Re: Uplifting II

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Thu, 2 Dec 1999 17:52:27 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Technotranscendence wrote:

> On Thursday, December 02, 1999 10:39 AM Robert J. Bradbury
> bradbury@www.aeiveos.com wrote:
> I commented on the process of making uplifts immortal.
>
> Whoa! Uplift and upload are not interchangeable. To uplift is to take a
> nonsentient lifeform and make it sentient. To upload is to transfer a
> biobrain to nonbiological substrate. Someone already defined this
> elsewhere, but I think it needs pointing out since the terms are almost
> spelled the same.
>

The light bulb went on after I read a few more posts, esp. Greg's.

I would however argue that "uplifting" without "uploading" is probably going to be fairly difficult. You are going to have a very difficult time discovering when you have actually achieved "sentience" without have a *lot* of diagnostics in the system.

I don't think you can do it (with any certainty) with a pure biotech mediated approach. It might be possible with a combination of biotech generic-neuro-organs *and* nanobot mediated single-neuron monitoring and strength tuning. But grafting neuro-organs onto existing (and potentially widely different) neuroarchitectures is going to be a very *iffy* proposition. "Uplifting" primates - ok, dogs, pigs & cats - perhaps, dolphins & whales - fine. Octopodes - hmmmmm... Flies and Ants... doubtful. Yeast, you've got to be kidding.

If you upload before uplifting the whole thing gets much easier.

Robert