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> before we can get anywhere close to human lifetime achievable travel times. Humans are an intermediate step. We are not the final shape of earth-origin intel

> before we can get anywhere close to human lifetime achievable travel times. Humans are an intermediate step. We are not the final shape of earth-origin intelligence. Why would we continue to fill these bodies when we develop the tech to no longer be so limited? Constrained to the parameters of our gravity well and to short lifespans without backup? Or maybe we just get replaced outright. Or, the worst outcome, everything from this planet dies without ever having left.

throwaway290 2y ago
A universe full of p-zombies
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  If you haven't, read "blindsight" by Peter Watts
  - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
    +1. Aliens and vampires in the same book. And really far-out ideas about cognition and biochemistry, well-grounded in science.
MagicMoonlight 2y ago
You can’t develop tech to move intoto a computer. Although it’s a good book idea. A kool-aid style cult where they convince their followers they will be “uploaded” once they hand over all their possessions. Then they just get shot in the head. AI might do it, but I wouldn’t count that as us going there.
- echelon 2y ago
  You're inventing requirements. This doesn't require that any of us live or achieve immortality.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Realistically if we perish and there is no comparable conscious life then no one can even care whether a bunch of machines we spawned to assist us continues to exist. Thinking 'it is good' is a product of your consciousness. When there is no one to judge then there is no 'good'.
- ehnto 2y ago
  In Cyberpunk 2077, you can stumble across a scene of people "jacked in" to a server in the desert. They have died, and reading notes around the area, they were part of a cult that believed they were going to be uploaded to and live in the Net forever. Somewhat related is the story of SOMA, which, spoilers ahead, involves you realising the earth on the surface has been wiped out, and putting faith in a person who's brain scan currently lives in a robot, to get you both into a simulated paradise that will be shot into space.
short_sells_poo 2y ago
It's murky concept though, so I wouldn't bet on mind uploading in our lifetime. Some fairly fundamental things need to be answered first. Things like how does consciousness and the sense of self arise. Naively, if you think that you are just a program that runs on a bunch of neurons in your brains, and that this program can be uploaded to a computer, you are still left with a very annoying problem: you upload a copy, and leave the original running in your squishy brain. So what then? Do you kill the original? But that involves killing a living and breathing human being. Do you wait until it dies naturally? That's still not a good answer, because you have to die so that a copy of you can continue existing. So until we figure how to actually "teleport" our consciousness to some other host, we are in a pickle. And there's absolutely no evidence that we'll ever be able to do this teleportation. What if we never figure out the physics to do this? Edit: I suppose you could sidestep this by generating fully digital consciousnesses that mimic what a human brain does. So a fully digital human. Assuming we can brute-force simulate a real human brain, this should be at least physically possible (as opposed to teleportation), but this still raises philosophical questions. What you are generating then aren't human beings, but conscious AI. You could argue that the human race would eventually be supplanted by immortal AI that are no longer bound by biology, but I'd argue that this isn't an evolution of the human race, rather a completely new life form (if you can call it that), which has nothing to do with humans except that we created it.
- echelon 2y ago
  You're imagining a future that is a continuation of our lives here and that is kind to currently living humans. But this is just inventing requirements. Imagine none of what you've presumed is necessary is even a design objective. Maybe it is, but probably it's too difficult and uneconomical. These capabilities could be built without ever enabling any of us to live or achieve immortality. Those hypothetical digital beings could be human-like, maybe exact simulations, or perhaps totally different. They could be benevolent, or perhaps not. We might come to a conclusion that it's no longer ethical to have biological humans. Or maybe we're forced into that outcome. Who knows. This is all wild postulation. But one thing that might happen is runaway growth and a deviation from a world we're familiar with.

throwaway290 2y ago

A universe full of p-zombies

galangalalgol 2y ago
If you haven't, read "blindsight" by Peter Watts
- Jeff_Brown 2y ago
  +1. Aliens and vampires in the same book. And really far-out ideas about cognition and biochemistry, well-grounded in science.

MagicMoonlight 2y ago

You can’t develop tech to move intoto a computer. Although it’s a good book idea. A kool-aid style cult where they convince their followers they will be “uploaded” once they hand over all their possessions. Then they just get shot in the head. AI might do it, but I wouldn’t count that as us going there.

echelon 2y ago
You're inventing requirements. This doesn't require that any of us live or achieve immortality.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Realistically if we perish and there is no comparable conscious life then no one can even care whether a bunch of machines we spawned to assist us continues to exist. Thinking 'it is good' is a product of your consciousness. When there is no one to judge then there is no 'good'.
ehnto 2y ago
In Cyberpunk 2077, you can stumble across a scene of people "jacked in" to a server in the desert. They have died, and reading notes around the area, they were part of a cult that believed they were going to be uploaded to and live in the Net forever. Somewhat related is the story of SOMA, which, spoilers ahead, involves you realising the earth on the surface has been wiped out, and putting faith in a person who's brain scan currently lives in a robot, to get you both into a simulated paradise that will be shot into space.

short_sells_poo 2y ago

It's murky concept though, so I wouldn't bet on mind uploading in our lifetime. Some fairly fundamental things need to be answered first. Things like how does consciousness and the sense of self arise. Naively, if you think that you are just a program that runs on a bunch of neurons in your brains, and that this program can be uploaded to a computer, you are still left with a very annoying problem: you upload a copy, and leave the original running in your squishy brain. So what then? Do you kill the original? But that involves killing a living and breathing human being. Do you wait until it dies naturally? That's still not a good answer, because you have to die so that a copy of you can continue existing. So until we figure how to actually "teleport" our consciousness to some other host, we are in a pickle. And there's absolutely no evidence that we'll ever be able to do this teleportation. What if we never figure out the physics to do this? Edit: I suppose you could sidestep this by generating fully digital consciousnesses that mimic what a human brain does. So a fully digital human. Assuming we can brute-force simulate a real human brain, this should be at least physically possible (as opposed to teleportation), but this still raises philosophical questions. What you are generating then aren't human beings, but conscious AI. You could argue that the human race would eventually be supplanted by immortal AI that are no longer bound by biology, but I'd argue that this isn't an evolution of the human race, rather a completely new life form (if you can call it that), which has nothing to do with humans except that we created it.

echelon 2y ago
You're imagining a future that is a continuation of our lives here and that is kind to currently living humans. But this is just inventing requirements. Imagine none of what you've presumed is necessary is even a design objective. Maybe it is, but probably it's too difficult and uneconomical. These capabilities could be built without ever enabling any of us to live or achieve immortality. Those hypothetical digital beings could be human-like, maybe exact simulations, or perhaps totally different. They could be benevolent, or perhaps not. We might come to a conclusion that it's no longer ethical to have biological humans. Or maybe we're forced into that outcome. Who knows. This is all wild postulation. But one thing that might happen is runaway growth and a deviation from a world we're familiar with.