RE: Uploaded Omniscience

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 16:48:53 MDT

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    Eliezer writes

    > Lee Corbin wrote:
    > > The psychological problem that most people have
    > > against uploading, of course, is that of "being
    > > inside a computer", or of knowing that one is really
    > > just on a silicon chip.
    > >
    > > A theme that probably should (and so probably has)
    > > been stressed by SF writers, and any of those of us
    > > who engage in discussions with the unconverted, is
    > > the attendant near-omniscience it would provide.
    >
    > But this isn't a logical reply to the question. Or did I misunderstand it?

    I'm not aware that I asked a question!? What one are you thinking of?

    > Human beings are temporal dynamics of Shannon information in physical
    > states. Uploading makes absolutely no difference if the new substrate has
    > equivalent dynamics and the uploading process preserves all functionally
    > relevant information (in the Shannon sense) of the original to within
    > thermal noise limits with no functionally relevant global bias.

    Yes, but from the "what's in it for me?" parts of people's brains,
    they really haven't been given much in terms of new capabilities.
    Much of it comes across as fantasy or dreaming at best---whereas
    I'm conjecturing that the "how do thinks stand, what's really
    happening to me?" parts of the mind are unhappy with the prospect.

    > As for near-omniscience, you can't do that without philosophically
    > nontrivial revision of sensory modalities.

    Yes, but people may think of it as though it were simply
    better optics. And that's the way it would start: the
    first visual impressions after uploading would be from
    the POV of a robot, perhaps.

    > Uploading makes no disruption in the way that humans are
    > woven into physics; it is as philosophically trivial as
    > a sneeze. You go through a larger discontinuity when you
    > fall asleep at night and wake up the next morning. Seriously.

    Well, something will have to go into their (equivalent)
    sensory modalities, if it's done as you are saying.

    Lee



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