> In a message dated 97-01-04 08:20:38 EST, Eugene writes:
>
> [ keep flesh out of space! ]
> This proposal sounded logical, yet it brought up a philosophical question for
> me.
>
> What exactly is "profit" to an upload, (if you mean the kind of transhuman
> upload I am thinking)?.
While uploads will trade in nontangibles (and for us mehums, even
unimaginables) they will certainly have a hunger for more, and better
virtual space (they are extropians, you see), which in our physical
world is equivalent to turning nonanimated, drab matter into a substrate
supporting thought/computation (putting the metaphorical name of God into
Golem's clay).
Energy is ubiquitous, but only in space. Solar orbits knows no clouds nor
day/night, and is a great location for physical experiments. Care to set
up a particle accelerator around LSO? Go ahead, who needs that useless
Mercury, anyway.
Why do experiments? Because even our paltry physics hints at things
like strange matter and spacetime engineering. With these vistas explored,
constraints of our spacetime/available matter/energy lose their sting.
Limitless growth? Impossible here (apage apage, vade retro, Omega), but
not Elsewhere. So if it's not there, let's build it, using tools of
this_space(). (If impossible, let's exploit given resources optimally
(extropian misers?)).
> Why would an upload feel the need to colonize and explore outerspace? Or any
> physical space for that matter? Or am I missing some major facet of this....
Because artifical reality cannot be detached from the material carrier,
at least initially. And matter is a scarce commodity in relation to the
available energy flux, at least in our backyard of spacetime.
ciao,
'gene