[ExI] Consequentialist world improvement

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Wed Oct 10 02:32:20 UTC 2012


On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:56 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> If he has passed away however, I feel weird about doing this.  It feels
> vaguely wrong.  Is it ethical?  What would Anders do?  On the other hand, if
> he is gone, this is a rather special way to honor the man, and let his
> family know he was special to us.  He is gone but not forgotten, and in a
> sense, not even completely gone.

If we're going to speculate, ask what would Omar do?  Would he have us
rebuild him now that we have the technology or would he tell you it
can't be done or that it shouldn't be done.  If you decide to proceed,
ask the Omar-bot the same question.  If ve answers "no, don't build
it" what sort of ethical issue do you have?

I don't think this is as silly as it may have first seemed.  Tupac at
Coachella is a good example why this stuff is a real question for
today.  If that hologram is driven by a 'program' that has enough data
mined for responses, there could conceivably be a new generation of
fans that wouldn't remember the original.  At that point, who is the
more-real character?

> If one often gets the feeling one should spend less time downloading one's
> brain into ExI-chat, a cheerful thought is that it might not be such a
> terrible waste.  You might be creating your future posthumous self with each
> paragraph you write.

Not just Exl-chat; the Internet in general.

btw, are you serious about building an archive-powered impersonator bot?



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