X-Message-Number: 3960
From:  (Robin Hanson)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 16:26:11 PST
Subject: Uploading

Thomas Donaldson writes:
>Work expands to fill the time/personnel available for it. I doubt that these
>partial brains will receive wages, it seems to me more likely that they will
>be put into lots of specialized equipment. Something capable of scanning 
>1 million photographs of cell structure in an hour to search for some 
>anatomical peculiarities, for instance.
>
>Nor do I expect such partial brains to stand up and  ask for any rights. Who
>would want to make them with the will to do that? We use our machines to do
>what WE want, not what THEY want.

I described an "upload" as something with the "same sort of external
behavior [as our brains], and therefore which can be used economically
in the same sort of ways we ordinary humans are now employed."  Thus
if we ask for rights and demand wages before we'll work, then by
assumption so would they.

>I believe that by the time we are able to "upload" people our
>understanding of how our brains work, and how the descendants of
>computers work, will be so extensive that just moving ourselves across
>(or whatever uploading is supposed to mean) won't increase our real
>abilities at all.

But uploads might still be drastically cheaper and faster to
reproduce.  Making the same produce cheaper can be a very big deal.

Robin Hanson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3960