drake_azathoth wrote:

I actually don't find it at all hard to buy the 'take care of your original ego-pattern' deal. One of the big things I see here in your argument is the FEAR OF DEATH. But most transhumans are willing to resleeve. That's a form of death right there for the sleeve, because the ego-pattern is COPIED and the sleeve's copy is DELETED. There is no perfect continuation of consciousness, nor even the illusion of it. They take it on faith that their backups, ego patterns, and the other bits that make them a person are their consciousness regardless of philosophical arguments and that they are already nigh-immortal. Someone who insisted on continuity would never resleeve or egocast, much less fork. I think the belief in their immortality via ego-patterns has a huge effect on transhuman behavior not dissimilar to that of religious fanatics who genuinely believe 100% they will experience life after death and thus aren't at all afraid to end theirs. If you genuinely believe 100% that YOU will continue on after your death as a fork, it will influence your behavior.

Exactly. But the link that Yera posted wasn't an Eclipse Phase in-setting comment, it was a real life blog post. While accepting the premise for Eclipse Phase that people don't mind discontinuity of consciousness is fine, arguing for real life people to hold beliefs similar to religious fanatics is quite another deal.

Arenamontanus wrote:

I personally believe that I am the equivalence class of all Arenamontanus-like processes. At least on an intellectual plane I am pretty OK with some versions of Robin's scenario. And the important point is that it is enough for *a few* persons (or one person) is OK with working under these conditions to completely change the economy (and humanity).

The vast majority of people would not accept dying just because a copy of their brainstate got instantiated somewhere. This would not change just because a small percentage of the population actually were willing to do so. As I wrote above, I have no problem with it in EP - it is a game, and I can even come up with some plausible explanation, like how pretty much the only people that made it off Earth alive were those who were willing to egocast. But in real life, things are different. I don't hold the belief that [this brain and body dies while a perfect copy of me lives on elsewhere] is equivalent to [this brain and body remaining alive]. On the contrary, I believe that [this brain and body dies while a perfect copy of me lives on elsewhere] is equivalent to [this brain and body dies] - the only real difference is my gf, children, other family and friends wouldn't have to endure anything but an abstract loss. Really, would you be indifferent to commiting suicide if a copy of you were instantiated elsewhere? I notice your "at least intellectually" reservation. Is your intellectual conviction strong enough to actually accept braindeath?

cappadocius wrote:

In real life, humans lose continuity of consciousness for roughly 8 hours out of every 24. They assume they didn't die and get reconstructed because of Occam's razor, but human consciousness is resilient enough to basically get perfectly resleeved in an identical morph every doggone day. Often with memories of things that they didn't do - sometimes wonderful, impossible things in far-off and strange worlds.

There is obviously a significant difference between sleeping and braindeath. Maybe before EEGs the two could be confused. But let us assume we had access to the relevant tech. An alpha fork of yourself is sleeved in a morph. You talk to it for a few minutes, just to be sure it worked alright. When you feel confident that it really is a copy of you in front of you, you give the command to the nanomachinery in your head to wipe your brain clean, ready for the next user. Would you do that with no regrets, wipe your brain clean because a copy of you existed?

cappadocius wrote:

If you insist that deleting a fork is murder, you murder four to six forks every night that you engage in REM sleep.

How do you define dreaming as creating a fork? It isn't like the brain takes a screenshot of itself, then simulates it for a while until it deletes it.

May I just say, I love how cyclical these forums are. Every 6 months or so we get an influx of people, and the same arguments get rehashed time and time again. It's awesome (no sarcasm). It also explains why some of the older accounts might not be jumping in :p

Smokeskin wrote:

The vast majority of people would not accept dying just because a copy of their brainstate got instantiated somewhere. This would not change just because a small percentage of the population actually were willing to do so.

Sure, but *that doesn't matter*. This afternoon a whole bunch of us researchers (philosophy, neuroscience, economics) talked upload economics and we generally agreed with Robin's scenario: without very strong countervailing forces copyable human capital - which could be due to a single willing upload - does produce a radical restructuring of the world economy. It might be fast or slow, and it might be more or less turbulent, but this kind of technology does change everything. Most people in the world have dualist ideas or subscribe to body identity, making them unwilling to upload in the first place, personal identity ideas preventing them from accepting copying, and worries about their rights that would make them unwilling to accept massive forking. But most people are wrong about a lot of things anyway, or hold strange views (i.e. views different from our own). There are going to be a few highly skilled people around willing to work and exist under conditions we currently find unimaginable - just consider how horrible work conditions people in the past accepted as entirely OK even when they had a choice. It is enough for one trainable individual to be OK with being widely copied for the economics to shift. In real life.

