X-Message-Number: 5213
From: "Peter C. McCluskey" <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Mind Uploading -> No revival of cryonics patients
Date: 18 Nov 1995 17:38:17 GMT
Message-ID: <48l5m9$>

References: <> <>

Brad Templeton () writes (in <>):
>I wonder if mind uploading would reduce the likelihood of revival of
>cryonics patients.

>Imagine that mind uploading becomes possible prior to nanotechnology.
>(I know some people think nano is the technology that would allow the scan
>but we don't really know much about this.)

>This makes nano far less valuable for most of the world, particularly
>body repair.  Oh, nano-based bodies would be very *nice* for manipulating
>the world, but they would not be necessary, the way that biological bodies
>need nano.

 My demand for nanotech-based computing power is likely to increase when
I am uploaded, and my desire for a nanotech-designed spaceship will
probably not decrease. It is unclear whether the technology needed for
those purposes will be sufficiently general-purpose to make uploading
of frozen minds easy.

>Many people wonder if this might create a new breed of humanity, one far

 I doubt that either "breed" or "humanity" will be good words to describe
uploaded intelligence.

>beyond us in ways we can't understand.   Many people hope for that, but
>they forget that if that happens, the children will come to regard their
>parents -- even their uploaded parents -- as curiosities of the past.

 I agree. If frozen minds aren't revived fairly soon after uploading
becomes common, there is no reason to expect they will be revived at all.
(Except maybe for reasons comparable to what motivates archaeologists;
but I doubt that I would find the benefits of that kind of revival very
appealing).

>They'll see little reason to create more of them, or to revive a population
>from the past.  Particularly since that requires work in the real world and
>in real time, which is the only thing that's "hard" in the network world.

 I consider the motivations for working on revival one of the weaker links
in the arguments for cryonics, but I won't find your argument very compelling
until you can suggest a means of uploading that neither involves a form of
scanning that could be adapted to frozen minds, nor involves an extended
period in which wetware would remain important (i.e. the mind-links suggested
in Vinge's _True Names_, which I expect would leave many uploads with the
desire to maintain the biological part of their minds for quite a while).
--
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Peter McCluskey      |   |  http://www.rahul.net/pcm
        | The opinions expressed above are objective truths
http://www.quote.com | as revealed by the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet.

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