Re: John Nash, proto-Extropian?

From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Wed Feb 20 2002 - 21:57:20 MST


At 12:47 AM 2/21/02 +0100, you wrote:

>On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 02:50:46PM -0800, Richard Steven Hack wrote:
> > >
> > >Augment and accentuate, not necessarily replace.
> > >
> >
> > So when you have a brain that thinks a million times as fast as a human
> > brain, you want to totter around on two legs?
>
>Does it matter? Any macroscopic body is going to be ridiculously slow
>and crude for such a mind.
>
> > People, when fully developed nanotech is here, there will be NO need for a
> > human body or human brain as we know it. As Esfandiary said once, the
> > human brain is like a mud-hut in Mexico - you can string pretty lights
> > around it, move in some good-looking pigs, but it's still a mud-hut...
>
>To continue the analogy, the goal is to create an improved house, but
>not to get rid of houses. The mistake of the anti-body meme is that it
>tries to get rid of any trace of the "impure" and "imperfect" rather
>than concentrating on how to extend and improve on the valuable parts of
>us. A negative rather than positive creed.
>
>--
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
>asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
>GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
>
>

In the initial phases, yes. I referred to fully developed nano. After
that, we cannot predict what kind of technology will be developed (that's
why we call it the Singularity), and therefore we cannot say what kind of
"physical" (or possibly energetic) body may be developed. I personally do
not accept the notion of "uploading" as a realistic probability (altho
certainly a possibility) as I feel that restricts such an entity's survival
probability to that of the system in which he is embedded - which is not an
acceptable situation for a Transhumanist. The Universe (or that portion of
it which the laws of physics allow us to access - and I do not assume
Relativity is an absolute here although it may appear to be so in current
understanding) is the only acceptable home for a Transhuman. Again, this
does not preclude uploading as an option under certain circumstances, but I
cannot accept it as some sort of long-term goal. I have metaphysical
problems with the notion of any sort of body-brain "duplication" being a
useful form of immortality. One is one's continuity in space/time - a
duplicate is never "you". I could accept uploading only if it is fault
tolerant, failure tolerant, restartable and "resurrectable" AND at the same
time the end result ensures that I and I alone exist.

Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net


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