X-Message-Number: 32837
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:29:01 -0700
Subject: Re: without really trying (Heinlein)
From: Keith Henson <>

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:00 AM,  wrote:

snip

> On the other hand, Robert Heinlein said TANSTAAFL--there aint no such thing
>  as a free lunch. On the third hand, Heinlein believed in reincarnation,
> which is  surely in the running for one of the dumbest ideas of all time.

As one of the people who tried and failed to get Heinlein signed up,
there is a lot to what you say.  But it is possible that Heinlein
might have the last laugh.

Hans Moravec felt the same way but resolved it (sort of) by saying
that he had left enough tracks in environment to be reconstructed.  We
had a bit of argument on the old time Extropian list where I allowed
it to be possible but it would require an astonishing amount of
computation to generate a version of Hans that thought like he did at
the point (say) he finished Mind Children.  It would take a vast
number of discarded iterations and I expressed hope that the discard
process of the millions of versions who were not quite close enough
would be painless.

Charles Stross who was (I think) reading that list in those days
worked this into a chapter of Accelerado.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How you got here:

The center of the solar system ? Mercury, Venus, Earth's Moon, Mars,
the asteroid belt, and Jupiter ? have been dismantled, or are being
dismantled, by weakly godlike intelligences. [NB: Monotheistic clergy
and Europeans who remember living prior to 1600, see alternative
memeplex "in the beginning."] A weakly godlike intelligence is not a
supernatural agency, but the product of a highly advanced society that
learned how to artificially create souls [late 20th century: software]
and translate human minds into souls and vice versa. [Core concepts:
Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is
not immortal.]

	Some of the weakly godlike intelligences appear to cultivate an
interest in their human antecedents ? for whatever reason is not
known. (Possibilities include the study of history through
horticulture, entertainment through live-action role-playing, revenge,
and economic forgery.) While no definitive analysis is possible, all
the resimulated persons to date exhibit certain common
characteristics: They are all based on well-documented historical
persons, their memories show suspicious gaps [see: smoke and mirrors],
and they are ignorant of or predate the singularity [see: Turing
Oracle, Vinge catastrophe].

	It is believed that the weakly godlike agencies have created you as a
vehicle for the introspective study of your historical antecedent by
backward-chaining from your corpus of documented works, and the
back-projected genome derived from your collateral descendants, to
generate an abstract description of your computational state vector.
This technique is extremely intensive [see: expTime-complete
algorithms, Turing Oracle, time travel, industrial magic] but
marginally plausible in the absence of supernatural explanations.

	After experiencing your life, the weakly godlike agencies have
expelled you. For reasons unknown, they chose to do this by
transmitting your upload state and genome/proteome complex to
receivers owned and operated by a consortium of charities based on
Saturn. These charities have provided for your basic needs, including
the body you now occupy.

	In summary: You are a reconstruction of someone who lived and died a
long time ago, not a reincarnation. You have no intrinsic moral right
to the identity you believe to be your own, and an extensive body of
case law states that you do not inherit your antecedent's possessions.
Other than that, you are a free individual.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Heinlein, having written one heck of a lot of material, probably could
be reconstructed this way to the level of detail that would have us
believe that we were talking to the real person.

However, that does not convince me to give up having a suspension contract!

snip

> On the fourth hand, experience teaches us, or tries to teach us, that few
> exceptional rewards are received by those who don't work for them. Too many
> cryonicists see themselves just as customers rather than partners or

> family. It's a rare individual who is actually doing all he can and should  
do.

So true.  There is way too much to do.

Keith

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