Re: Uploading

Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Mon, 4 Nov 1996 18:05:57 -0800


From: Chris Hind <chind@juno.com>
> Probably most people will go the way of the gradual
> incremental upload due to the fact that people are already thinking about
> designing augmentation tools (ie. genetic augmentations for when
> genengineering improves, and chips such as British Telecom's vision
> recording chip).

OK, supposing that most people do gradually, incrementally upload.
What happens then? When you are a computer program running in machine 1,
and you have an opportunity to shut down and start up (where you left
off) in roomier machine 2, will you take it? Or will you insist on
"gradually, incrementally" moving to machine 2, with first one line of
code, and then another, moving over?

What if you have the option to keep running in machine 1 and also start
up in machine 2? Are you going to take it, or would you feel better if
your machine 1 program was stopped when the machine 2 program started?

Will the machine 2 program be the same "you" as when you were the machine
1 program, or is it a different program that just thinks it's "you"?

I find that when I think of myself as a program in this way, I am
inclined to believe that my identity is preserved across these kinds
of interruptions and copies. This leads me to conclude that the same
thing is true about copies which span meat and machine.

Hal