[ExI] Uploads

[William Flynn Wallace]

I have the same question as everyone else.  I don't suppose that we will
know until uploading just makes a copy and leaves the original intact.
Then we'll see who's who!

On a technical note: it is one thing to figure out what a neuron is doing
and why - still difficult.  But the glial cells far outnumber the neurons
and we are mostly in the dark about them.  And a different type of neuron
has been found as of late.  We are a long way away.

It is of never ending amazement to me how much control many people want
over other people.  It's like asking a neighbor to cut down a tree because
you don't like it.  Prudes with Freudian problems, I say.

Thanks for the authors, a couple of whom are new to me (the first three),
but I will buy them as usual when I get a recommendation.  Read all of
Stross, Banks, and some of a couple of others.

I also like some of the 'softer' scifi books such as Bujold  (superior
writer) and Kage Baker (who deserves far more fame than she got), ditto.  I
am getting softer myself and don't care for ugly people doing mean things,
galactic overloads, lots of battles, descriptions of weapons etc.  But you
are probably right about what sells.

Like I said before, forget 'human body', 'computer brain'.  I had those in
mind for the avatars.

bill w

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 5:03 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 28/03/2020 20:21, billw wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> I have no idea if things will happen the way I describe, but so many
> people have what seems to me to be false (and frankly, ridiculous) ideas of
> what uploading would be like. I wanted to give a more realistic (in my
> view) description.
>
> As a libertarian I'd let just about anything happen.  Who besides some
> religious people would have any objections?
>
>
> Oh, you'd be surprised. Some people are dead against the idea on
> philosophical grounds (quite aside from religious ones). Extremely bad
> philosophical grounds, imo, but compelling to them. The worst thing is that
> some of these people don't just want to avoid uploading for themselves,
> they don't want *anyone* doing it, they regard it as fundamentally evil
> or at least fatally misguided. Talk about uploading enough, and you'll soon
> find them crawling out of the woodwork. If you really want to expose
> yourself to this, just ask the dreaded (and silly) question: "Will a copy
> of you really be you?", then sit back and wait for the mouth-foaming to
> begin.
>
> If you want some solid ammunition against the usual objections, read "A
> Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading" by Keith Wiley. Highly
> recommended. Very clear, excellent logical arguments and well-written. For
> me, reading it was the culmination of a long path that started with the
> first four pages of Linda Nagata's 'Vast' (mentioned below), and its
> depiction of an uploaded spaceship pilot.
>
> 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.
>
>
> Same answer as ever: Whatever you like (with certain limitations that have
> more to do with physics than anything else. Oh, and maybe legal questions.
> I don't suppose many people would object to a ban on avatars that guzzle
> woodland, belch out vast quantities of CO2 and manufacture nuclear weapons,
> for instance).
>
> Like I said before, forget 'human body', 'computer brain'. The technology
> required to make uploading as I describe it possible will render those
> terms meaningless. You could maybe say something like 'a synthetic body,
> with even greater sophistication than biological bodies, containing a
> similarly sophisticated synthetic brain capable of creating and linking to
> multiple virtual worlds'. We'd probably need a shorter, catchier name,
> though.
>
> Will uploads vote?  Will anyone accumulate wealth enabling living for
> centuries?
>
>
> Will democracy still exist? Will living for centuries (let's say
> millennia, shall we? Centuries seems a very modest goal) require any
> special accumulation of wealth? These are questions we can't answer.
>
> I'd like to read a scifi book that has all this stuff in it.
>
>
> So would I.
> I know of none that has all of this stuff, but can recommend some authors
> that I've found interesting and inspirational, at least in parts:
>
> Greg Egan, Neal Asher, Linda Nagata (her 'Nanotech Succession' books),
> Richard Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks ('Culture' novels),
> Charlie Stross (Singularity Sky, Saturn's Children, etc.), Greg Bear,
> Gregory Benford, Robert Reed ('Great Ship' books: 'Marrow', etc.), Olaf
> Stapledon, among others.
>
>
>   There is very often no progress in those books, no visions for the
> future.
>
> Plenty visions for the future, not all good, but very few actually try to
> chart an optimistic progressive path. Hardly surprising, though. Wars,
> murders, conflict etc., make for much better stories
>
> 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.
>
> Time will tell.
>
> It's a great thing and a curse to have all my interests.   bill w
>
>
> I can only agree with that. I try to practice attentional triage, but it's
> not easy...
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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