[ExI] Uploads

[William Flynn Wallace]

Imitating biochemistry:  the brain initiates a lot of behavior that other
organs carry out, such as endocrine glands.  So - will an upload contain or
create virtual endocrine glands?  Virtual leg muscles for virtual running?
Liver etc. for virtual digestion?  And so on.  Will they disconnect links
to how to curl your toes?

It seems that you all want a brain that is pure thinking, and there is so
much of it that is devoted to other things that maybe you will upload far
less than what is in your full brain.  What good will uploading your
medulla do?  No lungs, no heart,etc.  Or the cerebellum - no motor control
needed.

Will all emotions be included?  Could we just not upload fear?  Or whatever?

bill w

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 5:46 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 28/03/2020 00:46, billw asked:
>
>
> Thanks for all that, Ben  - just one question:
>
> The body is designed not to die or suffer injury.  It will attempt to shut
> down things that will do that.  Now suppose that we have an uploaded
> person:  Suzie.  She is a sex maniac and spends most of her time having an
> orgasm.  If she had a body, that would probably produce heart failure or
> blow out blood vessels .  It might produce inhibitions in the brain trying
> to dampen the orgasms.
>
> Is there anything to keep an uploaded person from just spending all their
> time with peak experiences like orgasms?  I assume that issues of tolerance
> and addiction will not apply. Those are biochemical changes.  Or will the
> totally uploaded brain try to do what the biological body would do?  This
> is far from clear to me.
>
> One more related example: your taste (tongue plus nose) diminishes with
> each bite you take of something.  Will this happen to Suzie?
>
> bill w
>
>
> OK, good questions. The main answer is, I don't know. But I'd expect that
> any upload would be well aware of these potential problems - perhaps
> through an 'orientation package' for all uploads - and be able to come up
> with sensible solutions.
>
> One thing that I would probably want to do would be to define a set of
> conditions under which automatic systems would override my conscious
> decisions. Eg., if  the decision threatened my survival.
>
> Another factor is that Suzie the Sex Maniac could very possibly keep the
> sensations of orgasm from having the effects you describe. It should be
> possible to subjectively experience something that normally involves bodily
> sensations without those sensations causing the usual 'real-world' bodily
> reactions. I've been musing for quite a long time now about such a
> dual-world existence, where you can choose whether what you experience
> comes from - and affects - the external environment (meaning, in this case,
> the body), or is purely in a virtual environment, or is a mixture of the
> two.
>
> i have no idea if this would be practical or feasible, but I don't see any
> theoretical reasons that it wouldn't be possible. You could for example,
> call up virtual overlays on your normal sensory input (an extension of the
> 'heads-up display' concept), that gives you information that comes from
> other sources than your bodies senses, or you could take your attention
> into a totally synthetic virtual world for a time while your body is
> occupied doing something mundane and easily automated, and have 'firewalls'
> between these two domains of experience, that only allow through signals
> that you specify.
>
> "I assume that issues of tolerance and addiction will not apply. Those are
> biochemical changes.  Or will the totally uploaded brain try to do what the
> biological body would do?  This is far from clear to me."
>
> This is one of the main points: We will be able to specify whether or not
> we want to apply the features of naturally evolved brains to our
> experience, and to what extent. Biochemistry is nothing special, it can be
> emulated (if that's not true, the whole uploading thing is a non-starter).
> To whatever degree you want. And of course, once emulated, you have much
> greater control over what happens. You're in the position of someone with a
> thermostat who gets it replaced with a digital temperature-control system,
> and realises that they have far more control over how it works now. Whereas
> before all they could do was set the temperature of the house, and hope it
> works well enough, now they realise they can set a huge range of conditions
> and responses, so that it automatically keeps the house nice and cozy when
> you're in, and lets the temperature fall when you're out, adjusts for sunny
> vs rainy days, makes it a bit cooler when there are a lot of people in the
> house, maybe learn that you often get up earlier than normal on a Tuesday,
> so put the heating on earlier on Tuesdays, etc.
>
> So the answer to your question is, issues of tolerance and addiction will
> apply to the degree and type that you specify. The uploaded brain will try
> to do what the biological body would do, to the degree that you want it to,
> including not at all. Suzie could potentially learn to be in a state of
> constant orgasmic bliss while going about her normal life unimpeded. Very
> likely, we'll discover other modes of being that aren't possible at
> present, and that nobody has even imagined.
>
> The potential for this all going horribly wrong, is of course immense.
> People will need to be educated to use these abilities properly, and will
> probably need to be protected from themselves until they know what they're
> doing. In the long run, though, we'll all know a hell of a lot more about
> ourselves than we do now. And of course, it will lead to people becoming
> something different to what we are now, not just physically, but mentally
> as well. We will hopefully, become proper Post-humans, not just monkeys
> with more bananas.
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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