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Luke_A_Somers comments on The impact of whole brain emulation - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: jkaufman 14 May 2013 07:59PM

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Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 14 May 2013 08:21:25PM *  11 points [-]

Even with baseline ems, and even setting aside the issues that came up during the FOOM debate, there are a lot of subjective details.

  • Backups. I mean, seriously. Backups. You can't die by accident. Yeah, this was noted, but it's seriously subjectively awesome compared to being a very squishy human.

  • Flip side: Not having to worry about your loved ones? I can think of certain parents who would go from bundle-of-stress to, well, only somewhat more stressed than what they were as non-parents.

  • Bad people might feel less inhibitions about killing people with backups. That's not so great.

  • Brain bleach that works.

  • Instant readouts of metrics on your mental state. Like, you can have an indicator for just how much your emulated limbic system is active. Many fewer arguments over whether you're calm enough to be having this discussion right now.

  • Ability to guarantee that you can keep confidence when giving advice, by forking a doomed copy... so long as the emulating environment can be trusted.

  • Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took them.