Re: Uploading: End of the mundane

mark@unicorn.com
Thu, 20 Aug 1998 04:13:49 -0700 (PDT)

Scott Badger [wbadger@psyberlink.net] wrote:
>My thoughts exactly. Program the copies to self-destruct in 8 (or whatever)
>hours

Uh, how? The best I could see would be to set a timer which would delete their process after 8 hours, but can you really see yourself working hard when you know that in eight hours you'll die? This is a copy of you we're talking about, remember?

>and assimilate the information into your consciousness. In fact,
>program thousands of short-lived copies and assimilate their experiences and
>you got your own personal singularity going.

Uh, how? It's all very well to talk about "programming copies" and "assimilating information", but as far as I'm aware no-one has a clue as to how to program a neural network or assimilate parts of one into another.

On this subject, I'm toying with a low-budget movie idea about the real perils of duplication (i.e. that the copies are exact duplicates of you and won't do all those neat things you planned); does anyone know of any movies which have handled this properly in the past? That is, where the duplicates really are exact duplicates rather than different versions of the same person? Everything I can think of seems to have gone the 'Jekyll and Hyde' route.

Mark