28 Comments

I didn't say that it's a private conversation, you imbecile ... my question was directed to a specific person, someone who implied that emming is feasible. *I* don't argue that it's feasible (in fact, I've argued that it isn't), so your response is retarded. Now FOAD ... I won't waste more time on this idiotic exchange.

VVV "and off your meds?" is exactly the sort of response I would expect from such a stupid ass, and why it's a waste of time to engage with people like this.

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Ems "seem" unnatural to me because the human brain is designed to work with a body...that has sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. That has arms and legs. That digests food. Etc.

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That's not a rational response ... and I didn't ask you.

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You don't have to be a dualist. Physicalists can worry about consciousness going missing as a result of computers having different physics.

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Please don't attribute claims to me that I didn't say.

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Ratings are relative. Having an information-wise copy of you placed into another entity -- even one that sleeps soundly -- won't help your insomnia. If it's your self-destruction that you're giving a positive score relative to your current insomnia, you can have that right now, without any copy (which is infeasible for the foreseeable future).

In any case I stated facts, not ratings, so your comment is a non sequitur. I guess it was meant as some sort of joke, but I don't see the value in dismissing substantive points that way ... so I was charitable and addressed what substance I could find in it. Our desire to persist is, as I noted, programmed into us by evolution; there's no *logically rational* reason to prefer to exist in the next moment than not to, and if continuity is so distressful as to give it a low rating, there are numerous ways to discontinue it ... but again, being "emmed" doesn't help at all, and is not currently and probably never will be an option.

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As someone suffering from insomnia, continuity of the self is highly overrated.

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"I do not think finding an example of when the disgust mechanism raised a false alarm (IVF) means that we can ignore it going forward for another practice (EMs)"

Yes, such affirmation of the consequent fallacies are a standard rhetorical technique of the extremely intellectually dishonest (among whom I include RH).

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"this is the first I’m hearing about waste brain matter"

Wow.

"is it your contention that this was as big a deal as the IVF controversy"

You should try actually reading what you're responding to ... no such contention is to be found in it.

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Too bad that didn't work for massive burning of fossil fuels.

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The radical "self-modification" involved in destructive scans is the killing of the self -- no other sort of modification happens to it. There's no continuity between that self and an information-wise copy of it into some entity (or perhaps trillions of entities) elsewhere. Resistance to such schemes is "natural" in the sense that evolution built us to be self-preserving. Of course there are various ways to overcome such programming, such as "patriotic" propaganda, or bamboozling them with pseudo-technical talk and shaming them for supposedly being unhip backwards luddites.

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What makes you think that we haven't all already been "emmed", on a planet (or a trillion planets) far far away?

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"The "unconscious zombie" issue is the main concern IMO."

Only among a particularly foolish subset of a very small subset of humans, namely dualist philosophers of mind.

"It might also be a good idea to try to figure out if the supercomputer simulating us is powerful enough to handle the additional computational load of an extra 14 orders of magnitude worth of human minds."

It's already well known that "supercomputers" are the wrong mechanism to simulate human minds ... Moore's Law can't get us there because it's on the wrong path (and besides, we're already hitting basic physical limits).

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"Finally, higher science fiction literacy and/or hobbyism strongly predicted approval of mind upload."

It says a lot that they looked at that rather than at *science* literacy, especially in a relevant field like neuroscience. Science fiction consumers are likely to have completely mistaken views of similarity between the modes of operation of brains and digital computers, and will have grossly mistaken beliefs of an analogy between the (easy) transfer of information and function between digital mechanisms and the transfer of information (difficult) and function (intractable) between biological mechanisms. (Can you say "homoiconic"?)

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Replace "ems" in the last sentence with "the mind-uploaded subject, in whatever new form it is now in".

Actually surprised that they didn't include "a new cloned body" as one of the options, since all the options are radically different from a normal human body.

I can easily see how permanently self-modifying to be a computer, android, chimpanzee, or brain-in-jar could be like a radical and extreme surgery, thus preventing acceptance.

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There was, however I don’t have a link because it was old and not widespread until after the public health concern broke. I do remember it being treated with disgust though. Here is a link to an article expressing disgust about a related practice (which hopefully won’t lead to any public health concern like the fears expressed within):

https://www.motherjones.com...

I admit this disgust is not expressed anywhere near as widespread as IVF disgust was. This isn’t necessarily because the reaction was less strong as human reproduction/sex matters get much more attention than agricultural practices. But of course I don’t know this.

So I do admit that disgust is in no way a definitive guide to what we should or should not do – my post was never intended to suggest that. I do think though, it can serve as a guide about when to be cautious. And I do not think finding an example of when the disgust mechanism raised a false alarm (IVF) means that we can ignore it going forward for another practice (EMs).

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