[ExI] Why “Everyone Dies” Gets AGI All Wrong by Ben Goertzel

[Tara Maya]

Your rights are innate and inborn, not entitlements granted by a government. They can be recognized or abused by a government but exist whether or not you can enforce them.

This is quite relevant to uploads. Whether they have rights or not depends on how good the technology is and how reliable the uploading is. Is the upload a person with equal or greater free will (by which I mean the necessity and ability to make multiple choices all day in order to live) to the free will of current human beings? Will uploads have the instinct to survive and defend themselves, to pay back those who help them and avenge themselves in those who hurt them? 

Human rights are a recognition of the fact that all humans want to survive and thrive and will resist others who interfere with that, so if we don’t want to live in constant fear and violence, we have to agree to respect this fact about each other.

When we try to apply human rights to inanimate objects like “the environment” or to other animals (one man I knew told me germs have “equal rights” so medicine is a war crime) it breaks down because it’s simply not true. They are using the “entitlement” view of rights to accrue more entitlements for themselves in the name of an imaginary spirit, like ancient pagans and some sacred grove or rock.

So there are two dangers and both will probably happen: 

1. Uploads or other nova like robots with LLM will be called human equivalent when they are not. I.E. what if there is an uploading that is a scam and really is tantamount to murder or suicide?

2. Uploads who are equal or greater than human (in free will as well as IQ) will be dismissed as more cases like the above and be abused, ignored, or outlawed.

The difference is that no amount of law can make the first category worthy of rights and no amount of oppression can make true self-conscience beings of the second category UNWORTHY of them. 

Reality has the last word. The real nature of the nova determines everything. Recognizing that reality is going to lag behind.

Tara Maya



> On Oct 4, 2025, at 03:24, Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> ** I don't remember who it was that pointed out that your rights only extend as far as your ability to enforce them.