Mind Uploading

[Guest R..pace!]

When mind uploading technology becomes available, humanity will have effectively attained immortality http://en.wikipedia..../Mind_uploading

The idea of being immortal and using synthetic materials to pave the way for an alternative mode of being does not sit well with those who believe that humans are not responsible for giving life and are hence not justified in taking command of any of its aspects. Regardless, wouldn't it be nice to live to see how everything ends up in the future? how your children and their children grow up? how new discoveries are made? For me the answer is yes, and to that end I think that this is a good technology. However, the possibility of criminals using this technology to extend their life spans and therefore become perpetual bane, to say the least, makes the technology a double-edged sword. I would upload my mind because the afterlife, if there is one, is a complete mystery: everyone moves on, but no one ever comes back to say how it looks like. I would rather exist in a place that I am familiar with than embrace the big unknown that is the afterlife. It's simple enough to assume that good people go to heaven and bad people to hell, but how good do you have to be to go to heaven? To me, that's something I will never know and as a result, I think that mind uploading is not so bad.

[RoosterCogburn]

The mind is just a tool, like arms or legs, heart and muscles. Using the mind is like putting your hand in a glove, where the glove is the mind and you are the hand. The mind is a tool, with which you can experience everything outside of you inside of you. Mind Transfer already occurs, it is called Telepathy. It is our inner connection. What would happen if you could separate the mind from your body? Well, ask my schizophrenic friend, he knows.....The mind is virtual reality, it is of the same fabric as the outer world. It is an illusion, a dream made up of light particles like the pixels of a screen. The outer world is also a Dream, it is just not as swift as your mind. Our collective habit is to entertain the focus that the outer world of matter is somehow more Real than the inner world of Mind. In fact, they are the same, they are both unreal and real.

[Guest R..pace!]

That's quite a pessimistic view of existence. How would we give meaning to life if indeed both the physical and metaphysical realms of being are mere illusions? What would be the point of living if life is like a dream that you could wake up from? There would be no point in persevering and enduring through the hardships of life because all that effort would be for naught. There would be no need for laws, morals, or religious teaching because whether or not one actually follows these, the end is the same: it was all a dream. Whether or not reality really is an illusion does not matter, for it is better to live a life based on values so that if reality is not an illusion there would be no reason to regret anything; and if reality is an illusion, there's still reason to be proud because you gave your life a foundation as opposed to living for the sake of living.

[Anton Chigurh]

Just wandering who invented "Killer Instinct" <_>

[=FlA=ibabyblink]

uuuuhhhmmmm.... bs?

[Funksdead]

That is some deep stuff..... I must say there is no point or meaning to life as there once was now, more of a assigned existence. The meaning of life, the betterment of the human race had been lost years and years ago. The point of your life now is far different from your ancestors 100, 200, 300 years ago. No one really knows what the point is until you passover to something that may not exist at all and then if it does what is the point to that existence. The complexity of a vast and ever changing world and or society will for ever alter the point of life. Need there be morality, laws, religion....not really if you were by yourself living alone you would need none of that to survive , so really what is meaning of life?

[Guest R..pace!]

I think the concept of existentialism offers a satisfactory answer to that question: there is no meaning to life. Specifically, life has no universal meaning. Existentialism assumes that we are alone, no one gives meaning to our existence but ourselves. We are born, we become conscious of our being, and so we give meaning our existence by defining ourselves; by defining I mean, being true to oneself and living life as we see fit. However, lets face it, some people's ideas of what life means are better or worse than others'. For example, it is clear that a person if someone believes that the meaning of life is to kill everyone or cause unnecessary conflicts, then that person does not have an acceptable definition of the meaning of life. Hence, guidelines are needed to assist people in getting acceptable meanings of life while also letting them be free to choose whatever they want: such guidelines come in forms of laws, morals, codes of conduct etc. In the end, life is what you make it, provided that what you're making it into is admissible.

[PHANTASM]

Life is the three Fs: feeding, fighting, and reproducing. Thats what they told us in biology 101.

 

Mind downloading reminds me of an old Doctor Who episode where the people put their minds into a computer when they died so they could live forever.

 

Hell would be having your mind downloaded into an ET player and fighting in combat forever.

[GraveDigger]

Life is the three Fs: feeding, fighting, and reproducing. Thats what they told us in biology 101.

 

Mind downloading reminds me of an old Doctor Who episode where the people put their minds into a computer when they died so they could live forever.

 

Hell would be having your mind downloaded into an ET player and fighting in combat forever.

I agree, and if you had been really rotten during your life you would end up on a team filled with noobs and team bleeders. There would only be 1 medic and he would have a really shitty lagg.

 

(possible high jacking in progress)

[Connection]

lets just assume it's possible to do this without destroying the brain you copy, that merely taking a 'snapshot' of a brain and feeding the details into a computer will really make a living, self-aware being in the computations, and that the ( probably traumatic ) process of uploading doesn't drive either the upload or the fleshly source of it completely insane.. there's alot that could go wrong with it, but ignoring the bugs and the possibly fatal flaw in the whole idea ( is there no such thing as a soul or spirit? does a snapshot of a brain really = a living person, or is there more? ) -- there are some interesting ethical questions:

 

so if you upload yourself before you die, are you the map in the computer, or the meatbag in the waiting room? are you both? neither? are the two separate beings? is the uploaded copy a person with rights?

 

what happens when you hack an uploaded 'person' ?

 

what about making several copies?

 

what about correcting personality faults, tweaking traits? making a person smarter while uploading them, upgrading this or that part of a personality? is that ethical, or do you create a new person if you do it?

 

does the upload become the property of the company that provides the scanning service? can they 'switch you off' if you don't keep up with monthly payments?

 

will microsoft have to keep patching your soul?

 

will mac uploads be compatible with faith, hope, fear, love? or will they only be able to experience smugness?

 

this is only 'immortality' so long as you keep the batteries charged -- wth

 

if you delete an upload is it murder? if they can just reboot to the last saved copy?

 

 

 

there's a whole host of things to think about.

 

save early and often.