Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
[snip]
>Stop for a moment. Think about it. Are you really ready to go? Here and
>now? Perhaps, while you were asleep last night, the final breakthrough
>occurred in the Cyc lab, or at Zyvex. Maybe you're being asked to decide
for
>real. Are you ready?
>
>Well, I'm still here (or a simulation of me is making sure that nobody
notices
>any sudden absences). I have made my choice. I do not regret it. I
really
>and truly am ready to be uploaded and upgraded, to plunge into the unknown.
>Am I afraid? Yes, but I still made my choice, believing it was real. So I
>don't want to hear any more about the pleasures of physicality. Some of us
>have severed that emotional commitment. Because I knew then, and decided,
>that I was even willing to lose my personality and my identity as an
>individual - if that was what was required - I am not bound even to that.
I'm not sure it makes sense to say I'm prepared to lose my personality and
my identity as an individual. What's the point of saying "I" want to upload
if "l" cease to exist once I get there. I don't see how that could happen
anyway. The uploaded version of you would have all your memories so
how could your identity be lost? It would only be expanded. I have
memories
from my childhood but I am no longer a child. Wouldn't it be the same?
[snipped a great dream scene]
>If I suddenly found myself Elsewhere and was asked if I was ready to be
>uploaded, I could answer "Yes" without hesitation. I wouldn't need to
savor
>physical existence one last time. I have already done so. So to answer
the
>eternal question - yes. I will give it up. All of it. Willingly.
>Emotionally, as well as rationally. My choice is made.
I would also say yes if offered the chance to upload. I was jogging again
today and thinking about yours and Den Otter's posts. I tried to imagined
that the world I was sensing was my own simulation. I chanted a mantra
while I ran: "Every sensation...my own creation....Every sensation....my own
creation...." To make sense of it I had to picture the me that was jogging
as only
a portion of the whole me, partitioned off and placed into this virtual
reality
while the rest of me was busy with other tasks. I was reminded of the
movie,
"What Dreams May Come" where Williams spontaneously creates his own
world after he dies. I like the idea of visiting other uploads and
experiencing
the worlds they create for themselves, or joining with other uploads to
cooperatively create worlds perhaps impossible to create alone. It's a new
slant on the old phrase, "Brave New World".
Scott Badger