From: Louis Newstrom (newsnewstrom@home.com)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 05:46:51 MST
From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
> Right now, there are six billion people alive in the world. Even if the
> Singularity is delayed until 2025, I doubt there will be more than seven
> or eight billion people alive at the time. That's less than one
> pre-Singularity human for each star in the Milky Way. In a billion years
> there will *still* be, at most, six billion entities who were uniquely
> alive before the Singularity.
>
> Do you really need to postulate that we are a small group among that six
> billion?
>
I think most of you have missed the real problems with surviving. Money.
The first uploads and maintained will probably be expensive. The first
problem will be with thieves who can't afford the technology. There will be
cases of people stealing storage nodes so they can delete the previous
occupant and upload themselves.
That problem will eventually be solved by security. But security (and just
the storage) brings a second problem: continued cash flow. It will cost
money to be stored. When you run out of money, the storage company will
"evict" (read delete) you. Once you are stored, and cannot touch the real
world, how many of you could still make money? I don't know if I could.
Most of my money comes from programming on top-secret projects. Those
projects do not allow data in or out. (I don't want a two man review of
every meme in my existence to exit the facility!) I may not be allowed into
my workplace anymore. And I'm the lucky one. Anyone who touches the real
world, like a doctor or athlete, will no longer be able to work at their
profession.
A secondary problem will be a religious / philosophical question that has
already surfaced here: The legal question of whether the "copy" is the
original or has rights of the original. You may find that once your body is
destroyed, current laws will not grant you rights. You may not be able to
stop the body-survivors from turning you off, merely for no other reason
than they do not believe that you are really in the machine.
This is also another reason that many people will not choose survival. Not
because they don't want to survive, but because they don't see it as
survival at all.
--- Louis Newstrom louisnewstrom@home.com
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