[ExI] The second step towards immortality

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2014-01-07 03:04, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>     And why should they sit in some server forever when the instances
>     could
>     change servers periodically?
>
>
> That would work so long as someone somewhere was interested in hosting 
> the servers, if it was a Bitcoin like server, they would continue 
> running so long as anyone viewed them as money because without the 
> servers, there would be no way of having it be fungible.

Hmm... there is a very cool idea here. What if running uploads acted as 
Proof of Work for a currency?

The most basic version would be that you have a currency of 
upload-seconds. This would of course encourage people to farm uploads, 
so at first it looks like you would just get pointless copies. But it 
would make their rents low or negative: you want to have more minds 
around since that makes you money. If having the upload around is 
necessary for the mined currency to work virtual landlords also would 
not want to evict their tenants. The extra minds would want to make 
money too, either by normal work or by buying into colonisation 
ventures. Converting the universe into computronium is good business in 
order to stay ahead of inflation! So this approach would push 
posthumanity towards radical expansionism. Charles Stross would have a 
fit over this idea :-)

Now, I suspect the above system is too simplistic and explosive to 
really work. It might be better to make the upload software act to check 
transactions rather than doing currency mining: you still want to have 
the uploads around, especially if the protocol makes you lose money via 
reneged transactions if you delete them, but the people who have an 
incentive to host them are mainly stable financial institutions.

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

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