[ExI] Mind Uploading: is it still me?

[Brent Allsop]

All this will be a mute point when we have neural ponytails and merged
minds.
Any particular body will simply be an appendage of the whole.



On Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 2:59 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 3:47 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> *> I have considered this.  I think there should be a restriction or
>> custom of one at a time.  You can either be an active meat body or an
>> upload, but not both at the same time.  And copies are not permitted.*
>
> * Otherwise, the population gets entirely out of hand. *
>
>
> *I don't think that will be a major problem because it's very unclear to
> me why, even under ideal conditions, an upload would want a meat body, and
> the more overpopulated the physical environment becomes the more unpleasant
> it would be and so there would be even less reason to want to download.  *
>
>
>>
>> * > Robin Hanson and I differ on this point.  He thinks uploaded copies
>> will be made in large numbers, driving the value of each one to near zero.
>> Lots of scope for dystopian SF.*
>>
>
> *I agree with you on that. Back in 2016 when it was still unclear if AI or
> uploading would come first Robin Hanson gave me the first draft of the book
> he was working on called "The Age of Em" and asked me for comments. He
> thought (incorrectly as it turned out) that uploading would come first. He
> figured if there was a task you needed to do that would take about two
> weeks you would make a temporary upload of yourself that he called an "Em"
> that would accomplish the task and when it was finished the copy was
> supposed to just kill himself and let the original carry on with his life.
> I thought that was unrealistic and blatantly unfair because the copy never
> asked to be made, the original is the one who decided to cause it to come
> into existence and so should be responsible for it. I suggested a slight
> modification in the plan, the original would accomplish the little two week
> task and then the original would terminate himself and the copy would carry
> on. But I don't think Robin liked my suggestion very much. *
>
> *John K Clark *
>
>
>
>
>> Keith
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 4:06 AM John Clark via extropy-chat
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 9:41 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > You are all your copies.
>> >
>> >
>> > All my copies have an equal right to call themselves John K Clark, but
>> all of them would insist that only one of them is "me" because all the
>> copies would start to diverge at the instant they were made, assuming they
>> were exposed to different environmental conditions, because then they would
>> all start having different memories.
>> >
>> > John K Clark
>> >
>>
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