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

[Tomasz Rola]

On Tue, 8 May 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Every form of emergence that I'm familiar with starts with a number of
> elements, each of which is similar. The ants in a colony, cells in a
> body, individuals in a population... If there is an emergent "super
> intelligence" that emerges from our collective efforts, then in some
> sense, we will become cells, or processing nodes, or participants of
> some kind in that super intelligence.
> 
> If the super intelligence is independent of us, then we'll make great
> pets. So I suppose the choice might be between useful insect, or
> irrelevant pet. I think I'd rather be a useful insect than a pet...
> but maybe that's just me.

Humans feel, dream, educate themselves and change. Pets and insects don't.

I am willing to extend humanity, to embrace cyborgs and augmented animals. 
Provided they implement abovementioned ideals, very few indeed.

> > 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.
> 
> Maybe they'll activate your pleasure center a few times a day... :-)
> It will be just like Christian Heaven!!! LOL

The idea of being titillated for eternity is plausible only to simple 
minds, who lack imagination and cannot see how boring and maddening this 
would have been.

Strangely, the very same kind seems to fail into marketing scams.

> > 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.
> 
> Our uploaded memories seem highly likely to be more reliable than
> those we work with today. Philip J. Corso, a highly decorated
> Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. He worked at the highest levels of
> government. Yet, he remembers seeing a dead alien, and shopping the
> parts of a crashed UFO around to various industry scientists in the
> early 1960s. Claims the reverse engineering of these artifacts
> indirectly led to the development of accelerated particle beam
> devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar
> material.
> 
> So what is more likely, that Corso actually did these things, that he
> lied about doing these things, or that his memory failed? I think I'd
> go for memory failure as the most likely explanation, with lying
> coming in second. Yet he is very convincing because HE really believes
> it.
> 
> I want a better memory than that. We all have the illusion that our
> memories are better than they actually are. It's part of how the brain
> works. It's the same kind of illusion that models our entire
> environment around us when we can only actually see part of it.

The best way to make sure your memory remains intact is to have control 
over uploading process (this includes both ends of the process, too).

Or you can trust entities who are, historically, known to screw people 
depending on them (if you care about history at all),

> > 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?
> 
> Dematerialization is the future. Of course, the future is here now in
> this sense in many ways. Do I really need those four boxes of old
> National Geographics in my garage if I have every National Geographic
> since 1888 on my iPad? Do I need 400 LP records when I have all that
> music on my MP3 player? Do I need to own a car if a robot can deliver
> one to me within five minutes whenever I need to drive somewhere? If
> we get good enough at creating material goods quickly from digital
> specifications, we might even be able to dematerialize things and
> rematerialize them when we need them. http://www.airbnb.com/ is
> dematerializing hotels. Imagine if Ebay were 1000 times more efficient
> than it is now. If listing, selling and shipping something required
> nothing more than the thought that you wanted to do so. If buying and
> getting something required nothing but a thought and a few minutes...
> How many things would you really choose to own on a continuous basis?
> If I could scan all my old papers and many of my old books, I would
> gladly get rid of them, but doing the scanning is a relatively large
> job. Took me a couple of days with a really fast scanner to do two
> boxes of papers... the last time I could find the power cord for my
> scanner... LOL.

Kelly, I have a deal for you. You: work hard, earn money, buy gold and 
send it to me. I: buy an extremely good camera, make loads of photos, send 
them in many copies to you. How many do you want - hundred copies? That's 
100:1 exchange rate, from your point of view.

Man!

Deal?

You can have million copies of "Lady with an Ermine" by Leonardo da Vinci, 
on your harddrive. All of them virtually worthless.

You can have machinery capable of making atom-to-atom copies. This does 
not mean original "Lady" will loose value. Its owner would have to agree 
and give you his piece of matter so that you can make an atomic copy. As 
long as he does not agree and you don't want to spend rest of your life in 
prison (if you are lucky), there is going to be only one such painting at 
best.

Everything that exists in one copy has value.

> > 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.
> 
> Perhaps every atom that was Earth will be converted (eventually) into
> computronium?

Or moonshine. I have seen working prototypes of moonshine but I am yet to 
see a *plan* of this computronium. Which one is more probable?

> > 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.
> 
> A house will be worth a lot because you can convert a house to an
> awful lot of computronium...

You can make computronium of dirt (if you know what it is, actually), 
hence a house will be worth as much as equivalent mass of dirt.

> > 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.
> 
> You are probably right. I just don't see any other choice in the long term...

If there is really no other way, not examining it seems like a bit too 
careless. Especially that even if way is just one, it can be travelled by 
different means and trajectories.

Oh, how I am always interested in cases of strange carelesness.

> > 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.
> 
> Sounds like the line they give the young suicide bombers today, doesn't it?

I have no clue. I am neither young, nor suicidal nor do I bear any 
semblance to bomber (although I could spare few kilos, yes).

> I think there will be some kind of contract that he'll sign... and
> that contract will probably have to be honored by both parties. I
> don't think the contract system will go away in the future. Sadly,
> there will be many robot lawyers, I'm afraid.

Your honor, Mr Smith did not want to have a library in his simulation.

Your honor, Mr Smith gave us a spoken wish, during talk with our lawyer Mr 
Jenssen, which we recorded, that he will be delighted to "spank asses 
until hell freezes".

Your honor, Mr Smith did not say he wanted to contact anybody, neither his 
relatives nor other uploads, nor his lawyers.

Your honor, Mr Smith wanted to spank abovementioned asses in a hotel with 
a view on the beach but never mentioned he would like to go out of the 
room. This is why we did not give him an option to go to the beach or swim 
in the sea. Actually, for this very reason we did not give him any other 
option at all.

Your honor, Mr Smith was very specific, after two days of subjective time 
in a sim, that he is not going back other than, quote: "over my dead body 
- but you told me I will never die, rigth?". Later, he wished us good luck 
and asked to not interrupt him anymore.

Your honor, Mr Smith is our client and he gave us instructions. By terms 
of contract, we are going to do our best to fulfill all his wishes.

> > 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 think your right to run will be tied to some extent to who wants to
> interact with you.

Probably. It is questionable if those willing to interact with me, will 
indeed talk to me or some glut simulation concocted ad hoc from backups of 
many people who were to be contacted at this specific time.

Why this complicated? Because it might be cheaper for entity caring for 
uploads.

Of course if I decide to upload under wings of such entity, I should not 
be surprised when they perform they money saving on my skin.

> > 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.
> 
> Uploading should not be the end of the road. However, if eventually
> the entire solar system is converted into computronium, there won't be
> any really happy place to download to... possibly... eventually...

Kelly. I may live happily in Oort Cloud.

By many experts on computronium psychology, who wrote here, propagation 
times counted in weeks or even months (realtime) are not interesting to 
computronium. So I will be able to find some dark corner on the edge of 
Solar System and computrionium would not even notice, nor should it give 
a damn (as long as I don't do anything suspicious).

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             **