If we download information from each other (using nanites in our organic brains) then how will we be any different then each other?
Another interesting question. I suppose that will be a difficult problem to come to grips with, and I suspect that the more "liberal" segments of society, the people first in line to upload, and first in line to share thoughts, are the ones who expose themselves to the most risk of such contamination problems, assuming that uploading even preserves "them" when the technology first becomes available. I suspect that more "conservative" people like myself will happily integrate with technology, but with much more apprehension, and in smaller and more frequent increments: baby steps. I don't mean people who avoid the technology at all costs, for such will be as unprepared as the masses who are now wandering on to the Internet. I'm talking about people who proceeed willfully, but carefully, never being the first to test a new technology, and always taking small enough steps that they have a chance to "step back" if necessary.
Actually, this thought leads me to an area that I've been thinking about lately, because I've been trying to think of a way that I could be convinced that uploading would actually preserve "me". You see, I have no doubt that if justinb uploads, the computer system to which he uploads would accurately carry out the intellectual and emotional responses appropriate to perfectly simulate justinb. In other words, it wouldn't just be a computer with a digital equivalent of his memory. I believe such a computer system would accurately be able to "think" like justinb, to react to his five "senses" the same way, to "emote" the same way.
Where I get hung up is whether it's really "him". The thing is, to me, it doesn't really matter. But now turn the tables, and it does matter. Even if an uploaded version of me will respond to others as I would, and even if an uploaded me would act and emote in a way indistinguishable from me in every respect to an observer, I am still left to wonder. Is it "me" doing that, or, for lack of a better term, someone else?
But what this got me to thinking was, what if I could offload some of my brain functionality and not tell the difference? At some level, qualia enter the picture. It still won't settle all my concerns, but it would certainly settle many of them if I could actually process one or more physical senses artificially.
For example, to actually "see", not just the ability to react to visual stimuli, which I can observe someone else do, but to actually have that qualitative experience myself, without the use of any organic portion of the visual system. Well, I shouldn't say without the use of *any* portion, but certainly no portion subsequent to the optic nerves.
Or if I could "feel", or "smell", or "hear", without the corresponding parts of the brain.
The tricky part is how far into the system to go before I'd consider it effective. For example, what if the visual processing done in the occipital lobe can be faked, but the actual qualia of "seeing" red or green is performed at the next step in the process (whereever that is, I'm not a brain guru).
LongeCity
