> In the future when all we >H are uploaded and racing along at our own
> speed, we will have a serious interface problem. Personally I am looking
> forward to "the far side party" and am eager to participate. The only
> problem is in the assumed exponential scale of development that all of
> my backups and clones will have, as they race through the galaxy.
> Exponential growths leads to exponential growth in difference. Thus my
> (or should I say "ours" about me and the clones?) backups will have very
> different speeds.
>
> How on earth are we gonna dance at the party? With so different
> perceptions of time, Pitch and tempo will seem different to me/us all.
But there could be a basic "party time rate" which everybody adopts
(at least when dealing with each other). See Greg Egan's _Permutation
City_, where the upload civilization in the second half has an
"official" time rate, and then individuals in their home virtualities
can run as fast or slow they want, given the available resources.
> This leads to a more general problem. How are we going to share our
> memories at the far side? Speech is out of the question I think. Way to
> slow and imprecise. Being uploaded as I/we are and converted to pure
> information processing, there must be a better way.
We need some kind of universal semantics, an artificial "language"
able to describe concepts well and in an consistent form which
everybody can translate their mind-states to and from. That might act
as a working buffer. But the demands on it will be great, since *very*
alien ways of thinking will meet.
> Perhaps we should develop a generic human definition, so that all
> interested transhumans, not only one self and clones, can share memories
> and experiences? Sort of an icky thought. But who knows how a transhuman
> will feel?
Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps a better model would be a standard
for mental representations rather than definitions, since we might
pick up a few aliens on the way to the party ("May I present
Threefoil-5-horoball-54, an intelligent flux-tube tangle I met in a
neutron star just coreward of the Dumbell Nebula")
> whew!!! sorry for the lengthy post. Had i had more time It could
> probably have been shorter. (Wasn't that Mark Twain who said that?)
I think he said it, but he stole it from Blaise Pascal, I think.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y