Permission for mind uploading via online files

Kaj_Sotala

Giulio Prisco made a blog post giving permission to use the data in his Gmail account to reconstruct an uploaded copy of him.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and also some information about the persons I have exchanged email with, including some personal and private information.

I am assuming that in 2060 (50 years from now), my Gmail account will have hundreds or thousands of TB of data, which will contain a lot of information about me and the persons I exchanged email with, including a lot of personal and private information. I am also assuming that, in 2060:

1) The data in the accounts of all Gmail users since 2004 is available.
2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available.
3) The technology to crack Gmail passwords is available, but illegal without the consent of the account owners (or their heirs).
4) Many of today's Gmail users, including myself, are already dead and cannot give permission to use the data in their accounts.

If all assumptions above are correct, I hereby give permission to Google and/or other parties to read all data in my Gmail account and use them together with other available information to reconstruct my mindfile with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, and express my wish that they do so.

Signed by Giulio Prisco on September 28, 2010, and witnessed by readers.

NOTE: The accuracy of the process outlined above increases with the number of persons who give their permission to do the same. You can give your permission in comments, Twitter or other public spaces.

Ben Goertzel copied the post and gave the same permission on his own blog. I made some substantial changes, such as adding a caveat to exclude the possibility of torture worlds (unlikely I know, but can't hurt), and likewise gave permission in my blog. Anders Sandberg comments on the thing.

Giulio Prisco made a blog post giving permission to use the data in his Gmail account to reconstruct an uploaded copy of him.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and also some information about the persons I have exchanged email with, including some personal and private information.

I am assuming that in 2060 (50 years from now), my Gmail account will have hundreds or thousands of TB of data, which will contain a lot of information about me and the persons I exchanged email with, including a lot of personal and private information. I am also assuming that, in 2060:

1) The data in the accounts of all Gmail users since 2004 is available.
2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available.
3) The technology to crack Gmail passwords is available, but illegal without the consent of the account owners (or their heirs).
4) Many of today's Gmail users, including myself, are already dead and cannot give permission to use the data in their accounts.

If all assumptions above are correct, I hereby give permission to Google and/or other parties to read all data in my Gmail account and use them together with other available information to reconstruct my mindfile with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, and express my wish that they do so.

Signed by Giulio Prisco on September 28, 2010, and witnessed by readers.

NOTE: The accuracy of the process outlined above increases with the number of persons who give their permission to do the same. You can give your permission in comments, Twitter or other public spaces.

Whenever you enter deep sleep you lose continuity of consciousness. Whence your intuition that continuity is important? Are you not impressed by timeless physics, nor Tegmark's multiverses? In a spatially infinite universe with particles being indistinguishable and whole Hubble volumes also being indistinguishable (the standard cosmological position), in what sense are different 'you's actually different people, even if there is no causal connection between them?

The fact that there is a copy of me going around does not change the fact that this instance of me is dead.

But does it even matter? If it looks like a you, thinks like a you, cares about all the same things you do, then your utility function should probably just consider it a you.

If you believe in Tegmark's multiverse, what's the point of uploading at all? You already inhabit an infinity of universes, all perfectly optimized for your happiness.

Personally I'm very inclined toward Tegmark's position and I have no idea how to answer the above question.

0nick01200016y

How do you do that quote thing, anyway? In any case, you don't lose continuity of consciousness when asleep; your brain keeps ticking away in the background as it does its maintenance routines. Never heard of timeless physics or Tegmark's multiverses; looking at the links, though, I don't really see the relevance of them. I do in fact believe in the many-worlds theory of quantum physics; that there are a nigh-infinite copies of me does not mean that this particular instance of me is unimportant to me (and, of course, the a good chunk of those other mes likely feel the same). If someone built a teleporter that created a copy of me, said copy of me would be an instance of the class of persons who refer to themselves as "nick012000" on the internet; however, creating another instance of said class does not mean that it is the same as another instance of said class. To use a programming metaphor, it'd be like saying that "Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2 = (Nick012000) nick1.clone();" produces one variable. It doesn't; it produces two. To continue the programming metaphor, I also wouldn't join into a hivemind, since that would turn that particular instance of the Nick012000 class into just a data field in that instance of the Hivemind class, but I would be okay with creating a hivemind with multiple blank bodies with my mind written onto them, since that would just be like running "Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2=nick1;", and both variable names refer to the same object. And, yes, it would matter to my utility function, since my utility function gives a strong positive weight to the continued existence of both the class of persons who refer to themselves as "nick012000" on the Internet, and to the particular instance of said class that is evaluating and executing said utility function.