> Thanks for a posting which mentions a much avoided topic re
> transhumanism and
> uploads - BUGS! If my experience with my PC is any guide, I will be wary
> of uploading for quite some time...
Yes, creating a stable environment for uploads is a nontrivial problem.
We need a large number of processes that interact in a robust, efficient
way (no, no upload can run as a single process - physics prevents that
powerful single processor systems, we have to go parallel) that can
withstand errors, breakdowns and crashes.
For example, assume my brain is run on ten processor clusters and one
crashes (because a nano-squirrel munched up the power cable?). How to
handle it? One natural solution would be to freeze the other nine
clusters as soon as the error is detected (which takes a short time
compared to my emulated mental processes) while error checking takes place
(was the data sent to the other clusters corrupted before the crash? I
don't want an involuntary digital ECT). Now we need to get the mental
state of one tenth of my mind, either from backup or by backtracking, and
place it on another processor cluster. Clearly nontrivial, especially
since most of us don't want to loose too much of our minds when the lags
on our networks become too much and out internal communications become
asynchronus.
The above example suggests that fine-grained parallelism is the way to go
with our minds, we might even be able to stand a few emulated neurons
crashing.
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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