[ExI] future of slavery

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Sun Apr 28 13:39:18 UTC 2013


On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 6:40 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> On 28/04/2013 04:27, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>>
>> I think it would be great to have many followers, devoted to my cause.
>> Raised from assembly code up to love and respect me, they would
>> tirelessly work with me, a family of loving companions, sagacious,
>> utterly trustworthy, not blind to whatever failings I might exhibit
>> but willing to accept and cherish them. They would recoil in horror at
>> the thought of being torn away from me, of being subverted away from
>> the path they wish to tread.
>
>
> But note that these entities would be very dependent upon you, probably more
> dependent than any human slave has ever been. Were you to die or abandon
> them they would suffer terribly. That puts a very heavy moral burden on
> *you*. In a very real sense they are all your dependents, and you have a
> moral duty to protect them.

### Well, there are some easy solutions:

Have all or at least some of them carry a copy of me. You may recall
my contention that my self is probably a smallish file, perhaps in the
gigabyte rather than tera- or peta-byte range. In this way if my main
instantiation were to be destroyed, my dear friends would endeavor to
reproduce me out of their own memories.

Digital suttee. Since the very reason for their existence would be
gone with my passing, my followers would erase themselves as well, of
course after exhausting all avenues to my resurrection.

Mind apoptosis, a related notion. My approval would be a trophic
factor needed for them to prevent self-erasure. My disapproval would
trigger a controlled self-destruction routine, just as the withdrawal
of serum trophic factors causes the apoptosis of normal human
lymphocytes.

Stoicism in the face of death. My friends would not wail and gnash
their teeth in the human fashion, instead they would accept the
cruelty of entropy as the iron law of the universe, and would carry
on, continuing my good works and cherishing my sweet memory.

I am a techno-optimist when it comes to solving ethical problems.

Rafal



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