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this could effectively lead to the creation of heaven, an afterlife that would eliminate the notion of death. I never quite understood why the entire human spec

this could effectively lead to the creation of heaven, an afterlife that would eliminate the notion of death. I never quite understood why the entire human species, once made aware of the non zero probability of this working, not diverted most of its entire global energy, time and resources towards this effort. I can only imagine it is because most people have no capacity to really imagine, or outright refuse to ever imagine, death. In a way I do envy them.

gallerdude 6y ago
You're basically arguing a techno-religious Pascal's Wager, so my contra-argument is the same: if the nonzero probability is a 0.1% chance, would you really risk your one and only life dedicated to something that has a 99.9% chance of not happening, whether it be real or techno-heaven?
- roca 6y ago
  You're implicitly assuming that accepting the Wager means "losing" your one and only life. OK, it depends on your utility function, but most religious and techno Wagers don't require immediate martyrdom.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Mathematically that makes sense if the life expectancy of an upload is greater than 100 000 years.
jasperry 6y ago
How can you be sure that if we could eliminate death, we would also be able to make life so great that our mind would find it worthwhile to keep living century after century? In other words, if we enabled people's minds to continue forever, how do we know it would be heaven and not hell?
roca 6y ago
I am not at all sure I want my mind copied. It is very hard to destroy or even contain all copies of information. Thus, I find it very plausible that if a copy of my mind is created, at least one copy will be effectively enslaved or tortured. Possibly more copies would find themselves in heaven than in hell, but how we weight that tradeoff is subjective, and I'm a bit of a pessimist so I would prefer not to take the risk, thanks. (Especially since as a Christian I believe my original mind is likely to reach God's heaven.)

gallerdude 6y ago

You're basically arguing a techno-religious Pascal's Wager, so my contra-argument is the same: if the nonzero probability is a 0.1% chance, would you really risk your one and only life dedicated to something that has a 99.9% chance of not happening, whether it be real or techno-heaven?

roca 6y ago
You're implicitly assuming that accepting the Wager means "losing" your one and only life. OK, it depends on your utility function, but most religious and techno Wagers don't require immediate martyrdom.
lostmsu 6y ago
Mathematically that makes sense if the life expectancy of an upload is greater than 100 000 years.

jasperry 6y ago

How can you be sure that if we could eliminate death, we would also be able to make life so great that our mind would find it worthwhile to keep living century after century? In other words, if we enabled people's minds to continue forever, how do we know it would be heaven and not hell?

roca 6y ago

I am not at all sure I want my mind copied. It is very hard to destroy or even contain all copies of information. Thus, I find it very plausible that if a copy of my mind is created, at least one copy will be effectively enslaved or tortured. Possibly more copies would find themselves in heaven than in hell, but how we weight that tradeoff is subjective, and I'm a bit of a pessimist so I would prefer not to take the risk, thanks. (Especially since as a Christian I believe my original mind is likely to reach God's heaven.)