>From: Ken Clements <Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com>
>
>Zero Powers wrote:
>
> > What I am fairly certain of is that
> > the essence of what is uploaded will be your mental existence as it is
>at
> > the instant of uploading. But as I've said before, that mental
>existence
> > will immediately begin to change upon the having of its first
>independent
> > mental experience. Does this answer your question?
>
>Well, this would indicate that uploading is the same as designing and
>building
>your basic autonomous thinking machine, just based on some design
>information
>you happen to have at hand. If that is all there is, what does it have to
>do
>with continuity of identity? Why would you want to do so when you could
>spend a
>bit more effort casting around for some better design base (or at least I
>could)?
Well I personally have never been a big fan of the uploading idea. I hate
to sound selfish, but frankly I'm into this immortality thing for the
purpose of indefinitely extending my own subjective experience. As I see
it, copying my mind into a computer is simply making some sort of backup
copy. That would do me little good, unless and until the "original"
suffered some catastrophe. Frankly I would probably not give a hill of
beans of the computer into which my mind was copied was dropped into Niagra
Falls, so long as the original me was still around.
I'm more in favor of *enhancing* rather than replacing my mental milieu.
You know a little more memory here, a little more speed and cognitive
ability there... Although at the end of the day, there may not be any
practical difference between the two methods.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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