Quote:

But in real life, things are different. I don't hold the belief that [this brain and body dies while a perfect copy of me lives on elsewhere] is equivalent to [this brain and body remaining alive]. On the contrary, I believe that [this brain and body dies while a perfect copy of me lives on elsewhere] is equivalent to [this brain and body dies] - the only real difference is my gf, children, other family and friends wouldn't have to endure anything but an abstract loss. Really, would you be indifferent to commiting suicide if a copy of you were instantiated elsewhere? I notice your "at least intellectually" reservation. Is your intellectual conviction strong enough to actually accept braindeath?

I have a cryonics contract. I am certainly willing to accept a radical discontinuity in my life where I will be dead for all practical purposes for multiple years before (perhaps) being reconstructed - a reconstruction that will likely be lossy and might even involve a total switch of substrate (I think being uploaded is the more likely route out of the liquid nitrogen than some nice nano-enabled thawing process). As I said, intellectually I am pretty happy with biting the bullet on suicide if there is a remote copy. I think there is plenty in favour of Derek Parfit's and perhaps even Thomas Metzinger's scepticism on the existence of a self (anybody who wants to go on about uploading identity should read the relevant section of Parfit's "Reasons and Persons" - lots of fun with egocasting there!) The reason I am willing to go at some length to preserve my current or future existence is that I think being an Arenamontanus-like process is very enjoyable and increases the total happiness in the world. Having more such processes will make things a bit better. But I am also realistic about my own emotional limitations. I do not always act according to my moral convictions or previous decisions for various reasons. It might well be that the emotional and practical reflexes I have learned as a biological meatsack that only exists in one uncopyable instance will kick in even when they have become irrelevant. After all, we see plenty of examples of how we retain many cognitive and cultural biases long after the forces that shaped them have become irrelevant (xenophobia, rapid discounting, status quo bias etc.). But I cannot do much about my possible future failings. I can just try to develop a world view that I think is as accurate as possible.

That's a woefully false analogy you've constructed there, especially since [b]experientially[/b], no one here can claim to have undergone braindeath and therefore validate how similar the process is to the natural and [i]non-lethal[/i] process of sleeping. Honestly, it's like you're trying to say that energy and matter are identical just because E=mc[sup]2[/sup].

Yerameyahu wrote:

:) I really didn't mean to cause any threadjacking, heh. Smokeskin, I do think you tend to present your own opinions (in this thread, I make no comment about your normal tendencies) as facts, or opinions held by the majority of humanity. This seems like a problem, to me. You made it clear that you disagree with Robin's side, and presented your counter-position. I just don't see any argument. :/

Well, you are right that I haven't made a poll representative of humanity ;) It is a recognized problem with uploading. Many transhumanists seem to accept uploading readily, but most that I've talked to seem to actually just accept it for other people - when asked the very personal question of "would you be ok with suicide if a copy of you existed", they become much more doubtfull. Look Arenamontanus' reply, and that's someone with a cryonics contract. Ray Kurzweil felt the need to counter the argument in The Singularity is Near, even Star Trek have had people who didn't want to beamed because it would kill them. More generally, humans show a strong survival instinct, and no matter how you cut it, the process does end up with your body being braindead. To me, it is an extraordinary claim that the existence of a copy will be enough to fully override the survival instinct. Even for terminal patients living in pain, only 15% choose suicide in countries where euthenasia is legal. The survival instinct is very strong, and short of editing that out, I don't see people taking suicide lightly just because a copy lives on. It seems to me that my opinion is very well founded in our knowledge of psychology and human behavior. The burden of proof seem to lie in the other camp, and I would even go so far as to say that it is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. And just to be clear, I'm not sure I disagree with Robin, I think resleeving and forking is an excellent part of EP and I have no problem with people in the setting accepting it. The only thing I disagree with was the argument that resleeving/forking acceptance spread because of the economic advantage, that simply isn't a selection force unless the rich get many more children or those who don't aren't able to have children, and even then it should take some generations. But it was presented second hand, maybe he meant something else.

Smokeskin wrote:

The vast majority of people would not accept dying just because a copy of their brainstate got instantiated somewhere. This would not change just because a small percentage of the population actually were willing to do so.

Smokeskin wrote:

People (meatsacks) are unwilling to die, and copies probably don't change that.

