<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Sep 18, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Alan Grimes wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">my uploader credentials go back over 15 years and I certainly don't think the POV of a person, or of a upload, or of a person who is an upload, is irrelevant. </blockquote><br>You do too believe that the POV-self is irrelevant iff you are a<br>destructive brain uploader. You can't have it both ways.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is only one way to have it, subjectively. Subjectivity is all important and objectivity is trivial. And please don't tell me POV is just an illusion because illusions are a perfectly legitimate subjective phenomenon. Your difficulty and the error of all uploading opponents I have ever encountered is that you fell hook line and sinker for the Bullshit that your third grade English teacher told you, that "I" is a pronoun when in reality it is a adjective. You are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Alangrimesian way. My brain of a year ago has been destroyed and been replaced with last years mashed potatoes, but the POV of John K Clark remains because those potatoes were organized in a Johnkclarkian way; and if it all turns out to be an illusion I really don't care. </div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">I don't see why an uploader, or anyone for that matter, would be so<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">stupid as to pretend selective pressures can ever be ignored. <br></blockquote><br>Actually, most of them exude an aura that strongly indicates that they think that everything after becoming an upload will be nothing but buttercups and daisies.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't. There will still be competition from things smarter than you, AI's as well as other uploads that started out smarter than you and haven't gotten dumber with the passage of time; and there may be competition from things not nearly as bright as you too, like viruses. But the biggest snake in the garden of Eden may be drug abuse, if you could open the "preferences" panel in your mind it would take an iron will not to move the happiness slide switch just a little further to the right, and then a little more, and then a bit more [...] I hope not but drug abuse could be the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all the trouble of actually accomplishing something when you can get the same agreeable feeling of pride and fulfillment without all the bother? </div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">If you are inactivated for a billion years and then restarted from<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">your POV nothing has happened to you but the external universe has<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">suddenly jumped forward a billion years.<br></blockquote><br>That would be stupid because you would be effectively dead during that<br>time and someone would likely come around to make you fully dead<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Maybe, and maybe I'll get hit by a bus when crossing the street to get to the uploading center, but neither triviality effects the fundamental philosophical point.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Actually it depends on what you mean by "restarted". If you clear out<br>too much state then you are rebooting a new POV-self. </div></blockquote><div><br></div>Yes, if you don't use enough information the resulting matter will not behave in a Alangrimesian way.<br><blockquote type="cite"><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">It should be noted that an AGI mem [...]<br></blockquote></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">I really don't see what Adjusted Gross Income has to do with what we<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">were talking about, or maybe you meant the American Geological Institute<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">or Analytical Graphics Incorporated. <br></blockquote><br>It's the Great/Powerful/benevolent/all-knowing/all-wise GOERTZEL's term,<br>"Artificial General Intelligence". I had assumed everyone on this list was familiar with it.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>I know, I had this same discussion over on the Singularity list not long ago. I pointed out that "AGI" is a cultish term invented by members of that list and used virtually nowhere else except to a (mercifully) limited extent this list. It's an unnecessary word with a better and shorter alternative, it's a word that is certain to make professionals in AI look at you funny. Think I'm exaggerating? I did a Google search for "AI" and got 702,000,000 results, almost all of them having to do with smart computers.</div><div>I did the same thing for "AGI" and got 13,500,000<nobr><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal; "> results with no mention of smart computers until page 9 of results. Page 9!</span></nobr></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br></span></span></div><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">AGI has a pretentious smell about it that another simpler and much more widely </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">understood term, </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">AI, does not. Why would anyone want to needlessly complicate things, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">why would anybody want</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">to place a roadblock in the path of understanding? Well it's not </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">really mysterious;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: nowrap; ">if you have a good idea then you'd want to communicate it with the least </span>ambiguity possible,</div><div>but if you have a really stupid idea then clarity of expression is not your friend.</div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">It should be noted that this option is available to non-uploaded<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">humans with only a neural interface.<br></blockquote></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">I don't see why something that isn't true should be noted.<br></blockquote><br>Now that's fascinating! Why on earth do you think a neural interface<br>CAN'T be used for mind-melding with an AGI architecture? </div></blockquote><div><br></div>My error. Somehow I thought you said the option is available ONLY to non-uploaded humans but you did not. My apologies. <br><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Minds that fail to compete at all will be pushed off the network and will, at best, be<br>stuck as an archive file on tertiary storage somewhere.<br></div></blockquote><br></div><div>I think that's probably true.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>