Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sundc!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: First upload Message-ID: Date: 10 Feb 91 04:37:18 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Cincinnati, Cin'ti., OH Lines: 120 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article ems%nanotech@princeton.edu writes: >The crux of the problem lies in verifying that >your upload technique has achieved true transference, and not just >produced an almost perfect copy. If you're wrong then you've just killed >the original person, no matter how traditional your line of research. What if the "almost perfect copy" passes a complete battery of psychological tests verifying its/his/her competence to testify, and then swears that you have not just killed the original person? >Another problem with this line of development is that, by the time >nanotechnology is on the verge of achieving upload, there will be few >if any terminal patients around to do the experiment. I can't think >of any disease or accident where it wouldn't be simpler to repair the >body using assemblers. Events violent enough to damage a human beyond >the reach of assembler repair would also be apt to leave nothing >to be repaired. (Like crashing into the sun, for instance. Pfft! :-) This is a very good point. The only good reason to consider uploading would be to reduce one's vulnerability events violent enough to damage a human beyond the reach of assembler repair. I'd breathe a bit easier, so to speak, if I were hardened against ionizing radiation, vacuum, temperature excursions, 2000 psi overpressure, and 1000 g impacts. >Imagine a situation where some research group *thinks* they have >achieved uploading, but really have copying. The copies themselves >swear by the technique and advertise it to all their friends and the >original "templates" aren't around afterwards to point out the mistake. >Later, a second research group shows by refined measurement techniques >that the first research group was in error. Now aren't you glad you >waited? Perhaps I am glad, but is my nonexistent copy glad? Virtually all of us are born with at least a few copying errors, yet we may still be glad. Actually, I don't quite understand how uploading must require destroying the original. Why can't we use highly accurate non-destructive 3-D imaging to map the structure and function of the brain? I thought the destructive upload model was part of a thought experiment to show that consciousness could be unbroken during upload. By the time we are able to upload, we should have much greater insight into the bases of consciousness and "self", permitting the technology to proceed on firmer theoretical footing. >Even worse, imagine a situation where the uploading technique works >sometimes, but is not 100% reliable. (Has there ever been any medical >process that was 100% reliable?) At 99% reliability, you don't have to >upload too many times before the long odds catch up to you. No biological process is 100% reliable either, as many grieved parents can attest. But I don't understand what you mean about "upload[ing] too many times"? Do you mean that one individual will upload more than once? Or that when many individuals upload, perhaps a few will die? I assume you mean the latter. Well, you answer your own question: no medical process is 100% reliable. Neither is any other technology. That doesn't stop people from getting out of bed in the morning and venturing back onto dangerous highways, getting into airplanes, etc. Indeed, whenever we have a major transportation accident, the rescue crews arrive at the scene by equally dangerous means. Doesn't it seem rather insane to drive an ambulance to go pick up victims of a crash involving the same transportation technology? What further proof could any driver need of their obvious folly? Yet this obviously doesn't matter to most people. People will gladly assume any risk, provided that (1) it is familiar to them, and (2) they believe the risk is worthwhile. Unfamiliar risks, like nuclear power today, and uploading tomorrow (in its earlier phases of development) will be perceived in a very exaggerrated light. Truly lethal but familiar risks, like automobiles, don't keep many people excited. This seems like a strange example of human irrationality, but it is actually an evolutionarily-selected survival heuristic: "Assume anything unfamiliar is dangerous." >False uploading, to coin a phrase, will not be the disaster that >death is today, of course, since a near-perfect copy of the original >results, with differences indetectable by normal human senses. The >only real problems would be psychological, for the copy and his/her >close acquaintances, and legal, since now inheritance laws would come >into play. What is anyone going to inherit when nanotechnology obsoletes our poverty-influenced concepts of property? Also, legal difficulties are largely the product of the legal profession, which will no longer exist by the time uploading becomes feasible. (At least not with the relative power over other segments of society which it has today. The legal profession is 100% information-based, which means we will have relegated it almost entirely to software by then. Our computers will not have agendas inimical to our interests, unless we make some big design mistakes.) >Unless some unforeseen difficulty develops, nanotechnology should be >able to keep the original you in good shape indefinitely, with >some gradual enhancements with "improved components" as they become >practical. This is why I think there will be a long hiatus between the >time we think we have uploading and the time it actually comes into >safe, reliable, regular use. Impatience is for short-timers. By "long", do you mean a long wall clock time, or do you mean a time during which "many" technological developments happen? The dynamics of exponential progress compress technological developments together in the future. E.g., your notion of "gradual enhancements" could segue quite naturally into "effectively uploading by stages" very shortly after "catastrophic" uploading becomes possible. I.e., a person might upload, over a period of time, without really planning to, merely by upgrading pieces here and there. At some point, the "upgrade" will no longer consist of meat. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171