On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 10:00:21PM -0700, Zero Powers wrote:
> >From: Damien Sullivan <phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu>
>
> >On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 06:02:50PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> >
> >>The difference is that the cybergnostic is not striving
> >>for the practical benefits but rather the ethical/aesthetic "purity" of
> >>not being embodied.
> >
> >The material world seems destined to die. The cybergnostic may be striving
> >for a practical benefit of real immortality, believing "pure information"
> >can be eternal.
>
> Pure information, it seems to me, can't be any more ethereal than energy and
> given the equivolency of energy and matter I don't see that information can
> exist absent at least a little bit of material. In short, I don't see how
> information can be any more eternal than matter.
>
> That said however, given the choice I'd go for the cybergnosticism simply
> because, given enough computing power, data and sensors a meat-based body
> would be of no benefit. There would be no experience in the material world
> which could not be compelling duplicated (even significantly enhanced) in
> the VR world.
I think there is an important difference between cybergnosticism as I
described it and simply accepting uploading as a good idea. We all seem to
agree that being digital and movable is a more practical form of existence
for human flourishing than being tied to a certain computational matrix. But
do you view the material world as something inherently bad, and the uploaded
state as inherently good? A cybergnostic would do this, although many people
who are in practice cybergnostics have not thought through these issues very
carefully and simply reflexively say that uploading is good. Once you start
to pick at the question *why* uploading is a good thing, then much of
cybergnosticism evaporates.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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