[ExI] The second step towards immortality

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 10:10 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] The second step towards immortality

Il 07/01/2014 17:22, Mark Walker ha scritto:

> I helped write a routine that had sims thinking they were outside the 
> sim controlling the sim. It was pretty hilarious. You should have seen 
> one guy who took a nickname from one of Broderick's books who got all 
> uppity thinking he was pulling pranks on sims when he was in fact a 
> sim himself. He's a great figure of fun...  Mark
_______________________________________________

Regarding this uppity sim,  Damien originally published The Spike in 2001.
I had the nickname Spike since about 1985, and used it on a technical paper
in 1987, long before Damien ever heard of us.  That name was on my badge at
work starting in 1989, since most of my professional contacts knew me only
by that name.  My work email is still spike.jones@  {company deleted} to
this day, as it has been since 1989.  I deleted the company name because I
don't want to get ExI email there.  They watch everything. 

Of course I was extremely pleased to see Damien use that as a title to his
excellent book on future technology and the singularity, but I cannot claim
any credit, for he had thought of the concept before he ever heard of me.
The term singularity eventually became far more common than spike.  I
noticed the mainstream press is gradually taking it up, often not even
seeing a need to define it, or if so only generally.

Damien is still working these days.  He just doesn't waste as much time
yakking on the internet as we do.   {8-]

Here's a mind blower for you.  At some future time, pre-singularity, we will
likely come up with a script which will simulate self-consciousness so well,
it could convince some people that it is self-aware (even if the writers of
the code know it is just a pile of clever code.)  When that happens, it
would have to occur to those bystanders that there is no way to verify of
the bystander herself isn't also just a pile of clever code running in some
meta-machine.  Conclusion: when we eventually develop convincing
self-awareness-simulating code, something capable of pretending to write
self-awareness-simulating code and telling humans it did that, the whole
exercise will really screw with the minds of those of us out here on this
level of existence.

Oh boy that will be fun to watch.  I am sooo eager to mess with perfectly
innocent minds in this way.  {8^D

spike