[extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?

[Anders Sandberg]

Damien Broderick wrote:
>
>>It’s not clear to me that the
>>chances of being saved by future posthumans is
>>increased more, or even equally much, by a Ray
>>Kurzweil way of living, than/as for example by a
>>Mother Theresa way of being ­ given that the
>>posthumans value altruism more than anything else.
>
> Only if posthumans are godschmucked idiots will
> they wish to retrieve Mother Teresa. I suggest
> you read Christopher Hitchens’ book The Missionary Position.

Or posthumans with a sarcastic sense of humour. "Hello madam. As you no
doubt know, you have been dead for 334 years. During this time, did you go
to heaven?"

I think altruism is irrelevant as a "bait" for posthuman retrieval, as are
most other motivations. Uniqueness makes much more sense. The more unique,
interesting and tangled up in important things you are, the better. You
might also go for the trick suggested by Charles Sheffield in _Tomorrow
and Tomorrow_, where the protagonist deliberately set out to create
mysteries only he knew the truth about, and ensured that future historians
would know that he knew.

But as Robert said, resurrection is unlikely to happen through
Clarke-Baxter wormholes. I would bet on massive brute-force constraint
calculations retrodicting the possible past, and that would create
resurrections of everybody. It still remains to ensure that you get fished
up from the simulator and given access to base reality if the posthumans
are not totally into ultra-altruism (or something more sinister, like
post-Jehova's Witnesses trying to convert *everybody* retroactively - the
mormons may baptise past generations, but the PJWs will try to get them to
join the church actively).

I'd rather get to posthumanity by growing up into a posthuman than
becoming their pet.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University