[SL4] Uploading Purity Test

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue May 09 2000 - 16:46:27 MDT


I posted this some time ago to the Extropian list.
I repost it now.

--
The Uploading Purity Test
v1.1 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
76 questions, 79 points
Have you ever run your mind on non-neural substrate?
 ...non-biological substrate?
 ...non-matter substrate?
 ...non-physical substrate?
Have you lived for more than a subjective century?
 ...more than a eon?
 ...longer than the age of the Universe?
 ...so long it has to be expressed in Knuth notation?
 ...forever? (Worth 2 points)
Have you ever gotten bored enough to take up a pointless mortal hobby?
 ...to track the position of all the atoms in the galaxy?
 ...to extrapolate a Universe where Donald Duck is God?
 ...to contemplate all the positive integers?
  ...Did you finish?
   ...Were you still bored?
    ...Are you reading this because you're answering all possible purity
tests in order?
Have you ever created a duplicate of yourself?
 ...more than ten duplicates?
 ...more than a thousand duplicates?
 ...more than a quadrillion duplicates?
 ...an infinite number of duplicates?
  ...Do you all have different names?
 ...Does everyone else have trouble telling you apart?
 ...Have you been blamed for something a duplicate did?
Has any version of yourself ever died?
 ...Were you trying to reprogram your own brain in real time?
  ...Did you forget to make a backup?
Do you consider yourself to be the "same" entity as your previous self?
 ...Do you not care?
 ...Did you manage to upload yourself without losing consciousness?
 ...Does someone else also consider itself to be your mortal self?
  ...Do you argue about it?
  ...Is there more than one entity that considers itself to be you?
Have you ever carked yourself into a Turing machine?
 ...into a creature in Conway's Game of Life?
 ...into a classical AI?
 ...into a pre-Singularity planetary economy?
 ...back into a mortal human?
Have you ever entered a fictional construct?
 ...Did you remove your memories of an external existence?
  ...Did you spend the whole time wishing you were a transhuman?
   ...Were you annoyed with yourself when you woke up?
Have you altered your mental algorithms to incorporate quantum computing?
 ...closed timelike lines?
Have you ever entered a simulated environment?
 ...with different physical laws?
 ...with different mathematical laws?
 ...with different rules of logic? (Worth 2 points.)
  ...Did you alter yourself to feel at home?
   ...Did it work?
    ...Did you refuse to go back?
Have you ever created an artifact of stellar scale?
 ...an artifact of galactic scale?
 ...your own Universe?
 ...this Universe?
 ...Did you create all of reality to begin with?
Have you ever participated in a group mind?
 ...Did they like you?
 ...Do you still have their memories?
 ...Are you still participating?
  ...Have you forgotten which one you were when you started?
   ...Does that question not have an objective answer?
Are you in contact with a version of yourself that has become smarter
than you?
 ...that has become a superintelligence?
 ...that has become a Power?
 ...that has become God?
Have you completely lost your mortal priorities?
 ...your personality?
 ...your memories?
 ...your individuality?
Do you fully understand the First Cause?
 ...the nature of consciousness?
 ...the meaning of life?
 ...the behavior of your own algorithms? (Worth 2 points)
 ...the tax code?
Scoring:
0:	Clinically Dead
1-5:	Virgin-Saint
5-10:	Pod Human		(The Matrix)
10-15:	Expanded Mind		(True Names)
15-20:	Headband		(Marooned in Realtime)
21-30:	Copy			(Permutation City)
31-40:	Bush Robot		(Mind Children)
41-50:	Upload			(Diaspora)
51-60:	Mind			(Player of Games)
61-70:	Power			(A Fire Upon the Deep)
71-79:	Post-Singularity Entity
-- 
       sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
                 Member, Extropy Institute
           Senior Associate, Foresight Institute
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<!-- |@|begin eGroups banner|@| runid: 3951 crid: 1901 -->
<a target="_blank" href="http://click.egroups.com/1/3951/10/_/626675/_/957912478/"><center>
<img width="468" height="60"
  border="0"
  alt=""
  src="http://adimg.egroups.com/img/3951/10/_/626675/_/957912478/EGDIRbranddidyou468x60a8.gif"></center><center><font color="white"></font></center></a>
<!-- |@|end eGroups banner|@| -->
------------------------------------------------------------------------


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:08 MDT