---Robin Hanson <hanson@econ.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> Joe Jenkins writes:
> >> and that people will be
> >> uncomfortable with the very fact that it isn't real.
> >
> >I can't prove were not already uploaded, so why should I care if we
> >upload within the upload if nothing more than for the sake of
> >efficiency.
>
> I claim that you are now pretty convinced that you are not an upload,
> and that if we were to convince you that you are, you would be very
> disturbed and disoriented.
>
> For one thing, living in a physical world, you have a rich intuition
> to draw on to think about security. If you can defend a volume of
space
> against intruders, you are largely secure.
The distinction you have drawn out here is between creating an upload world suitable for migration, and living in an already created upload world that you and all of your ancestors have evolved in. It is the latter, not the former, that I cannot prove is not the case. In my mind, not being able to disprove the latter disqualifies a lot of commonly assumed limitations about the former. Anyway, none of your objections are directly applicable to the use of this argument. Indirectly, however, if everyone was aware of the lack of limitations implicit in this argument, that should alleviate some discomfort..... I would hope. On the other hand, the lack of limitations in an upload world actually are far greater than this argument takes you. Those extra unknowns will certainly add discomfort but thats just part of life in the singularity lane.
> If you live in a virtual
> reality all that gets thrown out, and you have to use very different
> and alien approaches to evaluate and preserve your security. That by
> itself is enough to make someone uncomfortable with such a life.
There are going to be some uncomfortable transitions for sure. What I call "my ideal scenario for uploading" is nothing more than "theoretically possible". That scenario allows for uploading into a world where, at first glance, you are unable to detect you have been uploaded. Odd that you mention security as being a deterrent. I've always thought that that would be what pushes me to upload before the technology has matured to a point where I could migrate comfortably. Having multiple backup copies for survival of disaster sounds a lot more secure to me than defending a spot of property that can be blown to shreds.
Joe Jenkins
joe_jenkins@yahoo.com