On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Kate Riley wrote:
> > I commented on having 10^16 of me...
>
> I'm confused. Why 10^16? (Feel free to reply to this off-list if it has
> already been discussed on-list)
No, I'm always number-dropping on the list...
If we assume 10^26 "operating" minds / 10^10 people (allowing for some growth in human population before we have uploads), that gives you 10^16 "running" copies. Since memory capacity (particularly on the really long photon loops) seems greater than "operating" capacity (limited by the energy output of the sun unless star-lifting is employed), I suspect you have some even greater number of backup copies that are inactive. That allows you to easily tolerate those bad-hair days when an unobserved nanoprobe comes screaming through your MBrain cluster depositing a significant fraction of its kinetic energy (at even low speeds like 0.1 c thats a lot of kinetic energy) in the midst of your computronium.
They are going to want to know who sent out those nanoprobes without looking where they were shooting.
>
> I imagine that you'd want to keep copies of yourself at various stages, so
> that if you made serious mistakes, you could reboot yourself to a previous
> "pristine" time, as well as keeping a copy (copies?) of yourself at the
> present time.
Yep. Gets dicey though in determining who gets to decide what is a "mistake" that you should erase...
> Even so, 10^16 seems a tad excessive. Would these copies be
> dormant caches of data, or co-operating identities?
>
Could be "individuals" as we know them or a hive/borg-mind.
I suspect there are nested heirarchies of mind-units that have
different thought hold times (concentration times?) or
perhaps as Ander's suggests, different memory accuracies and
retention strengths.
Robert