[ExI] Uploads

[William Flynn Wallace]

What you are describing is more or less Heaven on Earth, but without golf.
I have serious doubts that this will happen the way you say, but who cares
about my opinion?  As a libertarian I'd let just about anything happen.
Who besides some religious people would have any objections?  What will the
avatars be like?  Human body, computer brains linked to yours?  Immobility
would be a problem for me.  I'd want an avatar able to go anywhere as if I
were there.

Will uploads vote?  Will anyone accumulate wealth enabling living for
centuries?

I'd like to read a scifi book that has all this stuff in it.  There is very
often no progress in those books, no visions for the future.

Very long before what you describe happens, the human race with evolve
itself genetically, and quickly.  Yes, why wait for regular evolution?.  It
has already started on a very small scale.  That is what interests me more
than the uploading, though of course I am interested in that too.

It's a great thing and a curse to have all my interests.   bill w

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 12:34 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 28/03/2020 15:53, billw wrote:
>
> 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?
>
>
> Personally, I think the sensible approach would be to start by emulating
> everything that you can. Including the stupid things, the things we don't
> know why they exist, the things that seem irrelevant, etc. So yes,
> endocrine glands, leg muscles, liver, toe-curling reflexes, the lot. And
> that includes all the emotional responses (which you probably couldn't
> avoid anyway).
>
> Initially.
>
> Then, we're in a good position to start fine-tuning things. Think the
> recurrent laryngeal nerve is a nonsensical by-product of blind evolution?
> (Yes, of course it is). Right, then re-route it. Bear in mind this is all
> an emulation, so such things would be easy, once the basic emulation is
> working. Did that work? Any unexpected side-effects? No? Fine, carry on.
> Tweak one thing after another, go cautiously, maintain rollback points,
> undo things that didn't go as expected. Imagine how much we will learn! It
> will take a long time, yes, even at software speeds, but you can probably
> see that gradually, an improved virtual organism would emerge.
>
>
> "It seems that you all want a brain that is pure thinking"
>
> This is *far* from the truth. Anyone who gives any serious, informed
> thought to the matter of uploading will realise that a sense of embodiment
> will be essential. The aim, initially, would be to emulate as much as
> possible everything that we can sense, plus the things that we can't
> directly sense, that contribute to our selves. Only after we have mastered
> that would we start to tinker with the design, and who knows where we might
> go after that.
>
> Here's how I would describe it:
> Imagine that you woke up one morning, and someone told you that you'd been
> uploaded (or you remember making the decision to upload, the previous day).
> But *nothing has changed*, subjectively.
>
> You feel exactly the same. Things look, feel, taste, smell, exactly the
> same. The world is the same. Your emotions are the same, your body is the
> same.
>
> Then someone shows you that by thinking certain things, or even by using a
> control panel in your environment, you can change things selectively.
> Press this button, and you get 2cm taller. rotate that knob and your
> apparent age goes up and down (with all the attendant internal changes as
> well as your appearance). You realise that your body doesn't hurt in the
> small ways that biological ageing has gradually brought on. Then you learn
> that you can make much bigger changes, including to your environment. Over
> a period of subjective months or years (which may or may not be real-world
> months or years), you learn more and more how to change things, control
> yourself and your environment, and how to communicate in many different
> ways with other people, including other uploads. At some point, you learn
> to use an interface with the real world, and perhaps inhabit the body of an
> avatar, or a non-human robot, or, well, or just about anything really. A
> hummingbird. A dinosaur, whatever.
>
> At no point do you even remotely feel like a disembodied mind (unless,
> that is, you normally used to!). At no point do you notice anything
> *missing*. Except the things that you deliberately change, like that
> arthritic pain you always got in your left hand. Maybe at some point you
> decide to find out what it's like to do without the feelings of hunger.
> Maybe that doesn't go so well, so you reverse the decision. And so on, and
> so on, for many many centuries. Or more.
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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