Become Immortal, Upload your mind

[Skippy 82]

http://www.helium.com/items/2029699-mind-uploading-immortality

According to Ian Pearson, a British futurist, death will be a thing of the past by 2050.

Pearson is one of many futurists, cybernetic experts and artificial intelligence researchers whose thoughts are converging on the same basic idea: Why not upload everything that's in the brain—everything that makes a person who they are—into a computer and then download it again into a new body? Doing such a thing would make the individual theoretically immortal.

Would you do it if you could?

[Grandmaster Phoenix 26]

Immortality would suck. Cracked.com did an articale on this, look it up. I' rather die at 50 than be immortal.

[pheonix561 2080]

He's suggesting whats been called by Ray Kurzweil as "The Technological Singularity." Or at least, the technological singularity is scheduled to happen at practically the same time, in 2045. Technology, with it's exponential acceleration, is supposed to grow so much eventually we build a computer smarter than the human brain. We'll program it to make itself smarter, and being smarter than us, it will know how to do it. It will keep making itself smarter and smarter until it knows how to do everything. Eventually, humans will combine with technology. Its supposed to be the next step in human evolution.

I think that I might do it, given the chance. So long as I retain the option to die/have my presence deleted or something.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

If we get that advanced, I think I'd like to be archived.

However, having a bunch of immortal people would suck. Overpopulation and whatever.

Still, this would be a great thing for outer region exploration. People, functioning via mechanics, rather than biological resources that are hard to come by in space, could just be solar powered or something and explore galaxies. Life support would be simplified by a lot.

We could probably colonize planets and moons, not having to breath Oxygen or rely on plant matter, and the overpopulation bit would be solved A-OK.

Sahaqiel

[pheonix561 2080]

I like to think, too, that a lot of problems we have from history would stop recurring. Like wars, and things. Namely because people would just be around long enough to get to know each other. I could go more in depth to this, but I'm too tired to do so, and I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about anyways.

God what useful input this is.

[Skippy 82]

Ever see the movie surrogates?

I actually did today, it's what prompted this. Do you think it would be like that, where there is a drop in violent crime because everyone is a robot and there is no physical danger to the operator, you can just be replaced?

As a psychology student, I can't see where a robot without human influence could operate as human, but maybe they will get there with the whole singularity thing, I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about on that subject though.

[pheonix561 2080]

Well neither can I, but thats probably why they just dismiss the idea as "A robot smarter than a human" and leave it at that. If they knew how they were going to do it, I'm sure they would have done it by now. And actually, I would think violent crime would skyrocket, because if you can't get hurt, or really lose anything, then whats the point of holding back? Life is now call of duty!

Anyways, this just came into my mind: Have you ever heard anyone say "you have to be at least two percent smarter than what you're working with to make it work?" People only really say that to call people as smart as cardboard boxes when they can't open them, but I like the idea of applying it to this situation. The power of the human mind would be nigh infinity!

[Skippy 82]

I alway heard it as 10% and usually referenced as the "10% rule", but that may have been a military thing, as I think I first heard it from my uncle, and it was a common saying on his ship.

And yeah, stuff like that would happen, but it would just be vandalism or destruction of property, purposely hitting someone with your car is no longer vehicular manslaughter or attempted murder, you just destroyed property. Interesting to see how a legal system would deal with that.

[pheonix561 2080]

Yeah. I think that, since people now exist as consciousness, they would probably build some kind of computer program designed to lock them inside for a specific amount of time, or prevent them from using a new body for a while, or something?

[Skippy 82]

I don't know, maybe you have to keep one body for x amount of time before you can get a new one, and if it is destroyed by your negligence you have to wait till your time is up. Or make it like leasing a car. Plus, I guess you could pull an offender back out of a body after they were caught. Destroy someone else's robot equals x amount of time before you get yours back.

[Fierce Muffin 490]

Ever see the movie surrogates?

Watched it a week? ago. The ending was confusing, because Fattymcfatass was all like "This virus is going to kill anyone that's in a surrogate." not "All surrogates will die, but the operator will be safe.", so when BaldMcHardass was all like "n" to "Kill all surrogates? y/n?", I was like "???"

And then I realized:

They puppyed up. Good movie, otherwise.

Also, uploading minds doesn't just mean good minds, bad minds would be uploaded, too. Thousands of Hitlers. Thousands of Osamas. lol Thousands of Obamas. OBAMA EVERYWHERE. Although, I guess the baddies would have a little trouble uploading their minds, but they'd find a way, obviously. I'd expect a few religions to be against it, which would turn a lot of people against it. Thousands of Rosie o'Donnells.

[Skippy 82]

We can't let this happen if there will be thousands of Rosie O'Donnells.

[Fierce Muffin 490]

lol

Anyway, on the topic of viruses. Think of what would happen if a virus got into the thousands of computers housing these minds. They'd acquire infinite information along with destroying it forever.

Scary thought.

[Blake 0]

Well, as long as I can choose when to stop, I'd do it. Must be hard to say 'hey, i'm tired of being reborn, i'll die now for good' though.

About the criminal stuff.. Maybe there could be rules and regulations to be able to upload your memories? like, if you commited a crime, you're not allowed to be reborn or so? I don't know.. that's probably too utopic, no?

[Skippy 82]

That is kinda scary, one bug could destroy thousands of minds in one throw. Imagine your existence ending that way.