On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Alan Grimes via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > The single unavoidable issue in uploading is the identity issue. That > alone is a showstopper and should end any further consideration of the > topic. Interestingly, I have noticed something extremely peculiar in the > last few exchanges. ** THE UPLOADERS THEMSELVES SEEM TO WANT TO DIRECT > THE DEBATE TOWARDS THE IDENTITY ISSUE!!! **
You understand, of course, that identity is an illusion. Most of our conscious experiences, thoughts, and actions are positively reinforced. This conditions our behavior to give us a will to live, which is good for our reproductive fitness. We want very much for this reward signal to continue by not dying. But the fact is that if it looks like you and acts like you and does so well enough that other people think it's you, then it's you. What else could identity be? A soul? The easiest path to uploading is to collect a lot of information about you and program an AI to imitate you. People are working on this now, for example, http://eterni.me/ You probably don't believe that a chatbot imitation of you is you. And of course, they make no such claim. But such imitations will only get better as our computers get faster, our AI software gets better, and we collect more information about you. If you carry a phone and use the internet a lot, then these devices probably already remember more about you than you remember yourself. I think we are in agreement on these issues. I would need a strong argument to consider uploading. I would need to see my friends go in for a procedure and come out younger, healthier, stronger, happier, and smarter in their new advanced humanoid robotic bodies. If I don't see the biological body being killed in the process, it would be easy to not think about what really happened. But it probably won't be up to me. Humans are social animals. Not only do we fear dying, we also grieve the death of others. It might matter less to your spouse than to you if the copy was not exactly like you, like if she fixed all the personality traits she tried unsuccessfully to change while your brain was carbon based. Would that bother me? Probably not, because I wouldn't be programmed to care. What worries me is that we might start giving human rights to machines that are stronger, smarter, and faster than us, and therefore better at competing for a limited supply of territory, atoms, and energy. -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
