X-Message-Number: 33461
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:11:04 -0500
Subject: #33458: Uploading [Eric]
From: Vortex Prism <>

--90e6ba3fd2831472ba049e380c0b

For Eric,


>This is the kind of nonsense you can expect to get
>with a generation raised on transporters, programming,
>and mathematics without a grounding in logic - an
>inability to distinguish between an abstract and
>a concrete.

Eric, why all the vitriol? You know nothing about me, my background in
logic, my capacity for intellectual abstraction, etc. I'm just trying to
have a civil discussion about the implications of uploading and downloading.


>How about you rephrase all of your uploading
>arguments using more accurate descriptions like,
>"very similar" and see how they sound?

Your main objection seems to hinge on the concepts of "identical  vs. "very
similar" and the fact that "identical  is an abstraction and "very similar 
is a concrete, based in reality. Frankly, I still don't see an issue.
Plastic changes at synapses are the underlying mechanisms of learning and
memory. Reconstructing a "very similar  person --- meaning that the brain
map of synaptic connections is the same, should produce the same thoughts,
feelings, etc.


If you think this is not the case, I would be interested in your arguments.


>What's particularly annoying about a lot of uploaders
>are their attempts to slur non-uploaders with some
>sort of accusation of being "mystical" for thinking
>there's something "magic" about a particular manifestation
>of a pattern - when they're the ones thinking that
>abstracts are something that actually exist and
>have these nifty magic properties in the real world.

Yeah, I should probably have chosen my words more carefully. I can see how
the words "mystical  or "magic  can be a bit of a slur. Sorry about that.


>Unfortunately, each of us is manifested in a particular
>piece of meat. Nothing special or magical about
>it - you could say the same thing about a rock.


Quite true. The question is: What happens when you use technology to create
a "very similar  piece of meat that happens to be a fully functional human
with the same memories and experiences of another fully functional human?

>But if you blow your brains out, well then the universe is
>going to be down one uploading advocate.

Very funny. I can almost feel that hot lead drilling a hole in my temple.

Really though, I would like to know why you are so against the
uploading/downloading concept. What harm is there in bringing new life into
the world? Even if it is not an "identical  copy. After all, we "piece of
meat entities" are not identical from one moment to the next ourselves. The
mind is a dynamic entity. You are not the same person from the night before,
when you wake up the next morning. Although, you are, "very similar .

--90e6ba3fd2831472ba049e380c0b

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