From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 12:10:58 MDT
On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> gts wrote:
> >
> > Robert Bradbury has suggested in light of this thread that we should
> > coin a new term to replace "immortality." I think it's a grand idea.
>
> I think the word you may be looking for is "amortal". [snip]
I'll note that Damien has suggested in other messages "emortal".
In thinking about the evolution of possible vectors further it
seems to me one might also use "unmortal" (in more the English
sense than the derived greek sense).
Unmortals would be constrained by the current physics of the
universe (i.e. no escape hatches via loopholes in physics)
but would not be constrained by local hazard functions
(i.e. point destructor events are of no concern -- this
relates somewhat to Hubert Mania's Nobody's Robody thread).
The best example I can think of would be the shape shifters
in Star Trek Voyager -- who continually return to the
"continuum" where their personal experiences get intermingled
with the body of knowledge of the species. The loss of an
individual might involve the loss of the experience since
the last immersion in the contnuum but everything else could
be retained.
Given the prospects of mind-to-mind links -- something that
DARPA & NSF (confined within NNI perhaps) are funding and
the possible availability of mind transfer and/or mind
merging technologies the concept of "mortality" becomes
a very fuzzy term. How much of "me" must be preserved
within the continuum for me to be "immortal"? Am I
"immortal" if multiple individuals have complete records
of my experience & mental processing capability (i.e.
they know all I knew and could think the way *I* think)
but they *choose* not to regularly utilize those
capabilities. [I.e. avoiding death requires that one
must not only be able to execute the code in ones mind
but one must be able to act on such decisions *in reality*
even if they happen to be sociopathic... i.e. "Surviving"
indefinately in a fully functional state in VR is *not*
"immortality"].
Bubble bubble, toil and trouble, witches cauldron brew.
Robert
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