<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">I have the same question as everyone else. I don't suppose that we will know until uploading just makes a copy and leaves the original intact. Then we'll see who's who!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">On a technical note: it is one thing to figure out what a neuron is doing and why - still difficult. But the glial cells far outnumber the neurons and we are mostly in the dark about them. And a different type of neuron has been found as of late. We are a long way away. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">It is of never ending amazement to me how much control many people want over other people. It's like asking a neighbor to cut down a tree because you don't like it. Prudes with Freudian problems, I say.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Thanks for the authors, a couple of whom are new to me (the first three), but I will buy them as usual when I get a recommendation. Read all of Stross, Banks, and some of a couple of others.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">I also like some of the 'softer' scifi books such as Bujold (superior writer) and Kage Baker (who deserves far more fame than she got), ditto. I am getting softer myself and don't care for ugly people doing mean things, galactic overloads, lots of battles, descriptions of weapons etc. But you are probably right about what sells.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Like I said before, forget 'human body', 'computer brain'. </span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif">I had those in mind for the avatars.</font></span><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 5:03 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
On 28/03/2020 20:21, billw wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">What you are
describing is more or less Heaven on Earth, but without golf.
I have serious doubts that this will happen the way you say,
but who cares about my opinion? </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
I have no idea if things will happen the way I describe, but so many
people have what seems to me to be false (and frankly, ridiculous)
ideas of what uploading would be like. I wanted to give a more
realistic (in my view) description. <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">As a libertarian
I'd let just about anything happen. Who besides some
religious people would have any objections? <br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Oh, you'd be surprised. Some people are dead against the idea on
philosophical grounds (quite aside from religious ones). Extremely
bad philosophical grounds, imo, but compelling to them. The worst
thing is that some of these people don't just want to avoid
uploading for themselves, they don't want <i>anyone</i> doing it,
they regard it as fundamentally evil or at least fatally misguided.
Talk about uploading enough, and you'll soon find them crawling out
of the woodwork. If you really want to expose yourself to this, just
ask the dreaded (and silly) question: "Will a copy of you really be
you?", then sit back and wait for the mouth-foaming to begin.<br>
<br>
If you want some solid ammunition against the usual objections, read
"A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading" by Keith Wiley.
Highly recommended. Very clear, excellent logical arguments and
well-written. For me, reading it was the culmination of a long path
that started with the first four pages of Linda Nagata's 'Vast'
(mentioned below), and its depiction of an uploaded spaceship pilot.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">What will the
avatars be like? Human body, computer brains linked to
yours? Immobility would be a problem for me. I'd want an
avatar able to go anywhere as if I were there.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Same answer as ever: Whatever you like (with certain limitations
that have more to do with physics than anything else. Oh, and maybe
legal questions. I don't suppose many people would object to a ban
on avatars that guzzle woodland, belch out vast quantities of CO2
and manufacture nuclear weapons, for instance).<br>
<br>
Like I said before, forget 'human body', 'computer brain'. The
technology required to make uploading as I describe it possible will
render those terms meaningless. You could maybe say something like
'a synthetic body, with even greater sophistication than biological
bodies, containing a similarly sophisticated synthetic brain capable
of creating and linking to multiple virtual worlds'. We'd probably
need a shorter, catchier name, though.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Will uploads
vote? Will anyone accumulate wealth enabling living for
centuries?<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Will democracy still exist? Will living for centuries (let's say
millennia, shall we? Centuries seems a very modest goal) require any
special accumulation of wealth? These are questions we can't answer.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I'd like to read
a scifi book that has all this stuff in it.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
So would I.<br>
I know of none that has all of this stuff, but can recommend some
authors that I've found interesting and inspirational, at least in
parts:<br>
<br>
Greg Egan, Neal Asher, Linda Nagata (her 'Nanotech Succession'
books), Richard Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks ('Culture'
novels), Charlie Stross (Singularity Sky, Saturn's Children, etc.),
Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed ('Great Ship' books:
'Marrow', etc.), Olaf Stapledon, among others.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> There is very
often no progress in those books, no visions for the future.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Plenty visions for the future, not all good, but very few actually
try to chart an optimistic progressive path. Hardly surprising,
though. Wars, murders, conflict etc., make for much better stories<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Very long before
what you describe happens, the human race with evolve itself
genetically, and quickly. Yes, why wait for regular
evolution?. It has already started on a very small scale.
That is what interests me more than the uploading, though of
course I am interested in that too.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Time will tell.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">It's a great
thing and a curse to have all my interests. bill w</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I can only agree with that. I try to practice attentional triage,
but it's not easy...<br>
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
</div>
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