I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of volunteers for destructive uploading (or actually even for nondestructive uploading). Especially not if the upload is going to be run with limited fidelity. Anybody who does volunteer is probably deeply atypical and potentially a dangerous fanatic.
Separately, I’m kind of awed by the idea of an “uploadonaut”: the best and brightest of this young civilisation, undergoing extensive mental and research training to have their minds able to deal with what they might experience post upload, and then courageously setting out on a dangerous mission of crucial importance for humanity.
(I tried generating some Dall-E 1960′s style NASA recruitment posters for this, but they didn’t come out great. Might try more later)
Another big source of potential volunteers: People who are going to be dead soon anyway. I’d probably volunteer if I knew that I’m dying from cancer in a few weeks anyway.
Space flight doesn’t involve a 100 percent chance of physical death, with an uncertain “resurrection”, with a certainly altered and probably degraded mind, in a probably deeply impoverished sensory environment. If you survive space flight, you get to go home afterwards. And if you die, you die quickly and completely.
Still, I didn’t say you’d get no volunteers. I said you’d get atypical ones and possible fanatics. And, since you have a an actual use for the uploads, you have to take your volunteers from the pool of people you think might actually be able to contribute. That’s seems like an uncomfortably narrow selection.
Space flight doesn’t involve a 100 percent chance of physical death
I think historically folks have gone to war or on other kinds of missions that had death rates of like, at least, 50%. And folks, I dunno, climb Mount Everest, or figured out how to fly planes before they could figure out how to make them safe.
Some of them were for sure fanatics or lunatics. But I guess I also think there’s just great, sane, and in many ways whole, people, who care about things greater than their own personal life and death, and are psychologically consituted to be willing to pursue those greater things.
Seems falsified by the existence of astronauts?
I, for one, would be more willing to risk my life to go to cyberspace than to go to the moon.
Separately, I’m kind of awed by the idea of an “uploadonaut”: the best and brightest of this young civilisation, undergoing extensive mental and research training to have their minds able to deal with what they might experience post upload, and then courageously setting out on a dangerous mission of crucial importance for humanity.
(I tried generating some Dall-E 1960′s style NASA recruitment posters for this, but they didn’t come out great. Might try more later)
Another big source of potential volunteers: People who are going to be dead soon anyway. I’d probably volunteer if I knew that I’m dying from cancer in a few weeks anyway.
I don’t think they’re comparable at all.
Space flight doesn’t involve a 100 percent chance of physical death, with an uncertain “resurrection”, with a certainly altered and probably degraded mind, in a probably deeply impoverished sensory environment. If you survive space flight, you get to go home afterwards. And if you die, you die quickly and completely.
Still, I didn’t say you’d get no volunteers. I said you’d get atypical ones and possible fanatics. And, since you have a an actual use for the uploads, you have to take your volunteers from the pool of people you think might actually be able to contribute. That’s seems like an uncomfortably narrow selection.
I think historically folks have gone to war or on other kinds of missions that had death rates of like, at least, 50%. And folks, I dunno, climb Mount Everest, or figured out how to fly planes before they could figure out how to make them safe.
Some of them were for sure fanatics or lunatics. But I guess I also think there’s just great, sane, and in many ways whole, people, who care about things greater than their own personal life and death, and are psychologically consituted to be willing to pursue those greater things.
See the 31 climbers in a row who died scaling Nanga Parbat before the 32nd was successful.