[ExI] Uploads (was: Covid)

[Dave Sill]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 5:35 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> How could there be any competition among people?
>

Assuming competition is desired, devising and implementing the changes
necessary to optimize oneself for a given task would likely be nontrivial
and would take time, resources, money, etc., to implement. Just because
you're in a simulation doesn't mean everything is magic: snap your fingers
and BAM, you're the optimal cake baker or CPA or lawyer or whatever. For
games, players could agree on various constraints in advance.

If there were still jobs done by 'humans' then if they wanted someone to do
> matrix algebra you'd just change your code to enable that ability.  Of
> course the true computers would likely be doing that.
>

Yeah, that's not a good example. A better one would be creating a work of
art: painting a picture, writing a song, writing a poem. Those are things
that a few people do well and, so far, only people do well.


> So are we envisioning a life of play while AIs run the planet?
>

Why not have people inside simulations run the planet, if they could do a
better job than AIs? Or at least not fuck it up? But what's wrong with
moving beyond the constant struggle to meet biological needs? If I could
have chosen a life of leisure over a life of 40 hours/week struggling to
keep the family going.


>   I keep coming back to reproduction.  Evolution is a game
> with reproduction as the goal.  How does that fit in with uploaded people?
>

It depends on the rules of the simulation. If individuals can change
quickly, dramatically, and intentionally, what's the point of trying to
implement something slow and random like natural selection?

I can also see a role for psychologists and programmers.  They would help
> the uploaded person decide on what he wanted to be and the programmers
> would achieve that.  I just have not thought about this very much and so my
> ideas are likely to be primitive.
>

I'd imagine there'd be a need for psychologists and programmers, though
implementing changes would quickly become more like hiring a designer than
hiring a coder. There'd likely be a marketplace of modifications and
upgrades that have already been implemented. Like, you wouldn't hire a
furniture maker, a rug weaver, a paint chemist, etc., to redo your living
room today. You'd either pick those things out yourself or work with a
professional interior designer who knows what's available, what would work
well together, and what would meet your needs.

As for nanobots, isn't it more likely to be manufactured viruses and
> bacteria?
>

Is there a difference? I mean, those are biological nanobots. Ideally we'd
want to move past playing by the rules of biochemistry in order to do
non-biological things.

-Dave
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