posted
Board at work so here goes: If you could give up your physical body and migrate to an indefinitely sustainable electronic existence would you?
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tired of a wooden existence? Ready for a life with a little more spark? Try the TRON experience now! Speedbike and Glowing Frisbees included.
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
Happiness is too chemical for me to give up. I doubt anyone could make a machine that could genuinly reproduce feelings, not emulate them.
Plus, I would hate having to sit around watching all the new-guys getting their processors with 2, 3 or 4 times the speed as mine. It's stressful enough keeping up with the state of the art with my home computer.
Posts: 1660 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, I would live forever but have no emotions to really give a rat's ass about anything, to find pleasure in living? I think not.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Will there be anyway to prevent any of these entities from becoming Skynet? Or at least keep said "people" from using my unused cpu cycles?
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
| IP: Logged |
I mean -- are you talking about just a transfer of consciousness? Or would we have all the same features of our current brain? Would we be able to feel pain?
You said to Scott that perhaps we could still feel emotions -- so that would mean good and bad, right? Pain and joy....
We could be "anywhere" in our global-based network, yet not be able to reach out and physically "touch" another...
posted
There are a lot more underlying issues to a community like that.
In our day in age we have literally hundreds of millions of viruses, I don't think we're ready to stop producing them. What if someone was erased or "killed" because of a virus? What then? do we prosecute the person that created the virus for murder? Would it actually be murder? What if the person that created it was a machine themself? How would you punish him? Would you unplug him from the network and let him sit as a stand-alone? The old con v. pro arguement is left leaning way too far to the con.
posted
What happens if another major power outage occurs? Will they die? Will these people be backed up? What happens if I make a copy of myself? Will my copy have the same rights as me? After all he'd be a 100% digital copy.
posted
Well the difference between a normal fresh clone and a digital one is this thing would have all of my memories. How would I prove I'm the real urbanX? Would I use Microsoft's DRM?
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Has anyone read the Hechee Books (The books after gateway anyways)?
It discusses nearly all these issues and resolves them fairly well (including storage, transfer, and what to do with the digital doppels when the meat version still exists).
I'll have to participate more in this when I'm not at work.
posted
Remember guys, this is a hypothetical scenario, no one has these answers. I posed the original question to see what we think being human means.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Being human, in part, means being able to control anything that isn't human. Once a human tries to control another human, that person is expelled from any reasonable definition of humanity.
So, if digital people are considered not-quite-human we run into controlling them and rewriting them to serve the bone-bag humans.
Posts: 1660 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
Being sentient, by definition, means being capable of feeling. So, if it's the machine that makes you feel, anyone/ anything can be sentient. Including "clones."
posted
How about a sense of self? I think therefore I am. I believe when machines gains the ability to operate out of self interest it will be considered sentient.
Posts: 421 | Registered: Jan 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Depends on whether the electronic existence would let one feel happy, and if I would be happier there or in my biological form.
Posts: 1364 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
This reminds me of one of OSC's Thousand Ideas in an hour sessions. I think I would migrate to the digisphere if I were terminally and chronically ill, so would be dying soon anyway. A big argument against it, however, is the aesthetic argument. There are a lot of sensations I would really miss. I wouldn't be able to feel a breeze, sit in the grass, or walk through a tree-filled neighborhood at dusk. Non-language based communication, like sitting wordless with a loved one, would not be possible. Instead, I would be limited to experiencing nothing but the digital world of information and language.
Of course, that's pretty much what I do now, so...
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
Frederick Pohl even has his digitized people having virtual sex in there. But being digitized is probably a lot like Pohl's concept of space travel...nothing to do in there but have virtual sex and solve math problems.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
