[ExI] The second step towards immortality

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2014-01-06 14:55, Mirco Romanato wrote:
> Il 06/01/2014 14:34, BillK ha scritto:
>
>> After uploading, the real world stops. It solidifies into an inert
>> state so far as you are concerned. This is because uploads internal
>> processes are hundreds or thousands of times faster. You live
>> equivalent lifetimes in real world minutes. You won't want to
>> experience the real world because to you it never changes.
> This is explained well by the words of a Marvel superhero, Quicksilver.
> For him life is like living in an eternal queue at the post office.
>
> But BillK, there is a little problem in your statement:
> the real life is needed for real resources.

Real resources are important, but the real world also want the virtual 
resources of the upload economy - skills, just-in-time problem-solving, 
loads of human capital and so on. A bit like how we city people need the 
"real resources" of agriculture and energy, and pay for them by 
"virtual" things like services.

The upload-to-upload (U2U) economy is likely to grow fast too, and on 
timescales that are normal on an upload timescale.

> given the subjective time inside a simulation is like hundred or
> thousand time faster than in real life, the people inside the simulation
> need to be able to plan for centuries or millenniums ahead.

Yes and no. You need to make deals with utilities on very long 
timescales, but with financial services on short timescales. This is not 
too unusual: many land and energy contracts are multi-decade.

The transition from no human emulations and a world with emulation may 
also be gradual if it is computing-limited: at first you need major 
supercomputers to run an emulation in realtime, later Moores law allow 
the big ones to run faster or multiple cheaper realtime emulations, 
followed by ever faster and more numerous copies. In the scanning- or 
neuroscience-limited transition the need for planning ahead is larger.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University