[ExI] Obama keen on brain mapping

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 02:12:04PM -0400, Alan Grimes wrote:

>> The transition from a world where brain emulation is not possible to a  
>> world where it is doable.
>
> Ok, but why is that, at all, remarkable?

Your trolling-fu is lacking today. If you thought you wouldn't
be remarkable it wouldn't get your panties in such a bunch.
Every. Fucking. Time.

>> In the past transitions to slightly faster economic growth rates and  
>> new means of production have led to pretty dramatic effects on the  
>> lives of people (consider the industrial revolution, globalisation,  
>> de-industrialisation), but most have developed rather slowly. Yes, I  
>> think most of these have improved things overall, but during the  
>> transition there is plenty of pain and some people get an extra unfair  
>> helping.
>
> Those are political problems, having no intrinsic relationship to  
> uploading.

The Sixth Great Extinction is also just a political problem.
It has no intrinsic relationship to humans. At all. The
reason why all these fine species dying are all perfectly
natural, and we have absolutely no impact on the ecosystem.
At all.

>> In upload transition scenarios, there are good reasons to think that a  
>> very sudden transition would cause a lot of drama - massive first  
>> mover advantages, big rewards for ignoring moral or legal rules,  
>> entirely new players gaining enormous wealth and power, big challenges  
>> to existing legal and social systems, new kinds of enslaveable agents  
>> not accepted by everybody as being persons, and so on. I am working on  
>> a proper paper on the topic, but our preliminary finding is that out  
>> of the list of putative causes of war and social conflicts rapid  
>> uploading transitions manages to check lots of boxes.
>
> Yeah, it's that ignoring moral or legal rules that bothers me the most.  

You're confusing 'ignoring' and 'trying to do something about it,
yet being unable to due to circumstances outside of our control'. 
Nobody wants to kill the cute furry animals. But people need timber,
and logging kills them just as surely as nuking the jungle from
orbit. 

> I don't think most of the laws on the books are actually just, but  
> considering the laws which are just, and the morals which are proper,  
> what can we do to enforce those?

What can we do to stop the Sixth Great Extinction? VHEMT seems to
lack traction, for some reason. You bitch and moan a lot, how about
suggesting something constructive, for a change? 

>> If you think brain emulation is impossible, then this analysis doesn't  
>> matter. If you think it is irrelevant because of some other future  
>> technology, fine, but consider that there is a certain risk that that  
>> technology does not arrive fast enough.
>
> I am completely indifferent to the date when uploading arrives. A later  

Yes, if shitting bricks is indifferent, you are indeed indifferent.

> date might improve my ability to construct defenses, other than that I  

Look, if the mountain gorillas waged a war on humans, who do you think will
be winning?

> don't care.

If only, then you'd stop trolling are the damn lists with your
fanatical crusade about all things upload. Why don't you start
worrying about zombies? You're also dead if you're zombie, and
they're all after your braaaaaaaaaainnnnnnssssss.