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

[Stefano Vaj]

On 4 May 2012 05:20, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> And in that event, the choices being die or upload, I suspect
> that even you might choose upload at that point.
>

The only "swindle" that might affect candidates for uploading is with
regard to some vague and "mystical" interpretations of the process.

What is an upload? An upload is a computing process who emulates on another
arbitrary platform your current identity, which is a pure social construct
in the first place. A qualified upload is an emulation which is competitive
with the original in a "specific" Turing test (meaning that it would
persuade the other party in a Turing test that it is "you" as often as you
can).

This is what you pay for, this is what you get. Nobody can really say in
objective terms whether it is "really" you, no more that we can say whether
today's you is the same individual as yesterday's you: this is a matter of
interpretation, and according to your preferred interpretation you may
consider it desirable or not.

Thinking however about the appeal that even extremely poor "emulations" of
ourselves such as portraits or biographies have had in history for most of
us, I suspect that as soon as you will be able to consider your updated
neighbours on the same basis of, say, neighbours having suffered major
amputations, philosophical doubts about the legitimacy of defining
uploading as "survival" will soon become extinct or restricted to the
tinfoil-hat fringe.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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