[ExI] Technical Uploading Difficulties

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Fri Mar 7 04:06:19 UTC 2008


Alex and Bryan wrote

> [Bryan wrote]
> On Thursday 06 March 2008, Alex wrote:
> > Those aside for now. But until we understand both the chemistry
> > and the wetware, I think it would be safe to reason that any
> > uploads would be no where near as 'human' as we would like.
> 
> Identity is something that is hard to pin down,

Yes, in some ways it is hard to pin down, e.g., whether a duplicate
of you is really you. But the identity in case of uploads is very
simple:

Either it's as good a you as the you that will be next week, or
it isn't.  Or next month, whatever. The important point is
this:  

*  If a person trying to get uploaded determines through
    questioning that his uploaded self really seems to be 
    him in all ways, then the upload effort was successful.

For example, if we succeed in uploading a sequence of
chimpanzees, and their behavior in terms of responses and
thoughts (as well as we can determine them) seems identical
to the original ape, then we're ready for human trials (IMO).

And once a human is successfully uploaded, the proof of the
pudding will be that his or her friends find communicating with
the upload to be essentially indistinguishable from communicating
with the original. 

Anything that falls short of this is a FAILED UPLOAD attempt.

Alex [agreeing with Bryan] writes

> Is the cost of immortality losing our identity and humanity?

But then, by definition, the immortality has not occurred!

Lee




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