[ExI] shining example and COVID-19 (John Clark)

[Dave Sill]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 3:51 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> What about what a person is without augmentations?  If you get uploaded
> you are just a long string of code, right?
>

You'd be, in one sense, a combination of code and data. That's what an
outside observer would "see". Inside the simulation you could be whatever
the simulation allowed. You could adjust your appearance as desired: tall,
short, thin, fat, male, female, hermaphrodite, human, dog, amoeba,
incorporeal, ..., essentially unlimited, but the simulation would probably
have to impose reasonable limits.


> So you can be anything you want to be - just change the code.  Now everyone
> is the same - the best code can do.
>

Wait, what? If everyone can tweak themselves--and we're not just talking
appearance--what makes you think everyone's going to choose the same
"ideal" form? Everyone has their own preferences.


> What is the point of that?  You are just a computer that is no better and
> no worse than any other computer.
>

No, no, no... you don't become a computer, you become an entity run by a
computer.


>   There is nothing distinctive about you that cannot be duplicated by
> some one else.
>

Well, there could well be rules against copying what others do: e.g.,
copyright and anti-fraud laws, simulation rules that you agree to before
your simulation is instantiated, etc.

-Dave
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