-bad 
future (not that I am suggesting bad education and bad prospects are 
intentional). "Young man, would you like to live the rest of your days in 
cybernetic heavens? Where the music is free, you can skate all day long 
and all night long you can balance wonderful babes on top of yours..." - 
he just needs to sell whatever he still has. All DNA and stuff, too. And a 
footprint of brain. Which means, every though this brain could have, every 
invention, belongs to us. After all, who can forbid us from educating the 
footprint, give him years of voyages and reading books in virtual library? 
It belongs to us now, right? It is a bunch of mathematical expressions. We 
can do with them as we please.

After uploading, however, well... We all know that maximum life span is 
below 140 years at the moment. But let's be generous, give the guy 300 
years of life. To not make things too hard for us, let's speed up his 
clock by a factor of 110000... So after about a day he clocks 300 years of 
subjective time and we are safe to plug him off. Every judge will let us 
free. Especially if we redact the papers accordingly. And there will be 
plenty of politicians eager to support us, because at one point, uploaded 
voters will outnumber meat voters - and we can easily insert proper 
decicions into statistically significant number of ghost brains.

Actually, we don't need to plug the guy off literally. We just swap him 
off, like it happens in time sharing systems (Windows users, who have 
hard time knowing they have swapfile on their systems, are going to be 
sucked in dozens into this scheme). Some tasks are swapped to 
the disk so another tasks could have their turn. This is perfectly legal, 
because on papers there is a clause that his task might be interrupted for 
short time if this is demanded for correct and proper system operations 
(like, for example, dust cleaning). The maximum time he spends in the 
"off" state is not stated, however, simply because it is so hard to 
predict every random event prohibiting the system's ongoing, 
uninterrupted work.

We could build a bigger system, but can any judge blame us if we postpone 
this to times when our budget allows for this?

I other words, I consider at least some uploading propositions very naive 
and disconnected from reality, where dog eats dog. And also, dog eats 
whoever is stupid enough to become a sausage.

Uploading is not the end of the road for me. It is a bus stop. I don't 
think I can justify uploading to myself if I don't have a plan for 
downloading, even a very sketchy one.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **