From: Chris Hind (chind@juno.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 1996 - 15:15:57 MST
>The problem is that people are viewing information as though it were
>physical matter. Information can never be moved, it can only be copied.
>Uploading is the transfer of information. The inability to move
>information (as opposed to copying) is a fundamental limitation of all
>information systems.
>It appears that uploading should not be possible for these reasons. The
>best we might hope for would be to augment our existing systems.
We can still live in a virtual world though with the laws of physics
altered at our whims and AI civilizations created and destroyed for your
entertainment. (Oh no! Here comes the AI civil liberties organization!)
In this scenario we do have the choice of either being a brain in a jar
with i/o streams feeding into a PC or we can augment our existing body
everyway we can think of and have a brain-PC interface builtin to our
genome such as communication with a PC via bat radar signals or tendrils on
the back of the neck which are a direct link to our brain. If this is true,
it doesn't matter much to me because I'd be satisfied with the 'greek god'
idea because I could still create entire universes in a virtual world as
well as have access to the continuously growing pool of human intelligence
plus gain immortality. Can silicon actually support life? If this is true
that we are required to 'move' data then Strong AI will never come about or
live in a quasi-consciousness where it continually lives/dies/lives/dies.
John, I'm looking for a reply on this one.
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