X-Message-Number: 3945
From:  (Robin Hanson)
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 95 15:31:08 PST
Subject:  Uploading - A practical definition

I continue to be amazed at how discussion of uploads seems to be
dominated by hair-splitting on when exactly something feels the same,
is conscious, or the "same" entity, etc.

When uploads finally appear, I don't think these distinctions
will much influence the major sequence of events.  

The basic fact is that human minds, especially intelligent educated
minds, are terribly valuable economically, and the growth rate of our
economy is limited to a large extent by the slowness and expense of
our technologies for reproducting such minds.

At some point we will find a way to transfer "enough" relevant
structure to alternative brain "hardware".  "Hardware" of the sort we
can set up factories to crank out by the billions.  "Enough" at least
to produce the same sort of external behavior, and therefore which can
be used economically in the same sort of ways we ordinary humans are
now employed.

At this point there will be enormous economic pressure to manufacture
such brains, and to copy relevant "software" into them.  An dramatic
transformation of the economy will then ensue.  The world will then
soon be dominated by these uploads, numerically and in terms of the
total wages they can command.

This will happen regardless of in what subtle sense such uploads are
the "same" as their original versions, or whether they have the same
sort, or even any sort, of internal experiences.  Those who wait for
just the right sort of upload brain to be developed, meeting all their
philosophical requirements for "sameness", will likely find most of
the economic niches filled by the first sorts of uploads.

I don't deny that those who place sharply different values on subtly
different variations of themselves, and who have the wealth to indulge
these values, will care about all these distinctions.  I just don't
think they will much affect the broad sweep of relevant history.

Those who plan to live in the future should do their best to stay
realistic about what it will be like. 

Robin Hanson



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