[ExI] Bodies

Ben Zaiboc bbenzai at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 17 13:08:32 UTC 2010


I'm with Lee on this one, only moreso.

Why do people assume that this is an either-or thing? That after uploading, you somehow lose the ability to interact with the world you 'left' (you won't leave it at all, really, your brain will just be made of someting different, and be much better at communication).

I think that's a good way of looking at it: migrating your consciousness into a better brain.  I'm sure there's no reason why that better brain couldn't be installed in an old-fashioned version 1 meat-body, just like the one you have now (If you really wanted that, for some unfathomable reason).

You'd be able to inhabit a real-world body when desired, and do all the stuff you presently do, and want to do, and more.  You'd be able to inhabit a completely virtual body, and experience a wide variety (understatement) of virtual environments.  You'd be able to combine the two, probably in ways we haven't even thought of yet.

I think it's important to appreciate that by the time we have the technology to emplement uploading, we'll be capable of building a much better version of our current meat-bodies, made of 'super-meat', or nanobots, or utility fog, or whatever.  We'll be capable of building (and living in) bodies that are pretty much anything we like, and of switching between experiencing life in such a body and a huge variety of virtual worlds at will.

I just don't understand the attitude that uploading somehow represents a /narrowing/ of choice, instead of a vast broadening of it (and I certainly don't understand the comment about granddad in a coma!).

Ben Zaiboc


      




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list