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Transcendence........would You Do It?


RainMan

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There is going to be a new species of technology soon that will enable humans to download their brain into a computer program before they die. If given the chance, would you do it?

Yes, eagerly and unequivocally.

 

Why? I’m conscious of 2 major reasons:

 

First and most viscerally emotionally, I – contextually and pragmatically defined as the process that is considering this question and generating this text – don’t want to die. As I define my me/I as this process, hosting a process nearly indistinguishable from me, hosting it in silico offers a means of avoiding death due to the failure of my biological organs, which I suspect will not be preventable within my biological lifetime.

 

Second, and more delightful, I’d like to be able to debug me/my mind – that is, follow and understand in detail how it/I works. Constrained as it is by biochemistry, I can’t do this with the me/I process run by my brain. Were an emulation of this run in a computer without these biochemical limitations, I could.

 

But I don't get too wrapped up in it because it's doubtful the technology to do this is going to happen in my lifetime (barring visitors from Asgard or Vulcan).

I share, and am deeply bummed out by, your doubt, Buffy.

 

In the 1970s, when I first began to consider the prospect of in silico immortality, and in the early 1980s, when I first felt somewhat empowered to understand and contribute to achieving the technology, it seemed a profoundly difficult challenge, but one I could reasonably expect would be met by the end of the millennium.

 

AIs of the “could emulate I/me” variety remain a dear hobby, but a career of LOE estimation slaps me in the face with the cold numbers that, even assuming no major mistakes (an act of ridiculous conceit), fundamental impossibilities (a big, well-documentedly risky assumption), and 100% availability of myself to the task, my mortal coil will be shuffled off before I make much progress.

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