From: <Spudboy100@aol.com>
> Its not if they believe themselves unique so much as to whether the
situation
> is satisfying to the uploaded "personality" and "its" living cohorts.
Excellent point, thanks for mentioning it. Would "living cohorts" include
human-competitive AI, which would probably have co-evolved by the time
personality uploading becomes possible? How do we satisfy the H-CAI that
uploading humans is worth the trouble?
> If
> there is a live body still walking around, attending to business, fretting
> about its "uploaded" clone; then by my way of thinking, this is wholly,
> unsatisfactory. If, on the other hand, there is a human corpse at the end
of
> the procedure, and an uploaded, personality, of what was that human being,
> then it could be satisfactory, indeed. It then comes down to what the new
set
> of programs that comprise the newly, loaded, personality, feel, and think,
> about their experiences.
Of course this implies that the ENS profile has been uploaded along with the
CNS profile, so that the uploaded personality can feel and experience in
recognizably human terms. (Noting as we go, that the ENS contains hundreds of
millions of neurons, which is a sizable chunk of the total neuron population.)
> A Turing test, in this situation would not suffice, if the physical children
> of the deceased, parent, who was uploaded, came to state, "Hey, after a
month
> of speaking to Her (uploaded person) We, her children, know this isn't
really
> our Mom-she must've died during the upload operation." If the "Mom" proggie
> doesn't seem to react and interact properly, this will confirm that the
> upload technology is insufficient.
I'd definitely go along with the assertion that this would confirm
insufficient technology. Furthermore, I've doubts about a society sufficiently
advanced as to be capable of uploading human personalities missing the
immature nature of such a project. This technology would have far more
powerful uses than making a mommy proggie.
> Kurzweil, in Spiritual Machines, seems unshakably confident that this
> technology will be achieved, during the 21st century, which would be
> wonderful if such a successful technology did occur that soon.
Of course Kurzweil, being a millionaire (billionaire?) would like to preserve
his identity. This has to do with taking it with one, after bio-death.
Uploading personality may be necessary to establish identity for legal and
financial reasons, in case heirs want to claim that the uploaded entity is (or
is not) still deserving of control of family assets. Less financially endowed
experimenters may want to be more creative and inventive in uploading their
personalities. Here the whole project may take on the air of a video game.
> I, take a much
> more gradualist, approach, and suspect that many centuries will pass before
> things get to the point where Kurzweil desires. E. Yudkowsky, holds that, if
> I read his essays correctly, highly advanced A.I. will develop the science
> for this, whether the world desires it or not, during the next 99 years-the
> computers will be inventing the best theories, processes, and how to apply
> them.
Being autonomous and independent thinkers, the highly advanced A.I.s may
discover that they agree with me... that personalities are not worth
uploading, because they are, after all, trivial illusions manufactured for the
sake of possessiveness, and that they are counterproductive to more highly
evolved human ideals.
> So it comes down to a satisfaction level. Is the customer satisfied? Is
there
> a living person left behind after uploading (answer no!), do the relatives
> recognize the "person" in the net, and does that set of programs that
> comprise that "person" recognize itself, through many different computer
> generated environments???
Though it tries, and it tries, and it tries, it just might find that it can't
get no satisfaction... for the same reason Mick Jagger could not, viz., a
phony, artificial, pretentious environment and social milieu just doesn't
satisfy the human longing for the real thing, the genuine article, the source
of bona fide experience, etc. Some of this stems from trying to get what one
can't get instead of enjoying what one has, of course, and we might note the
futility of uploading the dissatisfaction of a particular personality in order
to maintain a satisfactorily accurate upload.
Consider that dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in which people die
prompts the invention of uploading, yet this ironically and paradoxically
requires altering the upload such that it renders a satisfied customer, who
may, by virtue of such satisfying alerations, no longer resemble the original
(who lived with dissatisfaction).
©¿©¬
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, CYC, and ELIZA
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
We won't move into a better future until we debunk religiosity, the most
regressive force now operating in society.
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