Robin's Palm Writings Category: Singularity
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This essay is low-end SL4(link), or possibly high-end SL3. You should probably read that essay first, or you maybe won't much see the point of this one.
My goals in writing this essay were to demonstrate the sorts of things that having access to one's software allows, and how those abilities relate to my own personality. I've had a decided lack of success at conveying to those close to me (who are almost without exception life-long SF fans; very SL2) the excitement, wonder, and terror I feel about SL4 ideas. (Side note: I no longer am so awe-struck as to consider myself really SL3; I'm probably not high SL4 yet (too excited), but I'm getting there.)
I found myself casually daydreaming about some things I might use uploading (link) for one day, and realized that unlike most of my post-singularity fantasies (usually reserved for when I'm driving or otherwise unable to do anything useful), this one was genuinely _different_ from the things one can do now, as opposed to my standard fare of glorified LARP fantasies.
I'm not going to tell you the _goal_ of this fantasy until the end. Here's a narrative of what the experience I was thinking about might be like.
Please note that I'm assuming the availability of perfect uploading. In other words, if you knocked me out, uploaded me, and did something to make the body issue irrelevant (give me a perfect VR rig, or give the copy a perfect robotic body) when I come to neither of us should be able to prove which of us is the original. This idea requires flawless copying of a human conciousness onto an easily modifyable substrate (i.e. computer software). Whether the human is abstracted in some sense or merely simulated on a neuronal level is irrelevant. The uploading process needs to be non-destructive.
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One day I decide to try an experiment. The first step is, of necessity, uploading, if I haven't already done so. My copy and I are arranged so that neither knows which is the original, and we spend a while validating the fidelity of the copy. That is, we spend some time (hours or days, at least) ensuring ourselves that we are both the same person in every respect. Having done so, we flip a coin; whoever gets heads goes back to whatever they were doing before; it is considered the orginal, and will be called the prime copy.
I, however, got tails. I am the experimental copy. I'm fine with this (if I wasn't fine with being either copy, starting the experiment was pretty dumb in the first place). It is time for me to start modifying my conciousness.
The first step is to try to remove my abitlity to feel boredom. I theorize that this is probably pretty easy, but that the easy ways of doing it are probably error-prone. In particular, I expect it would be hard to remove my capacity for boredom without resulting in catatonia (if staring at a wall never bores me, I might just do that forever) or obsessiveness (ADHD or OCD).
Fortunately, my job is relatively easy, because obsessiveness is a perfectly acceptable outcome. Avoiding both obsessiveness and catatonia would be fine too, but obsessiveness is probably slightly prefferable in this case.
To make the change I'm going to want to experiment on further copies of myself, to watch for obvious problems. Once I'm sure that a copy is a step in the right direction, I'll destroy myself in favour of that copy (which is then "me" for all purposes). I need to keep detailed notes at each step, in case problems crop up long-term, over many versions. For that same reason, prime copy needs to check in occasionally.