From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 18:27:58 MST
Damien writes
> At 09:19 PM 3/28/03 -0800, Spike wrote:
>
> > Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to god
> > is praised early and often in the old and new
> > testaments of the christian scriptures. This make
> > anyone with a modicum of a sense of ethics want to
> > barf.
>
> The asserted wickedness of this bizarre parable [the one where Abraham
> agrees to roast Isaac just so that God can show off to the devil what
> a fawning slave he's got] takes on a creepy >H salience when we transpose
> the matter to uploads, xoxes and all that jazz.
Interesting connection.
> Many extropians are only too happy to terminate a xox, or get rid of
> a `meat' body, once the magic dust has been ported into a computer.
*Exactly* right! And it's entirely due to our stupid evolutionary
heritage in which we simply cannot imagine---no matter how rational
and how logically it's laid out before us I'm coming to fear---that
we can be
B O T H
uploaded and in the flesh. One CAN be in two places at the same time,
just as one can be in two times at the same place. Jeez.
Look, *after* you've uploaded, think carefully about what you are
about to do when you terminate your million-times slower biological
self. *Why* do it???
Is it because you think that he'll be *so* devastated to slowly
realize that he's different from you and he's not uploaded?
Suppose, just suppose, that you are so up-to-speed by then that
you realize (and he realizes) that you and he are exactly the
same person.
And that it's BETTER to be running in two places than one.
And that he's happy that he's you, and is already uploaded!
So, as your symbolic finger hovers over the symbolic level that
will terminate your original's existence, wonder exactly why you
need that space to become less graced than it is.
Lee
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