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SteveG comments on Should We Shred Whole-Brain Emulation? - Less Wrong
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Just laying some more groundwork... One distinction the discussion requires:
Who is in control of the components and the environment of the emulation?
Possibilities:
An outside entity, attempting to gain economic or other value by using the emulation to complete information processing tasks. (I'll call this "The Boss.")
-The environment was established to maintain the emulation, which is not "given a job," but was created for scientific observation by outsiders.
-The emulation is not given a job, but environment was created by outsiders as a platform for experimentation on emulations.
-Perhaps the emulation was created as an "upload" of a person, or as their designed child or progeny.
-The emulation has a greater or lesser degree of control over its own environment or composition.
Example of lesser degree of control: It can decide to select some of the content it sees and listens to.
Example of greater degree of control: It can directly alter one of its emotions by "twisting a knob."
Uploads and those creating a WBE-like entity as progeny most likely would prefer to add improvements to a greater or lesser extent, rather than complete fidelity.
Some people may argue that WBEs should lead as natural an existence as possible, one very much like people.
On the assumption that these people value their uploads or progeny, however, some aspects of life experience would be edited out. For example, what would motivate one of these creators to pass their WBEs through an unpleasant end-of-life experience, like vascular dementia?
The emulated lives of uploads and progeny would, to a greater or lesser extent, be edited. We could try to reason more about that.
Would uploads avoid self improvement? If we are going to try to address this question, we should first consider the plausibility and importance of the whole upload concept.
Given the power and relatively young age of some Silicon Valley executives who seem to see uploading as part of their future, we might want to check to see whether the pursuit of uploading would have any side-effects.
If we believe that uploads are malleable and improvable, then the technology to create uploads would also permit the creation of more powerful minds, with all the consequences.