Re: Afterlife?

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• [ Next ][ Previous ] In reply to: Gamma Pi Next in thread: Anders Sandberg

It strikes me outright that in order to figure the validity of such a civilisation's abilities I might have to go on a great deal of grave digging for proof.... of course, the signs of uploading from a civilisation advanced enough to do time travel might be hard to spot.

Then again, there are other matters to be considered. For example, who would be a likely target for uploading? I remember someone stating that in a future where we had maybe 50 billion people well cared for, with better education, that the number of people who were amazing geniuses might be hundreds or thousands of times more than today.... in such a case, wouldn't it be somewhat less likely that people would go for one of us cave people than, say, someone who was considered very advanced for a world a hundred years from now? The ultra savants of the future may well make names for themselves, also...

I would think the primary targets would be people of great historical value... possibly Newton or Einstein, maybe Asimov or Shakespeare... Columbus or Picasso. *laughs* though I don't expect anything to come of it, someone could feasibly lead an expedition in search of "signs of upload"... though it seems like a bit of a waste of time. Unless you get results, of course;)

                                               Skye

• Gamma Pi <gammapi@newsguy.com> wrote:
  > I am 42 years old and wish to think that some part
  > of me will live
  > forever. I have an even stronger wish to think that
  > my loved ones will
  > live forever. This deep wish to believe in an
  > afterlife is quite
  > common if not even universal. It contributed to the
  > origin of religion
  > (ref. Max More's essay "Transhumanism: towards a
  > futurist
  > philosophy").
  > I am reasonably confident that the first uploading
  > experiments will
  > be performed during my lifetime. At the same time I
  > do not think that
  > uploading will be an operational technology in
  > useful time (that is,
  > in time to live forever or at least a very long time
  > by having my
  > "self" and memories transferred somewhere else).
  > Cryonics may be an answer: have yourself frozen up
  > until uploading
  > becomes an operational technology and that's it. But
  > some of my loved
  > ones would not accept it as it would go against
  > their beliefs, and
  > even worse some are dead already. So at least from
  > my point of view
  > uploading and cryonics are not an answer to the deep
  > wish to believe
  > in an afterlife.
  > Why not considering afterlife as a goal? Imagine a
  > future thanshuman
  > civilisation, spread over the galaxy, with a mastery
  > of space-time
  > sufficient to reach "somehow" into the past and
  > record "somehow"
  > selves and memories of human beings. Back to the
  > future, these could
  > be uploaded to whatever physical structure is used
  > those days as a
  > vehicle for human consciousness.
  > So the basic concepts of religion would become: God
  > exists, we will
  > evolve into it; Heaven exists, it is where God
  > lives, A concept of
  > "Purgatorium" could also be formulated in this
  > framework as some
  > personalities might need re-engineering before
  > "Heaven". Even more
  > interesting, the ethical/moral values of "God" are
  > exactly the same
  > that our own civilisation will develop.
  > I am sure these ideas have been explored by thinkers
  > (Theilard?) and
  > discussed on the Extropian list. Any good
  > references? By the way this
  > is my first posting to the list, I look forward to
  > discussing
  > interesting things.
  >
  >
  >
  > ----------------------------------
  >
  > gammapi@newsguy.com
  > http://extra.newsguy.com/~gammapi/
  >
  

  ---

• [ Next ][ Previous ] In reply to: Gamma Pi Next in thread: Anders Sandberg