E-motive-mail from an upload
Having read most of the mail on the subject "Path to uploading" in the first week of the new year I would like to come up with some ideas.
If I were an upload, one of the first things IŽd do was trying to establish a friendly contact with all of my human antecessors who so passionately wished, talked and designed me into existence at the beginning of the 21st century.
I would rush through the extropian and >H mailing list archives and kindly review every single idea, imagination and calculation about uploading scenarios. Looking at and thinking about all the compilations of - at that time - latest scientific discoveries and their probable effects on creating an upload device for entities like me, I would give warmcpu-ed comments on them, agree on one topic, disagree on another with every author, confirm hir conviction, if she was right or dispel hir doubts. Maybe I would burst out in the upload equivalent of a thundering laughter at those propositions that were fed by an overdose of enthusiasm, optimism or narrowmindedness. But most of all I would probably be amazed at detecting that strong emotional energy behind the cool and rational thinking of my immediate ancestors and candidates for transhuman states of existence.
But being equipped with profound Darwinian knowledge, updated by a snuff of Dawkinsian brilliance I could easily produce a quick-motion simulation of the raw body experience throughout mammalian evolution including all that primitive ridiculous behaviour that originated in even older reptilian brain structures. So, it wouldn`t cost me too much computational power to come up with the capacity to really understand the importance of the emotional archetypes in the central nervous system of Homo sapiens. And while watching the rise of my newly discovered EQ (Emotional Quotient) matching my superior IQ IŽd be writing a demo-program and sending it via e-mail to the still living transhuman aspirants.
Inserting a disc with my program into the drive of their wearables theyŽd be experiencing via computer/brain interface some hitherto unknown electrochemical environments, interactions and connections of neuronal aggregations which stretched the plasticity of the whole brain to an extent that the thinking power and imagination, needed to co-experience the overwhelming fusion of emotional intelligence favourably surveyed by empirical rationalism in my transhuman forcefield, could be easily achieved without any additional wet or artificial brain structures. After an ecstatic period of about seven seconds the program destroys itself in order not to damage the cognitive areas of the user`s brain too seriously.
But what about those who were in their fourties by the beginning of the 21st century ( see "RE: > fourty" on the extropian mailing list of december 1998 ) and who, by the time a proper shooting of a telomerase hybrid was available, were probably too old to derive benefit from it? No hard problem at all ( hi Mr. Dennett, hi Mr. Chalmers ) since by use of some smart genetic algorithms I might build up virtual body-mind-continua of the neurosuspended in their icy Alcor-homes and of the unhappy few irretrievably deceased who had been wise enough to let behind some hair or deep frozen blood . So there could be a little suspension of the suspended, celebrated as a sneak preview or the limited editon of a mainstream Tiplerian resurrection in real time and cinemascope ( . . . soon in one of your neighborhood theatres . . . )
Anyway, don`t you think an upload should consider to be able to really feel artificial, digital or whatsoever kind of emotion with an observational attitude powered by the Kantian "interesselosen Wohlgefallen" (i.e. indifferent pleasure) ?
I hope every future upload will devote a tiny fraction of his time to write reports on how it really feels to be a true transhuman to all those who are still reluctant to make the final decision. They shouldn`t forget those enthusiasts who have devoted so much time, willpower, wit and intelligent emotion on the subject : us extropians and transhumanists of 1999.
Hubert Mania mania@welfen-netz.com
Don`t die - - load up - - way out