"Uploading" w/o Uploading

YakWaxx@aol.com
Fri, 5 Sep 1997 15:57:50 -0400 (EDT)


Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> wrote:

> Anders Sandberg wrote:
> > Yes, it has already been discussed (great minds often think alike),
> > it is commonly called gradual uploading. Many of us think this is the
> > most likely form of uploading (although getting rid of the biological
> > core might be trickier than we think)
>
> I for one disagree. First cryosuspend the brain, then nanodisassemble it
> and get the brain architecture, use that for the upload setup, then
> start the upload. Avoids the disturbances of being partially uploaded.

It may well turn out that consciousness cannot be preserved in this way. If
you brain slowly converges with the machine, at about the same rate as your
brain changes now, your conscious mind should be preserved. However, if you
dump the wetware and rebuild it in software or hardware you may end up making
a seperate conscious mind. Although that mind may seem the same to everyone
else, and the mind itself may 'think' it's you, it might not actually be
'you' (because you're dead). And I'll just presume that you would rather be
alive than have something that thinks it's you fooling all your friends.
This, of course, brings up points that have had no end of discussion on this
list.

--Wax