Re: Miss Pop Ulation (was: population, homosexuality)j

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Sun, 5 Dec 1999 01:59:20 -0800 (PST)

On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Gina Miller wrote:

> > Commenting on exchanges between Spike & I regarding how many
> > self copies are acceptable...
>
> I'm deranged just enough to visualize this multiple me plot, I'll take ten,
> but with slightly less intellects, enough to understand me, and converse
> with, but in lacking, so I maintain that edge of control and dominance of
> authority. Sick, aint it! Gina.
>

Actually, no. Given the "dominance" behaviors we *must* be programed with, it would be *really* silly to want to create copies that are 100% equivalent. What you really want is to create a divergent self that can dominate a somewhat different ecological niche that you can relate to on multiple levels. I.e. you want a mutated self-clone in an alternate environment with whom one has some identity/empathy.

This problem makes me doubt the appeal of scenarios where we have many copies of ourselves. While I fully grant that having copies of ourselves makes great sense from a survival standpoint, it makes little sense from a competitive standpoint. Does Gina want to bid against 10 copies of herself as an information source?!? Then of course, you have the problem of whether we could tolerate/enjoy talking with 10 of ourselves. I have enough headaches dealing with the soft-selves that I can create currently without having to worry about physical instantiations of said soft-selves running on different hardware.

In situations such as these, I look very closely at my claim that "you must be willing to give up everything you are for what you might become". You have to believe in the process of evolution much more than you believe in the preservation of oneself!

Robert