Maybe the confusion is this: it is rare for time to be completely wasted: Reading TVtropes has many benefits and anything creative is obviously a good thing. “wasted” time is really just time that could have been spent even better. An upload like this would value it’s time a LOT less, the opportunity cost goes down immensely, and suddenly what was before waste is now proper training and study.
On a more serious note, if I split into copies for that sort of reason, I’d prefer to merge and re-split occasionally or share memories across copies. Then all the mes would have all the fun, instead of each me having some.
I sort of like the idea of multiple copies of me competing for timeshare, but I’d expect it to not work out very well, as some of me would sooner or later start trying to game my own evaluation metric in order to get more time than the rest of me, which over time is an unfortunate trend.
Depending on how much computing power I had, just letting some designated TVTropes/Wikipedia/YouTube personalities run at a slower rate, and merging them back in when I’m done (or rotating copies between fun and work so someone’s always working) could be an option.
Maybe the confusion is this: it is rare for time to be completely wasted: Reading TVtropes has many benefits and anything creative is obviously a good thing.
This is an interesting point. As an upload, I wouldn’t have many obligations to others that I couldn’t do quickly and easily. That would leave me essentially doing whatever I felt like, with little or none of the urgency of current life. If I wanted to read TVTropes, I could with no consequences. If I wanted to read the literature in particle physics, I could do that with no consequences.
Only problem is how do you “merge” two copies of your brain so that the resultant have the memories of both? I’d guess it’s somewhat implementation dependant and pretty hard. Hard enough that we can’t assume it can be done without explaining how for the purposes of a thread like this.
Hard enough that we can’t assume it can be done without explaining how for the purposes of a thread like this.
Meta-comment: Your stance on this, that technologies should be known to be workable before their effects are discussed, is different from the LW zeitgeist (citation when I can find it). I say this without stating a preference for either. I just wonder what it says about how you think about the future or things in general.
I don’t take that stance, in general. However, this thread is just just random idle scifi discussion, and details the way is is done in this case seems relevant to the end result.
Maybe the confusion is this: it is rare for time to be completely wasted: Reading TVtropes has many benefits and anything creative is obviously a good thing. “wasted” time is really just time that could have been spent even better. An upload like this would value it’s time a LOT less, the opportunity cost goes down immensely, and suddenly what was before waste is now proper training and study.
Uploading is sounding more and more appealing.
On a more serious note, if I split into copies for that sort of reason, I’d prefer to merge and re-split occasionally or share memories across copies. Then all the mes would have all the fun, instead of each me having some.
Depending on how much computing power I had, just letting some designated TVTropes/Wikipedia/YouTube personalities run at a slower rate, and merging them back in when I’m done (or rotating copies between fun and work so someone’s always working) could be an option.
This is an interesting point. As an upload, I wouldn’t have many obligations to others that I couldn’t do quickly and easily. That would leave me essentially doing whatever I felt like, with little or none of the urgency of current life. If I wanted to read TVTropes, I could with no consequences. If I wanted to read the literature in particle physics, I could do that with no consequences.
Yea.
Only problem is how do you “merge” two copies of your brain so that the resultant have the memories of both? I’d guess it’s somewhat implementation dependant and pretty hard. Hard enough that we can’t assume it can be done without explaining how for the purposes of a thread like this.
Meta-comment: Your stance on this, that technologies should be known to be workable before their effects are discussed, is different from the LW zeitgeist (citation when I can find it). I say this without stating a preference for either. I just wonder what it says about how you think about the future or things in general.
I don’t take that stance, in general. However, this thread is just just random idle scifi discussion, and details the way is is done in this case seems relevant to the end result.