I disagree. I think you miss the point. The majority will shift, not due to people will change their opinion. They will be dwarfed by the copy population explosion. Those that copy multiply faster. Pretty soon those that copy themselfs will be the numerical majority, even if they are based on a few individuals. As for self termination, the copies could be considered future family members & offsprings, I think that such rational could trump self preservation instincts.

King Shere wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

The vast majority of people would not accept dying just because a copy of their brainstate got instantiated somewhere. This would not change just because a small percentage of the population actually were willing to do so.

Smokeskin wrote:

People (meatsacks) are unwilling to die, and copies probably don't change that.

I disagree. I think you miss the point. The majority will shift, not due to people will change their opinion. They will be dwarfed by the copy population explosion. Those that copy multiply faster. Pretty soon those that copy themselfs will be the numerical majority, even if they are based on a few individuals.

You might be right that we'll make tons of copies of all of us. But this does not necessarily have anything to do with how willing individuals are to commit suicide. Even with a copy explosion, you'd just end up with lots of individuals unwilling to commit suicide, since they are copies with the same sentiments as the original. Of course if only people willing to commit suicide got copied, then that idea might well become the majority. As I mentioned with the explanation for why people in EP are willing to commit suicide, that they were the only ones who got egocasted off earth, then there are ways of applying selection pressure on this trait.

King Shere wrote:

As for self termination, the copies could be considered future family members & offsprings, I think that such rational could trump self preservation instincts.

You only see people sacrificing their own lives for offspring in situations where the offsprings' lives are actually at risk, AFAIK. And even then, it isn't everyone that is willing (or able) to do it, and is certainly not with the nonchalant attitude that resleeving or fork destruction implies. I am also highly doubtful of the idea that offspring level loyalty will apply to copies. For example, people who find out that they have offspring they didn't know off don't show anything near the same amount of emotional attachment and willingness for self sacrifice. On the other hand, full offspring loyalty seem to displayed towards adoptive children. It seems that these emotional ties take time to form and are triggered in very specific ways, and have little to do with rational understanding. As such, I find it highly unlikely this degree of attachment will be shown towards copies. In fact I see rivalry and threat being much more likely, especially if family members, friends, job opportunities, etc. weren't also copied, or unless copies were all sent far, far away.

Speaking for myself ... I like to live. And while I recognize "I" as I know myself will die over time, an abrupt end (such as self-destructing once I verify my alpha is operational) would, under most circumstances, be unacceptable. I would be uncomfortable with, but willing to accept, a gradual 'resleeving'; add a few cyberneurons, delete the biological ones, so on and so forth over months. But ultimately, most of the arguments made above still do apply; I feel more comfortable dying knowing parts of my information pattern (in the form of my children) will succeed me. I feel uncomfortable about going to sleep because I honestly do not know if the "I" that wakes up is the same "I" that went to bed. So as a consequence, I try to leverage every day, to sample life and experience things. I do sometimes apologize to myself if I had a bad day. I also understand economics and put a real price on my life. If by my dying, my progeny passed on my genetics and knowledge with a significantly greater level of success and happiness, I would probably do it (if that weren't the case, I wouldn't be spending my life working from 9-5!) I assume I would recognize the same with resleeving. If by dying, I extend the life of my copy from 40 years to 40 centuries, or increase his portfolio from $100K to $100M, that is a good trade-off - but I would approach it with the philosophical belief that I am dying (and that dying maybe isn't so bad).

My wife agrees, and has no problem with things like egocasting, because (at the risk of misquoting her and sleeping on the couch), it seems close enough, and she's got too much work to do to sit around thinking about stupid stuff like that, and for that matter, so do I, so I'd better get back to work.

Octopus may not have a dominant arm, but that isn't the same as being able to perform two tasks at once. I would definitely think that the ambidextrous trait should be (repeatedly) necessary before you start firing 8 beam weapons at once with any accuracy.

Thread Vader.... rise! I have a problem. A serious writers block and a general inability to describe characters in full sentences. So when i started taking interest in playing a Octomorph user, i really haven't got a clue on how to describe such an alien morph. Because, basically my mind says "Its a frikkin octopus, we all know how they look. Eight arms, color-changing. This one has a suit." Any suggestions on what to focus or how to come up with the right words to do the cephalopods justice?

Its an out of character description for other players so they know how my character looks.

One thing you might find helpful is to do a little research on different species of octopus. If there's one that matches some traits that fit your character well, then use a picture of that species to base the physical appearance on. Or, conversely, just browse pictures of octopuses and find one you like, and use that.

One of my octomorph characters often favours a blonde, curly 'Harpo Marx' wig... it matches his usual "Hi babe!" chromatophore pattern.