The more complicated issue to me is, what can be reduced to qualifying as the
difference, between You and your body? The more Objectivist view is to
concede that you are a body. In the case of some evolution uploading to
software, we need to go to neuroscientists and have them help us best decided
what is, in fact, you?
Are you feedback from a neuromuscular system, plus memory?
Is there any reasonable chance that you are more or less then that?
Can computer science, anytime soon, absorb the "haptics" of the sensation and
memory of the inside of your own mouth? If not, is this something people will
need?
What about hundreds of other minor sensations and habits that will need to be
duplicated sufficiently, in order to "fool" the uploaded personality?
Do neuroscientists yet understand sufficiently what constitutes us as a
personality?
The limbic system, cerebrum, cerebellum, and all its interlocked interactions.
The complexity to this is daunting so no wonder thinkers seek a Yudkowskian
Singularity to be able to accomplish this, rather then the monkey, trying to
understand the monkey. Please hand me a banana.
Mitch
In a message dated 8/23/2001 12:55:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
lcorbin@tsoft.com writes:
<< I had been supposing that there already were levels of implementation
(or abstraction) between me and the physical world. I see my body
as just a device that allows my actual living to take place; that's
why I look forward to an upgrade to distributed hardware. The
material world will be no more abandoned then than it is now: if
I have my way, I'll have sensors throughout whatever solar systems
I live in that keep me posted on the slow-moving physical world.
If all goes well, then I'll have to pay even less attention to it
than I do now.
Lee >>
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