When the singularity occurs and you get uploaded, what happens to your meatspace body? Is the upload a “move” or a “copy”? If it’s a copy how could you stand waiting around to die in a few decades, knowing that there’s an immortal you somewhere out there?
also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
I could be wrong here, but I think the idea is that you will augment what you have to the point that the meatspace body will shed its layers one by one. Eventually there wont be one. Precisely what you link to. And no, it’s not the same.
However, what’s the difference between replacing cells with silicone as opposed to new cells?
I really hadn’t thought of it working ship of Theseus-style, wasn’t really on point I guess).
My impression of the mind-uploading transhumanists was always that you hook up to the Net or whatever, it moves or copies over your consciousness, and you live forever in cyberspace - but it seems to me if you “move” your mind over, it’s really a copy + delete operation, (just like on your computer) so your meatspace mind still dies. And that doesn’t seem good.
But if it’s just a copy operation, well then there’s two of you, a meatspace You and a cyber You. Wouldn’t your meatspace self get jealous, depressed, etc. knowing that somewhere out there is another version of you that gets to live forever and have any and every experience possible?
It’s like how at the end of LOTR the heroes get on the elf boat and sail away into the afterlife - goody for Frodo, he gets to go live forever, but nobody asked Samwise if he wanted to go!
I think your original concept is what most extropians used to believe.
Here is the big question: Faced with that kind of dilemma (Is it me? Is my meatspace me going to be pissed off? What if I am stuck here and he gets to have a good time?), what if the technologies we create will in fact be created working around the inability to answer those questions? Do you really think someone would want to design something that would leave those possibilities open?
Given that we have imagined some possible shitty outcomes we instead opt to create the staged transcendence technologies. We are, of course, glossing right over the myriad of arguments about whether or not something like this is or ever will be possible, but I digress.
My point is that science is easier than philosophy. So work around the metaphysical with some math already.
To bad we were never good at math…
