People are greedy. When people have the opportunity to exploit others, they often take it.
If anyone gets a hold of your em, they can torture your for subject aeons. Anyone who has a copy of your em can blackmail you: “Give me 99% of your property. For every minute you delay, I will torture your ems for a million subjective years.”
And what if someone actually wants to hurt you, instead of just exploit you? You and your romantic partner get in a fight. In a fit of passion, she leaves with a copy of your em. By the time the police find her the next day, you’ve been tortured for a subjective period of time longer than the universe.
Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to upload a copy of themselves without someone else’s assistance. When you’re dead and Apple is uploading your iEm, you’re trusting Apple not to abuse you. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you’re uploaded safely, how will you store backup copies? And how will you protect yourself against hackers?
If you postulate ems that can run a million subjective years a minute (which is not at all scientifically plausible), the mainline copies can do that as well, which means talking about wall clock time at all is misleading; the new subjective timescale is the appropriate one to use across the board.
As for the rest, people are just as greedy today as they will be in the future. Organized criminals could torture you until you agree to sign over your property to them. Your girlfriend could pour petrol over you and set you on fire while you’re asleep. If you sign up for a delivery or service with Apple and give them your home address, you’re trusting them not to send thugs around to your house and kidnap you. Ever fly on an airliner? Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to fly without someone else’s assistance. When you’re on the plane, you’re trusting the airline not to deliver you to a torture camp. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you get home safely, how will you stay safe while you’re asleep? And how will you protect yourself against criminals?
Does committing suicide today sound a more plausible idea now?
All of those scenarios are not only extremely inconvenient and not very profitable for the people involved, but also have high risks of getting caught. This means that the probability of any of them taking place is marginal, because the incentives just aren’t there in almost any situation. On the other hand, a digital file is hugely more easy to acquire, incarcerate, transport, and torture, and also easier to hide from any authorities. If someone gets their hands on a digital copy of you, torturing you for x period of time can be as easy as pressing a button. You might never kidnap an orchestra and force them to play for you, but millions of people download MP3s illegally.
I would still rather be uploaded rather than die, but I don’t think you’re giving the opposing point of view anything like the credit it deserves.
On the other hand, a digital file is hugely more easy to acquire, incarcerate, transport, and torture, and also easier to hide from any authorities. If someone gets their hands on a digital copy of you, torturing you for x period of time can be as easy as pressing a button.
If Y amount of computational resources can be used to simulate a million person-years, then the opportunity cost of using Y to torture someone is very large.
An upload, at least of the early generations, is going to require a supercomputer the size of a rather large building to run, to point out just one of the reasons why the analogy with playing a pirate MP3 is entirely spurious.
...the laws of physics as now understood would allow one gram (more or less) to store and run the entire human race at a million subjective years per second.
No one can hurt me today the way I could be hurt in a post-em world. In a world where human capacity for malevolence is higher, more precaution is required. One should not rule out suicide as a precaution against being tortured for subjective billions of years.
I’ve been snarky for this entire conversation—I find advocacy of death extremely irritating—but I am not just snarky by any means. The laws of physics as now understood allow no such thing, and even the author of the document to which you refer—a master of wishful thinking—now regards it as obsolete and wrong. And the point still holds—you cannot benefit today the way you could in a post-em world. If you’re prepared to throw away billions of years of life as a precaution against the possibility of billions of years of torture, you should be prepared to throw away decades of life as a precaution against the possibility of decades of torture. If you aren’t prepared to do the latter, you should reconsider the former.
I don’t think you’re a “bad guy”. I do think it’s a shame that you’re burying an important and interesting subject — the kind of goals and capabilities that it would be appropriate to encode in AI — under a mountain of hyperbole.
Evidence:
People are greedy. When people have the opportunity to exploit others, they often take it.
If anyone gets a hold of your em, they can torture your for subject aeons. Anyone who has a copy of your em can blackmail you: “Give me 99% of your property. For every minute you delay, I will torture your ems for a million subjective years.”
And what if someone actually wants to hurt you, instead of just exploit you? You and your romantic partner get in a fight. In a fit of passion, she leaves with a copy of your em. By the time the police find her the next day, you’ve been tortured for a subjective period of time longer than the universe.
Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to upload a copy of themselves without someone else’s assistance. When you’re dead and Apple is uploading your iEm, you’re trusting Apple not to abuse you. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you’re uploaded safely, how will you store backup copies? And how will you protect yourself against hackers?
Sound more plausible now?
If you postulate ems that can run a million subjective years a minute (which is not at all scientifically plausible), the mainline copies can do that as well, which means talking about wall clock time at all is misleading; the new subjective timescale is the appropriate one to use across the board.
As for the rest, people are just as greedy today as they will be in the future. Organized criminals could torture you until you agree to sign over your property to them. Your girlfriend could pour petrol over you and set you on fire while you’re asleep. If you sign up for a delivery or service with Apple and give them your home address, you’re trusting them not to send thugs around to your house and kidnap you. Ever fly on an airliner? Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to fly without someone else’s assistance. When you’re on the plane, you’re trusting the airline not to deliver you to a torture camp. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you get home safely, how will you stay safe while you’re asleep? And how will you protect yourself against criminals?
Does committing suicide today sound a more plausible idea now?
All of those scenarios are not only extremely inconvenient and not very profitable for the people involved, but also have high risks of getting caught. This means that the probability of any of them taking place is marginal, because the incentives just aren’t there in almost any situation. On the other hand, a digital file is hugely more easy to acquire, incarcerate, transport, and torture, and also easier to hide from any authorities. If someone gets their hands on a digital copy of you, torturing you for x period of time can be as easy as pressing a button. You might never kidnap an orchestra and force them to play for you, but millions of people download MP3s illegally.
I would still rather be uploaded rather than die, but I don’t think you’re giving the opposing point of view anything like the credit it deserves.
If Y amount of computational resources can be used to simulate a million person-years, then the opportunity cost of using Y to torture someone is very large.
An upload, at least of the early generations, is going to require a supercomputer the size of a rather large building to run, to point out just one of the reasons why the analogy with playing a pirate MP3 is entirely spurious.
Now you’re just getting snarky.
This document is a bit old, but:
No one can hurt me today the way I could be hurt in a post-em world. In a world where human capacity for malevolence is higher, more precaution is required. One should not rule out suicide as a precaution against being tortured for subjective billions of years.
I’ve been snarky for this entire conversation—I find advocacy of death extremely irritating—but I am not just snarky by any means. The laws of physics as now understood allow no such thing, and even the author of the document to which you refer—a master of wishful thinking—now regards it as obsolete and wrong. And the point still holds—you cannot benefit today the way you could in a post-em world. If you’re prepared to throw away billions of years of life as a precaution against the possibility of billions of years of torture, you should be prepared to throw away decades of life as a precaution against the possibility of decades of torture. If you aren’t prepared to do the latter, you should reconsider the former.
I rather subscribe to how Greg Egan describes what the author is doing: