From: hal@finney.org
Date: Fri Jun 25 1999 - 17:24:03 MDT
Eric Hardison, <bijaz@mindspring.com>, writes:
> First, I'd like to point out that I think uploading is the wrong
> approach. It would be better to replace the body with new
> electromechanical technology -- cell for cell via multiple injections.
> Once every cell has been replaced with an electromechanical version,
> they can all dispense with the "organic pretension". The new body will
> be programmable. Bored with the old style of body? Go in for a retrofit
> or maybe a restructuring "operation".
The question I like to ask in regards to this kind of "gradual uploading"
scenario is this. What about the case of a person who is already uploaded
into a computer? Let's ignore for now the question of whether he is the
same person he was when in an organic body. Hopefully we can agree that
there is "someone" in the computer.
Should he have concerns about identity when his program is subject to
similar kinds of transformations as uploading? Modern operating systems
will move programs around in memory, or even swap them out of memory
altogether and put them on a disk for a while before swapping them back in
to run some more. If you were a program like this, wouldn't moving you to
a disk "kill" you as certainly as uploading? Where is the continuity in
a system which shoves around bits and pieces of your program willy-nilly?
It would be even worse if you had a multi-processor system with dynamic
load balancing, where parts of the program are moved from computer to
computer in order to keep everything running efficiently. If the system
were running many brains at once then your whole program could be moved
around from machine to machine without your being aware of it.
My feeling is that these kinds of transformations should not be relevant.
The important thing in this model is that the computer manages to
run through all the steps of the program that calculates your mind.
The details of how the computer accomplishes this should not matter.
At some level, all computers are equivalent. If some use different
technologies for performing their calculations, that is not important,
as long as the calculations get done.
If this is true it doesn't matter if your program gets swapped out for
a while, or moved from processor to processor. But if it's OK for your
program to be suspended on one processor, have the data and state copied
to another processor, and be resumed there, then isn't this essentially
the same process as uploading? You shut down one processor (your brain)
copy the data to another (a computer) and start it up there.
Some people are uneasy at the thought of running on a computer system
which would take such liberties with their program. They want to run on
a nice, simple computer, no swap-outs, no jumping around, nothing fancy.
Otherwise they are afraid they might die and never even notice it,
which would be a tragedy.
This is another example of how these seeming abstract philosophical
musings may actually have practical significance for us in the next
century.
Hal
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