[ExI] Perception of Uploading

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Mar 7, 2026 at 3:07 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Friday, 6 March 2026 at 21:18, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
snip

> > "For worse in that she could not have children unless she left the
> > clinic for their gestation. Zaba had read the design notes that led up
> > to the creation of the clinics and their spirits and had long
> > understood the mathematics behind Suskulan's limits. In the long run,
> > births and deaths had to match. If you wanted no deaths, then there
> > could be no births."
>
> I always thought that logic was rather supect. Maybe if an upload took up as much, or more, material resources as a biological human, it might make sense.

If they take up any resources at all, a replicating immortal
population in a fixed base will become a disaster.

I should add that I was not consistent even in the next chapter
because to have a story, you need characters.  The story assumed an
upload of close to 99% with the "powers that be" trying to maintain a
human population (for reasons that are never stated).  The story also
assumed (my bias) that people would keep their bodies and brains on
"hot standby."  That takes resources, though probably not as many
resources as active people.

I have also written about people (as uploads) running much faster in
real time, submerged in the deep ocean to get rid of waste heat, and
running very fast.

I have written a little about what might be causing the light dips at
Tabby's Star.  If the deepest dip is a data center with trillions of
uploaded aliens, and 509 times the area of the Earth, the location is
well out from the star, in the "computational zone" where low
temperature (65 K) keeps the error rate down.

> It also implies no expansion off-planet, which strikes me as very unlikely, given uploading, as it seems to be the ideal enabler for mass colonisation of space.
>
I agree, though I am not sure that whatever runs in Tabby's Star data
center would be considered human.
> >
> > https://terasemjournals.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/henson-chapters-1-2-3-with-bio-no-illustrations.pdf
> >
> > The Clinic Seed part starts several pages in.
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > If it happens, it would certainly be a transformation.  "Altogether
> > better"?  I don't know, for certain different and a complete break
> > from the past, no children.  The story has generated only a small
> > number of comments over the years; most of the comments have been "a
> > triumph of humanity" sort.
> >
> > Have you read it?  It's only 7000 words.
>
>
> Two or three times, over the years.

Cool.  I consider it one of the best things I have written.
>
> As I said above, I don't buy the 'no children' idea, and I don't even think that uploading would lead to the depopulation of biological humans that you portray.

If uploading became as universal as cell phone use, there would not be
many people left.  Assuming the one-at-a-time rule.  Duplicating
people seems like it leads to a disaster.

> Unfortunately, my own writing skills are very poor, or I'd have written my own story, depicting a world where there are just as many, or even more, biological humans on earth (and elsewhere) as now, as well as a much bigger population of uploads.

You should write it.  If nothing else, it would cause you to consider
limits and logical outcomes.  I would like to read such a story.

> Most people are born biological, live a few decades, or a few centuries, and at some point decide to upload. Basically business as usual, but with better medicine, and uploading replacing death (at least if you're lucky enough to live in a place where the local authorities allow it).
>
> You now have an actual 'afterlife' that wouldn't be a matter of faith, and the departed would probably actually depart (being able to think much faster, and change into more advanced beings, so very soon probably wouldn't have much in common with the people they leave behind, and possibly there'd be a policy that uploads can't stay on earth, for verious reasons), but you'd have a realistic chance of one day seeing them again, after you upload in your turn.

If they were running fast, it might be too tedious.  But in such a
case, they could probably spin off a process to talk to biological
people.  I mentioned that (I think) in the next chapter.

Then there is Robin Hanson's Age of em, where he suggests that
uploaded humans could be endlessly replicated and used for mundane
tasks.  That seems like abuse to me.

> The uploads would exist in the same realm as superintelligent AIs, both keeping a more-or-less 'hands-off' approach to the biologicals, regarding them as a kind of nursery, or starting point for the growth of higher intelligences (that way, it's possible to tell plausible stories about events after the singularity).
>
>
> > > The prospect of all humans becoming extinct, and the prospect of all humans voluntarily moving to an uploaded state, are pretty much exact opposites, really, so calling uploading 'extinction' hardly seems a way to get people enthusiastic about it.
> >
> > "Enthusiastic" was not an intent.  It is an intentionally ambiguous story.
>
>
> Fair enough.
>
>
> >
> > > I think this is a case where being literally correct goes against being generally understood. Adding a parenthetical "but nobody died ..." might just be more confusing than helpful, or lead many people to dismiss the whole thing as silly. I think you have to already be familiar with the concept of uploading for it to make sense.
> >
> > People here and on the sl4 list are and were familiar with the
> > concept.  My goodness, that was a long time ago.
> >
> > Keith
>
> ---
> Ben
>
>
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