From: Phillip Huggan (cdnprodigy@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Oct 27 2005 - 21:02:04 MDT
Is there any literature that the process of uploading, formatting one's individual mind upon a substrate other than one's brain, will actually work? I'm starting to compile a taxonomy of singularity pathways and I think uploading should be removed entirely from this list. I don't deny a sentient agent can be engineered with uploading technology that is behaviourally indistinguishable from an "original". But this is a far cry from ensuring one's immortality by saving static copies of one's mind.
The fundamental flaw appears to be in the belief that uploading (for immortality) only requires a copying level of resolution that is the smallest physical brain structure necessary to form one's mind. This would merely create another individual. The laws of physics that give rise to the fields neurons and microtubules operate under, would have to be reproduced as well for uploading to copy personal identity. It has been mentioned developing uploading is too hard to contemplate pre-singularity. I would take this further: uploading is too hard post-singularity; achieving it would require enacting new laws of physics. Uploading = being god, and discussion of it doesn't belong alongside other mind/intelligence singularity hybrids.
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