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In this story, you don't live forever. You live a few hours, in a limited simulation, to interact with an individual that is alien to you. Then you die. The fa

by remram 3y ago

In this story, you don't live forever. You live a few hours, in a limited simulation, to interact with an individual that is alien to you. Then you die. The fact that an infinite number of you will get to experience this doesn't make you "live forever".

theamk 3y ago
the "your clone lives for a few hours to interact with an alien individual" is the price. but the image can live much longer (story says 59 years), and you can talk to it.. so the benefits are great. Moving to computer to escape illness or debiliating accident is an obvious use case, but there tons of smaller benefits. Make a 12-person startup where each employee is yourself. Unsure whether to learn Lisp or haskell? Learn both in two instances. Feel last 20 years of your life wre a mistake? Restore old backup.. The possibilities are endless, but the price is high. Would you want this? I am not sure myself but I can imagine someone else saying yes.
- remram 3y ago
  The possibilities for every body else. The cost for you. From your point of view, you step into a machine, and then you randomly experience one of the interactions with a user. If the image truly lives forever, you have overwhelming chance of interacting with somebody completely alien to you, who will ask you things you don't fully understand, and marvel at your primitiveness. Then you die. You have some small chance of living for a few years with a user you understand. Probably still much shorter, less rewarding, less free than if (by chance) you are the version of yourself that steps out of the scanner and lives their natural, physical life instead. It's a Prestige situation [1] except you have been tricked into it, because the image does not get used according to the terms you signed. "There'll be people just like me forever" is very different from "I live forever", to me. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_(film)

by remram 3y ago

theamk 3y ago

the "your clone lives for a few hours to interact with an alien individual" is the price. but the image can live much longer (story says 59 years), and you can talk to it.. so the benefits are great. Moving to computer to escape illness or debiliating accident is an obvious use case, but there tons of smaller benefits. Make a 12-person startup where each employee is yourself. Unsure whether to learn Lisp or haskell? Learn both in two instances. Feel last 20 years of your life wre a mistake? Restore old backup.. The possibilities are endless, but the price is high. Would you want this? I am not sure myself but I can imagine someone else saying yes.

remram 3y ago
The possibilities for every body else. The cost for you. From your point of view, you step into a machine, and then you randomly experience one of the interactions with a user. If the image truly lives forever, you have overwhelming chance of interacting with somebody completely alien to you, who will ask you things you don't fully understand, and marvel at your primitiveness. Then you die. You have some small chance of living for a few years with a user you understand. Probably still much shorter, less rewarding, less free than if (by chance) you are the version of yourself that steps out of the scanner and lives their natural, physical life instead. It's a Prestige situation [1] except you have been tricked into it, because the image does not get used according to the terms you signed. "There'll be people just like me forever" is very different from "I live forever", to me. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prestige_(film)