From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 01:49:49 MDT
Anders wrote:
> If you don't trust anybody, then the best approach is probably
> just to have a number of backups with corresponding bodies,
What exactly are those corresponding bodies made of? The crucial question of my scenario
is even simpler than you think: When the discussion on this list comes to distributed
copies or backups I always wonder what the exact condition of such a backup is. Is it
pure software, is it a combination of software and artificial body - some kind of
"robody" - or are they just sleeping flesh, built from nanobots after an exact or
improved and enhanced blueprint of my former body including a one to one copy of my
consciousness - if I´m lucky?
> and external software that checks if they get sleep on signals (the
> message would likely be "today is XX-XX-XX, sleep on" encrypted
> with your private key - this way nobody can forge it without
> having the key, and you don't have to broadcast any keys). Have
> the copy exoselves check their mailboxes in a staggered manner so
> that if your signals cease one and only one is activated.
Yeah, great, that sounds plausible, thanx.
> The copies could be stored in secret stealthed Kuiper belt objects
> with minimal energy requirements as long as they are not active.
But how do they get back to earth? No matter what they are, software, carbon-based flesh
or a software-robody-combination...someone other than me must use his hands to get them
back on our planet or at least: someone other than me must simply put my - let`s use
contemporaray terms - blue DVD-backup into the hard drive of a robody. This is the
crucial manipulation, the point, where someone else is in charge. Or is it just my old
fashioned anthropomorphic viewpoint to depend on hands and feet that prevents me
from seeing the advantages of being freed from a body? That`s why I was wondering if
all our fine ideas about living forever must finally rely on this little manual help
from a friend or a paid institution. And if there actually is no way to do it ALL by
yourself.
>> Yes. If you don't have much trust in a society coercion and
> violence are the lowest common denominator for transactions, and
> with the tech usually assumed in such a society that can be
> extremely destructive.
If you go into cryonic suspension, this point is unequivocal. You need someone who thaws
you. But the same seems to be true for alternative immortality provisions. It's fairly
easy to say, okay, I've got five copies of myself sleeping somewhere, so my relative
immortality is ensured, but then you must realize that you depend on a working human
community of trust.
> I would probably use smart contracts of some kinds
> (essentially that the contract between you and me includes
> something like the system above included in the contract), which
> were also deposited with trusted third parties. On activation and
> irregular reviews the integrity of the contract and copies would
> be publicly checked, also by a number of trusted third parties.
> This would detect if the contract had not been executed when it
> got the activation silence.
Sounds reasonable.
> If you were *really* paranoid you
> might put a number of encrypted copies of yourself in different
> activation companies such that you would only re-emerge after
> combining all (or a certain number) of them together - the only
> way to do a fake reanimation would be if they all colluded.
Well, Anders, as the saying goes: you never ever expect the Spanish Inquisition :-))
Greetings from humania
Who actually is not as paranoid as it may sound and who only wants to find out, if he
can provide for and perform the mechanisms of relative immortality ALL on his own.
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