X-Message-Number: 32909
From: 
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 14:59:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 15th reason why uploading is unlikely

Content-Language: en

 
 
I had said I planned to post one reason per week, but  have speeded things 
up a bit, since I have a sense that most of what is likely  to be said soon 
has been said. So, onward. 
I recently thought of a 15th reason. Like the others,  it's not conclusive, 
but I like it, and offer it here out of turn, but keeping  the number 15. 
15. Cruel  world.  
It has been argued that, if uploading becomes possible,  and more generally 
the creation of virtual worlds, then there will be scads of  virtual worlds 
and any world chosen at random is almost sure to be a virtual  one. 
However, it seems likely that virtual worlds will tend to  be pleasant 

ones, since the programmers are unlikely to be sadists. Yet the  world we see or
whose past we infer is overwhelmingly a cruel one, built that way. 

Throughout almost all of  history and prehistory, life on average for 
individuals of 
all sentient species  has been one of misery, especially near the beginning 
and near the end, which  are dominated by suffering and death.  
Viewed from the birth end, a relatively high birth rate  is necessary to 
maintain population, because otherwise the high death rate would  soon result 
in extinction. (Almost all species have gone extinct anyway.) Viewed  from 
the death end, a relatively high death rate is required to prevent  

catastrophic explosions of population. (A hefty part of the deaths have occurred
in 
youth, infant mortality having been high in all species except some recent  
human communities. For most of history and prehistory, only a minority lived 
to  become adults.) 
I sometimes wondered what squirrels found to eat, where  there weren't any 
oak trees. Turns out that, among other things, they eat baby  birds in their 
nests. 
Once more"savor the bitterness of it--this suffering is  built into the 
system. Any hypothesis  that says we are typical must account for the 

prevailing misery. (This is  similar to the old "problem of evil" but clearer 
and 
more  pervasive.) 
Robert Ettinger 



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