One person, one vote - a fundamental principle of our democratic government. But what happens in a world where one person can be copied, again and again?

That is the world described by Robin Hanson's "Em economics". Ems, or uploads, are human minds instantiated inside software, and hence can be copied as needed. But what is the fate of democratic government in such a world of copies? Can it be preserved? Should it be preserved? How much of it should be preserved? Those are the questions we'll be analysing at the FHI, but we first wanted to turn to Less Wrong to see the ideas and comments you might have on this. Original thoughts especially welcome!

To start the conversation, here are some of the features of idealised democracy (the list isn't meant to be exhaustive or restrictive, or necessarily true about real world democracies). Which of these could exist in an Em world, and which should?

• Democracy grants legitimacy to the government.
• Democracy is fair and egalitarian - each person has a single vote.
• Democracy aligns the interests of the rulers with that of the ruled.
• Democracy is stable - powerful groups can generally seize power within the structure, rather than overthrowing it.
• Democracy allows the competition of governing ideas.
• Democracy often leads to market economies, which generate large wealth.
• Democracy often lead to welfare states, which increase happiness.
• Democracy doesn't need to use certain coercive methods, such as restrictions on free speech, that other systems require to remain stable.
• Democracy stops a particular group from hanging on to power indefinitely, which can reduce corruption, inefficiency and excessive use of state power for private purposes.

EDIT: For clarification purposes, I am not claiming that democracies achieve these goals, or that these are all desirable. They are just ideas to start thinking about.

Recently, the Blue Brain Project published a paper arguing that human neurons don't form synapses at locations determined by learning, but just wherever they bump into each other.  See video and article here.

For those people hoping to upload their brains by mapping out and virtually duplicating all the synapses—this means that won't work.  The synapse locations do not differ from human to human in any useful way.  Learning must be encoded in some modulation of each synapse's function.

Lecture at youtube. 

Sorry - haven't watched it yet so no summary, but I expect it to be fun.

Suppose I have choice between the following:

A) One simulation of me is run for me 100 years, before being deleted.

B) Two identical simulations of me are run for 100 years, before being deleted.

Is the second choice preferable to the first? Should I be willing to pay more to have multiple copies of me simulated, even if those copies will have the exact same experiences?

Forgive me if this question has been answered before. I have Googled to no avail.

I made a video last month, which when I mentioned in another thread someone said I should post as a top level discussion.

It's just a ten minute zero-budget thing I wrote in which a girl has a video conference with her dead and backed-up-then-uploaded grandfather. Intended as the first in a series, but later episodes will only get produced if donations come. Later episodes talk more about AI's failures and the political situation with unrest from the living demanding the dead shouldn't have their jobs etc.

Anyway, watch it here if you like, I'd be happy to hear what y'all think :)

When I was reading The Seven Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Gaming, I was struck by the number of people who are strongly motivated to cause misery to others [1], apparently for its own sake. I think the default assumption here is that the primary risk to ems is from errors in programming an AI, but cruelty from other ems, from silicon minds closely based on humans but not ems (is there a convenient term for this?) and from just plain organic humans strikes me as extremely likely.

We're talking about a species where a significant number of people feel better when they torture Sims. I don't think torturing Sims is of any moral importance, but it serves as an indicator about what people like to do. I also wonder how good a simulation has to be before torturing it does matter.

I find it hard to imagine a system where it's easy to upload people which has security so good that torturing copies wouldn't be feasible, but maybe I'm missing something.

[1] The article was also very funny. I point this out only because I feel a possibly excessive need to reassure readers that I have normal reactions.