I think developing mind uploading (and developing other anti-aging/anti-death technologies) is one of the most important things for humanity to do. Literally everyone alive today will die if we...
I think developing mind uploading (and developing other anti-aging/anti-death technologies) is one of the most important things for humanity to do. Literally everyone alive today will die if we don't. Sure, we won't all be dying in some sudden unusual event, but I really don't think the usualness of it is an important detail at all.
If we solve death, there are some open problems around resource usage and cultural stagnation, but I think human intelligence can address them in ways much better than nature's default "just kill everyone regularly" solution. The trend of first-world nations to have decreasing birthrates implies to me that solving death doesn't mean everyone would quickly reproduce until we run out of resources, and mind-uploading would allow us to make a lot more out of our existing resources anyway.
There is no immortal technology, is there? I am thinking of storage mediums. What would you store it on? Scientists are making strides storing data on DNA, but even that isn't 'immortal' and has...
There is no immortal technology, is there? I am thinking of storage mediums. What would you store it on? Scientists are making strides storing data on DNA, but even that isn't 'immortal' and has storage degradation. And let's say your brain data does last on its storage medium, is there any guarantee that there will be a program out there that can read it? I mean, this data will probably need a database somewhere in there, will we use SQL as the backbone? Will SQL even be readable in 100 years?
It's not that hard to store things accurately if you can expend energy to detect and correct mistakes and manufacture new storage as needed. DNA has information loss because that's how evolution...
I am thinking of storage mediums. What would you store it on? Scientists are making strides storing data on DNA, but even that isn't 'immortal' and has storage degradation.
It's not that hard to store things accurately if you can expend energy to detect and correct mistakes and manufacture new storage as needed. DNA has information loss because that's how evolution works. It's not inherently impossible to make a copying system that doesn't have random mistakes, but evolution can only act through random mistakes, so it can never develop an organism without random mistakes. An intelligent creator doesn't have that limitation. You can use error-detecting codes in data to make it so you can detect and avoid copying corrupt data (to an arbitrary overwhelming probability).
Storing data on inert material has limitations, but if the system can gather and use energy, then it's less limited. You could imagine people inventing self-replicating robots that detect and correct errors in themselves, and also contain computers storing (and running) mind-uploaded humans for very long amounts of time.
I think developing mind uploading (and developing other anti-aging/anti-death technologies) is one of the most important things for humanity to do. Literally everyone alive today will die if we don't. Sure, we won't all be dying in some sudden unusual event, but I really don't think the usualness of it is an important detail at all.
If we solve death, there are some open problems around resource usage and cultural stagnation, but I think human intelligence can address them in ways much better than nature's default "just kill everyone regularly" solution. The trend of first-world nations to have decreasing birthrates implies to me that solving death doesn't mean everyone would quickly reproduce until we run out of resources, and mind-uploading would allow us to make a lot more out of our existing resources anyway.
There is no immortal technology, is there? I am thinking of storage mediums. What would you store it on? Scientists are making strides storing data on DNA, but even that isn't 'immortal' and has storage degradation. And let's say your brain data does last on its storage medium, is there any guarantee that there will be a program out there that can read it? I mean, this data will probably need a database somewhere in there, will we use SQL as the backbone? Will SQL even be readable in 100 years?
It's not that hard to store things accurately if you can expend energy to detect and correct mistakes and manufacture new storage as needed. DNA has information loss because that's how evolution works. It's not inherently impossible to make a copying system that doesn't have random mistakes, but evolution can only act through random mistakes, so it can never develop an organism without random mistakes. An intelligent creator doesn't have that limitation. You can use error-detecting codes in data to make it so you can detect and avoid copying corrupt data (to an arbitrary overwhelming probability).
Storing data on inert material has limitations, but if the system can gather and use energy, then it's less limited. You could imagine people inventing self-replicating robots that detect and correct errors in themselves, and also contain computers storing (and running) mind-uploaded humans for very long amounts of time.