[ExI] The Anticipation Dilemma (Personal Identity Paradox)

[Mike Dougherty]

On 7/16/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> It might be easier to discard the notion of surviveability, or, as you
> suggest, to eliminate the desire to survive, but I don't want to do
> that! No, no no!   :-)     Reasonable or not, "being alive is better
> than being dead, all other things equal" is something pretty hard-
> wired in me, at least for now.
>

so hardwired that you're redefining "alive" versus "dead" to make that
hardwiring easier to manage.

I think much of the difficulty of drawing people into these discussions is
convincing them to release their own ancient hardwiring about identity.  If
you were to talk about the issues facing the first AI that wakes up and
convincingly explains itself to be conscious of its own identity - I don't
think you'd have the human identity bias to relinquish.  Once you lead down
that road, it's much easier to introduce mind uploading and arrive at the
same conclusions with (possibly) fewer hangups.
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