Well, if we're implying that time travellers could go back and invisibly copy you at any point in time and then upload you to whatever simulation they feel inclined towards... I don't see how blendering yourself now will prevent them from just going to the moment before that and copying that version of you.
So, reality is that blendering yourself achieves only one thing, which is to prevent the future possible yous from existing. Personally I think that does a disservice to future you. That can similarly be expanded to others. We cannot conceivably prevent copying and mind uploading of anyone by super advanced time travellers. Ultimately that is outside of our locus of control and therefore not worth worrying about.
What is more pressing I think are the questions of how we are practically acting to improve the positive conscious experiences of existing and potentially existing sentient beings, and encouraging the general direction towards heaven-like simulation, and discouraging sadistic hell-like simulation. These may not be preventable, but our actions in the present should have outsized impact on the trillions of descendents of humanity that will likely be our legacy to the stars. Whatever we can do then to encourage altruism and discourage sadism in humanity now, may very well determine the ratios of heaven to hell simulations that those aforementioned time travellers may one day decide to throw together.
Time traveling super-jerks are not in my threat model. They would sure be terrible, bu as you point out, there is no obvious solution, though fortunately time travel does not look to be nearly as close technologically as uploading does. The definition of temporal I am using is as follows:
"relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs; secular." I believe the word is appropriate in context, as traditionally, eternity is a spiritual matter and does not require actual concrete planning. I assert that if uploading becomes available within a...
I need help getting out of a logical trap I've found myself in after reading The Age of Em.
Some statements needed to set the trap:
If mind-uploading is possible, then a mind can theoretically exist for an arbitrary length of time.
If a mind is contained in software, it can be copied, and therefore can be stolen.
An uploaded mind can retain human attributes indefinitely.
Some subset of humans are sadistic jerks, many of these humans have temporal power.
All humans, under certain circumstances, can behave like sadistic jerks.
Human power relationships will not simply disappear with the advent of mind uploading.
Some minor negative implications:
Torture becomes embarrassingly parallel.
US states with the death penalty may adopt death plus simulation as a penalty for some offenses.
The trap:
Over a long enough timeline, the probability of a copy of any given uploaded mind falling into the power of a sadistic jerk approaches unity. Once an uploaded mind has fallen under the power of a sadistic jerk, there is no guarantee that it will ever be 'free', and the quantity of experienced sufferring could be arbitrarily large, due in part to the embarrassingly parallel nature of torture enabled by running multiple copies of a captive mind.
Therefore! If you believe that mind uploading will become possible in a given individual's lifetime, the most ethical thing you can do from the utilitarian standpoint of minimizing aggregate suffering, is to ensure that the person's mind is securely deleted before it can be uploaded.
Imagine the heroism of a soldier, who faced with capture by an enemy capable of uploading minds and willing to parallelize torture spends his time ensuring that his buddies' brains are unrecoverable at the cost of his own capture.
I believe that mind uploading will become possible in my lifetime, please convince me that running through the streets with a blender screaming for brains is not an example of effective altruism.
On a more serious note, can anyone else think of examples of really terrible human decisions that would be incentivised by the development of AGI or mind uploading? This problem appears related to AI safety.