From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Apr 05 2003 - 14:32:24 MST
On Sat, 5 Apr 2003, Hal Finney wrote:
> Harvey writes:
>
> So we have two scenarios:
>
> 1A: Do a duplication and leave the original intact
> 1B: Do a duplication and destroy the original
1A is approximately possible using nanobot sensing at
the cellular/atomic level -- I'm not sure that you
can make it perfect.
1B is probably possible with a destructive readout of
the state of a cryonically suspended individual.
Not proposed is 1C -- in which you may do a destructive
readout but at the same time reassemble the original.
> What about these two scenarios:
>
> 2A: Do a duplication and leave the original intact
This seems surprisingly close to 1A done with the nanobots.
> 2B: Don't do a duplication, just leave the original alone
Then you are dead, dead, dead. Do nothing to develop a
distributed replicated intelligence and eventually your
hazard function catches up with you.
Now, as I think Harvey pointed out there are some creative
approaches to this that involve a gradual evolution and perhaps
distribution of your intelligence that would not involve
outright copying. So teleportation and immortality are not
"strongly" linked -- but one has to be very clever about it.
> But I've never heard anyone expressing a sort of
> "duplication imperative", a feeling that any missed opportunity to
> duplicate would be as bad as destructive duplication.
I would assert that non-duplication is much worse than destructive
duplication. Individuals are information containers -- potentially this
information (their experiences) might save future human lives (and their
information). It seems likely that *if* this information is preserved in
some way that in the future that we will develop the methods to read-out
and distribute this information so that others may benefit from it.
To allow the destruction of information that might be of benefit
is certainly unextropic and perhaps immoral.
If the only option is "destructive duplication" then I would consider
it highly responsible for all extropians to consider it as an option.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 05 2003 - 14:44:08 MST