[ExI] Fwd: [Cosmic Engineers] Re: Sharing/engineering proposal

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Fri Oct 15 16:40:00 UTC 2010


On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:

snip
>
> No susceptibility to biological/chemical attack (bacterial/viral infections and poisoning)

Sigh.  The trade off for not getting the flu is that you are now
subject to infection by some horribly evolved version of Stuxnet.

Perhaps that's the real answer to the Fermi paradox.  Technophiles
always figure out uploading and are then eaten by some nasty computer
virus.

> Vastly more robust physical structure (potentially, anyway.  Nothing stopping you uploading into computational aerogel, though, if you really wanted!)
>
> No deterioration with time (not strictly true, but the deterioration of the kind of hardware envisioned would be far, far slower)
>
> Access to your own mental architecture, and the possibility of easily and reversibly altering it, opening up the way to improve your mental capacities, in whatever way is important to you

This is lethal.  At least nobody is going to recognize a person who
mucks around with their internal state variables.  See Society of Mind
for discussions of these points.

> Copying/Backing up your mind, with all that that implies

If offers some possibility you could be restored after mucking with
yer mind or being eaten by a virus.

> Access to virtual realities that are as real as anything you can experience now, and much more varied.

You mean like WoW only even more addictive?

snip

Ben, I am not really pouring cold water on your ideas, which are very
much in tune with those discussed on the early extropian list.  But I
do urge caution.

Keith

> Ben Zaiboc




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