From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Dec 02 1999 - 11:39:36 MST
k
On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> The lifespan issue is very important too. It might be considered cruel to
> uplift a creature that can only live such a brief life. (This might be
> subjective, but I think a life span of three years is too short. Heck, I'm
> interested in immortality just like most of you.:)
When I first read this, I thought this has to be wrong, but then I
realized it has to do with the technology involved. If you upload
or uplift with a quantum level simulation, then you are going to
get cell death due to the normal (currently mis- or unprogrammed
biological system(s)). However, if you upload/uplift into a
more abstract simulation (say at the neural circuitry emulation level),
then you are not going to get the normal neuronal cell death that
(might) occur and you probably never die unless the circuitry
contains a program for that (and you are silly enough to activate it).
However this situation gets *really* interesting when you have
exact copies with "consciousness" added onto the underlying
programs. For example, you have a female praying mantis uplift
and a male praying mantis uplift. Let me see a show of hands
for people on the list who want to be mind-melded to the male
as the female cuts off his head to release the block on his
penile erectile function so they can exercise those reproductive
drives...
Dying for sex, now thats what I call *natural*.
Now of course, uplifting praying mantis's and allowing them to
have sex puts us back very close to the discussion of whether it
is ok to create copies, sub-SIs, etc. use them for your
purposes and then discard them when they are no longer useful.
But I'm not going to go there today.
Robert
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