From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Oct 04 1996 - 04:30:27 MDT
On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Ira Brodsky wrote:
> You can't conquer death (and everything else) if you are a slave to
> physical needs/desires.
Are you sure about this? If the physical needs and desires align with
what you want to conquer, you will be very good at it and enjoy the trip
too. Imagine linking your pleasure center to some way of measuring your
evolution.
> As I recall, someone on this list (maybe it was
> Max More?) said they would not want to be uploaded to exist solely as
> intellect. Why not? Do you think if you achieved such an existence you
> would miss having physical needs/desires? I doubt it.
We humans are embodied, physical beings with a lot of emotional baggage -
we *are* our bodies in some sense. So far all realistic uploading
scenarios have simply dealt with copying the neurochemical pattern of us
into a digital emulation, where we continue to live as emulated physical
beings (who of course now can start to automorph very freely - who needs
physical continuity?).
We wont immediately become "pure intellect" - that doesn't exist, at least
no human or human-derived intellect can work without emotion, motivation
circuits and plenty of brainstem processing (you don't want to loose your
superior colliculus or habenula when you upload). Without these parts we
would simply not function well, and be less (effectively) intelligent. We
might change ourself into posthuman beings with completely new such
structures, but that will take plenty of work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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