[ExI] Will ems have two genders?

[Robin D Hanson]

On May 15, 2016, at 11:52 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com<mailto:rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 5:00 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se<mailto:anders at aleph.se>> wrote:
On 2016-05-14 04:04, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
Is there a reason to expect that ems would have a male and a female gender? We have to remember that ems are not biological, and gender may have a purely biological origin.

But ems start as scans of biological brains and retain the memories, personalities and identity constructs of the bio-original. Since most people strongly identify with one gender or the other, they are likely to keep doing that as ems.

I think furries, transgender people and experimentation online with alternative personas demonstrate that there is more fluidity than many people think, but they are hardly evidence that ems will lose gender identity. In the longer run, when people start mind editing, yes, but not in the short-run scenario in Robin's book.

### I have to read it, once it comes out on Kindle. In the meantime I would think that the short-run scenario is going to be really short-run, running in internet time on yottaflop steroids.

Age of Em is available for pre-order on Kindle. I estimate that the entire Age of Em may only take a year or two, But during that time the economy would grow by an enormous factor, and at typical em subjective speeds a millennia or two would pass. Anders is right that I guess genders stay relevant over that time, because it remains hard to modify the complex spaghetti legacy code that is the brain.

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu<mailto:rhanson at gmu.edu>
Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University
Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
See my new book: http://ageofem.com









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