[ExI] Machines of Loving Grace

[efc at disroot.org]

On Sat, 12 Oct 2024, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 12, 2024 at 4:41 PM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>       Why do you think there would be no children? Would it not be conceivable
>       to "merge" to programs? If we have achieved that enormous control and
>       understading of the patterns in our brain, a "merge" might be one way to
>       have a child?
> 
> 
> One might argue that the traditional incentives are gone.  If old age and death are no longer things, there is no need to be
> supported in old age, nor to leave some legacy (for those who can't contribute works of culture, technology, or the like, or who
> fixate on only genetic legacies).
> 
> However, with new technologies come new means.  "Forking" may be possible: spawn off some limited clone of yourself.  If it does a
> good enough job (or just survives long enough), maybe it eventually gets rewarded with independent existence (especially once keeping
> it under control would be more expensive than it would be worth, which will eventually happen for a clone that is not conditioned to
> slavery, as a useful fork would not be) - changed enough so that no one will confuse it with its parent, which is probably a good
> thing for both fork and original.   There are other possibilities as well.

Yes, I think that forking, and clones + merges are interesting concepts 
which could perhaps be thought of as "children" in a way, in that remote 
future.