From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Mon May 08 2000 - 01:18:49 MDT
Before the rest of them got in on the game, Replicant00 wrote:
> What I want to know is the explanation for wanting to have an opinion on
> killing a copy of one's self.
Uploading. There are a variety of hypothetical uploading strategies which
are "destructive," that is, the uploading destroys the flesh in the
process. Many people worry that if identity is not preserved, this is
suicide, not a route to longevity. You may find yourself in the position
of deciding whether or not to undergo a procedure like this.
In addition, copies are likely to be made if the computer is anything like
the computers of today, where data is cached, transferred, processed, then
written to disk, etc.. Even if not, you'll be best served in terms of
longevity if you keep lots of backups, assuming that making backups
preserves "you" at all.
The long and the short of it is that medical "immortality" can take you
only so far. Maybe it'll get you thousands of years, but it's hard to
imagine avoiding a sufficiently serious accident over the course of
millions of years without recourse to at least some kind of minimal backup
system, if not uploading. So if you're bent on immortality, these are
issues which you'll need to think about.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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