X-Message-Number: 25209 Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 11:51:45 -0800 Subject: Re: Safeguards against uploaders? From: <> Dear Valera, [snip] "The popularity of all these 'survival through hi-tech duplication' ideas really concerns me." Yes, I agree. Ironic, then, that it is the very people who wish to live a good long life that are so ardently promoting uploading as a form of personal survival. "I am planning to arrange cryonics contracts for my parents. I fear that at some point people with a liking for comforting abstractions and re-definitions may make up a majority on the CI board of directors and decide to duplicate my mum or dad instead of reanimating them. I don't want them to be killed, even in such a wonderful futuristic manner as uploading, and even if I got electronic or biological copies of them in return. Are there any safeguards against attempts by 'benevolent' uploaders in authority within cryonics organisations to finish... sorry, upload off cryonics patients?" This is a very real concern---for one, because uploading will possibly be many times cheaper than repairing, and for another, because Merkle's dissassembly-analysis-reassembly plan could also be cheaper and/or more technologically feasible than repair (the only alternative for today's freezing/vitrification is extremely low temperature advanced nanotechnology, which could be very costly and have no other application than reanimating old cryonics patients). Both result in certain destruction, as sure as cremation. CI's founder Robert Ettinger doesn't think uploading is equivalent to survival, and neither does Ben Best, its current president. I don't know what the president of Alcor (Joe Waynick) thinks, but Mike Perry is a strong supporter of uploading, and he works for Alcor. However, in 50 or 100 years, who can say who will be running the organizations (or who will be in charge of the patients), and what pressures these organizations might face for 'salvaging' old cases that cannot yet be easily repaired. This is why I want the cryonics organizations to have official policies on these issues. At the very least, I want cryonics organizations to respect patients' wishes to be 'reanimated' in a manner of their own choosing, even if their choice means that reanimation will not be possible for quite some time; and I want them to agree that if they pass on handling of their patients to other organizations, they will force them to abide by the same agreements. I personally think that, if a computer is created capable of consciousness (of a subjective inner-life) that is many times more intelligent than humans, then when trained by humanity's collective knowledge, it will quickly and easily come to the conclusion that uploading and duplication are not forms of personal survival. Perhaps if such a thing happens, people will trust the computer, and give up permanently on uploading. Until then, people who cannot think clearly about the issue due to emotional entanglements will continue to insist that a duplicate is numerically identical to the original, in spite of the fact that this is demonstrably false. Best Regards, Richard B. R. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25209