Uplifting isn't Uploading, right?

Alex Tseng (alextseng@rocketmail.com)
Tue, 18 Nov 1997 17:41:39 -0800 (PST)


Hi peoples,
I was just wondering if uplifting is the same as uploading
uploading to me seems to imply from human to human
What you guys are saying here is putting human intelligence into
more powerful albeit lower life forms ( get the best of both
worlds? )
Also how far have we gotten in this uplifting thing?
Seems pretty scary thinking about it,...if God decides that we
have gone to far and calls it quits on us .... : " Closing time ,
gentlemen ... !!! " heh heh
Thanks for these interactions...
AlexTseng

===
Die to live forever, live as you were going to die today -

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.
- Antioch Bookmarks

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that
you've got it made.
--Jean Giraudoux

Of course, an uplifted species would have rights too, so your
intelligent guard dogs would want pay and maybe form unions
(packs?)..... One needn't uplift to the point of giving rights.
That is another issue altogether.
Yes, but we should realize we are taking on a big responsibility by
even partial uplifting. There are plenty of people who think even
normal animals can have certain rights, and an uplifted animal
would likely have more rights.
It mgiht be, though my first step would be anything to increase
brain power in a meaningful way -- whether than be increasing
speed or firing, changes in connections or adding more neurons /
connections.
There are no significant differences in firing speed, neural
arborization and connectivity as far as I know between different
mammals. However, a colleauge pointed out to me that primiates
seems to have some very high-frequency cells that others lack
that may be important. But in general relative cortical size and
structure seems to be more important than the other properties.
Surgery is one route, though I'd be more into breeding and
controlling development hormonally and genetically.
Genetics is probably the way to go, if only to add control genes so
that we can make adult brains grow more or "debug" them, since we
want the species to have a heritable intelligence. Hormones and
surgery can only help individuals.
Increasing the amount of effort and time to growing a larger brain
in, say, octopi, might be a good start.
it may be hard to work with octopi, since their brains are so
different from ours and we have more experience with mammal brains.
I also believe intelligence to be best measured by problem
solving abilities. Language would be a good way but not the only
way to implement this measurement. (There are nonlinguistic
tests we can do to test uplifted organisms, such as some which
are already done with mice.
Yes, but language is important in order to make the uplifted
animals able to communicate with each other, and hence spread
their own experiences and memes. It would likely accelerate
development just as it appears to have done in humans.
It strikes me that we really need to learn more about how we
became intelligent in order to be good at uplifting. But
uplifting also gives us valuable information on how we may have
evolved.

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