From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 07:46:51 MDT
I think the doctrines laid down by Thomas ab Aquinas said that people
would be reconstituted in the flesh by the same atoms - and then he had
to deal with the issue of cannibals in his Summa Theologiae :-) But
that "solution" at least on the surface ought to make body-identity
people happier.
Apropos xoxing, I'm having an interesting discussion with David Pulver
about the roleplaying game Transhuman Space and why most nations forbid
xoxing of uploads. The real reason is of course that the game would be
unmanageable with too much xoxing of everybody and their pets. But what
about plausible anti-xoxing arguments? Assuming the technology existed,
what would be the best reasons not to allow people to copy themselves?
(that such bans would not work is another matter)
That xoxing is a tricky legal issue - if the wife xoxes, is the husband
a bigamist? Are all xoxes bound by the same contracts as the original?
- makes banning a way out of legal headaches for legislatures, but then
again, it is hardly enough to justify a ban.
One line of reasoning would be the Fukuyama approach: xoxing threatens
human dignity profoundly, and hence should not be allowed. Of course by
the time xoxing is possible Fukuyama has already lost a lot of power. A
variant is the risk of xoxes being used as tools when they are to be
treated as people.
Another approach would be the economic problems. If the scenario in
http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html works (not entirely plausible in
this setting, as AI does exist) then xoxing might lead to an economic
depression. This might be the strongest worry in a world were Fukuyama
arguments have begun to crumble from technoshock.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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