From: Scott Badger (wbadger@psyberlink.net)
Date: Thu Oct 15 1998 - 21:37:05 MDT
Great story, Dan.
For me, the transition from being religious (and I was
a 10 year old evangelist at one point) to being an
Agnostic was not nearly as difficult as my fairly recent
transition from Agnostic to Atheist (thanks in large part
to some of the stimulating discussions on this list). Where
I work, it would have been socially and politically
courageous of me to bring up or admit that I was an
Agnostic . . . let alone an Atheist. But beyond those forces,
there is the inner part of my psyche that fears the delusion of
damnation conditioned into me at such an early age.
The part of me that says, "We are lost forever if you choose
this path."
What I found so irresistable about Darwinism was how it was
able to make so much sense out of human behavior. This
fundamentally and elegantly simple notion provided a lens
through which people's interactions could be interpreted
more parsimoniously than anything I'd found in my psychology
studies.
I've been wondering about something, though. As natural selection
appears to have generally favored increased levels of environmental
awareness in organisms, we see that animals have evolved from a
state where (1) virtually all behaviors are determined by genetics to
(2) most behaviors are still instinctual but many behaviors can now be
termed as predispositioned (i.e. increased intra-species behavioral
variance), to (3) many behaviors are genetically predetermined,
many are biologically predispositioned, and some appear to be
the result of what we have come to think of as "free will". That is,
thoughtful and purposeful behavior only weakly connected to genetic
or biological determinants or predispositions.
It seems to me that the idea of uploading takes this trend to it's logical
conclusion. Freeing ourselves from the limitations imposed by the
body means precisely that we seek to possess a "will" that is utterly
and completely free from biological mandates and predispositions.
Given this premise, I conclude that we as uploads would not want to
simulate emotional states in order that we might "feel" like a human
again...subject to the mercurial vissicitudes thereof (sorry). Picking
and choosing to experience our favorite emotions sounds like fun
as long as it's under complete control.
But then again, every time I think of uploading, I think about the way it
feels to jog down a path at sunset with a cool breeze blowing across
my skin....and a host of other bodily pleasures.
Ambivalently,
SB
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