I would point out that the scenario I was writing about was clearly one in which ems are common and em society is stable. If you think that in such a society, there won't be em kidnapping or hacking, for interrogation, slavery, or torture, you hold very different views from mine indeed. (If you think such a society won't exist, that's another thing entirely.)
As a human, you can only die once.
There is kidnapping for interrogation, slavery and torture today, so there is no reason to believe there won't be such in the future. But I don't believe it will make sense in the future to commit suicide at the mere thought, any more than it does today.
As for whether such a society will exist, I think it's possible it may. It's possible there may come a day when people don't have to die. And there is a better chance of that happening if we refrain from poisoning our minds with scare stories optimized for appeal to primate brains over correspondence to external reality.
Now you're just getting snarky.
This document is a bit old, but:
...the laws of physics as now understood would allow one gram (more or less) to store and run the entire human race at a million subjective years per second.
No one can hurt me today the way I could be hurt in a post-em world. In a world where human capacity for malevolence is higher, more precaution is required. One should not rule out suicide as a precaution against being tortured for subjective billions of years.
I've been snarky for this entire conversation - I find advocacy of death extremely irritating - but I am not just snarky by any means. The laws of physics as now understood allow no such thing, and even the author of the document to which you refer - a master of wishful thinking - now regards it as obsolete and wrong. And the point still holds - you cannot benefit today the way you could in a post-em world. If you're prepared to throw away billions of years of life as a precaution against the possibility of billions of years of torture, you should be prepared to throw away decades of life as a precaution against the possibility of decades of torture. If you aren't prepared to do the latter, you should reconsider the former.
All of those scenarios are not only extremely inconvenient and not very profitable for the people involved, but also have high risks of getting caught. This means that the probability of any of them taking place is marginal, because the incentives just aren't there in almost any situation. On the other hand, a digital file is hugely more easy to acquire, incarcerate, transport, and torture, and also easier to hide from any authorities. If someone gets their hands on a digital copy of you, torturing you for x period of time can be as easy as pressing a button. You might never kidnap an orchestra and force them to play for you, but millions of people download MP3s illegally.
I would still rather be uploaded rather than die, but I don't think you're giving the opposing point of view anything like the credit it deserves.
An upload, at least of the early generations, is going to require a supercomputer the size of a rather large building to run, to point out just one of the reasons why the analogy with playing a pirate MP3 is entirely spurious.
Warhammer 40K is one of those settings that is highly is open to interpretation. My interpretation is that it's in a situation where things could be better and could be worse, victory and defeat are both very much on the cards, and hope guided by cold realism is one of the main factors that might tip the balance towards the first outcome. I consider it similar in that regard to the Cthulhu mythos, and for that matter to real life.
Evidence:
People are greedy. When people have the opportunity to exploit others, they often take it.
If anyone gets a hold of your em, they can torture your for subject aeons. Anyone who has a copy of your em can blackmail you: "Give me 99% of your property. For every minute you delay, I will torture your ems for a million subjective years."
And what if someone actually wants to hurt you, instead of just exploit you? You and your romantic partner get in a fight. In a fit of passion, she leaves with a copy of your em. By the time the police find her the next day, you've been tortured for a subjective period of time longer than the universe.
Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to upload a copy of themselves without someone else's assistance. When you're dead and Apple is uploading your iEm, you're trusting Apple not to abuse you. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you're uploaded safely, how will you store backup copies? And how will you protect yourself against hackers?
Sound more plausible now?
If you postulate ems that can run a million subjective years a minute (which is not at all scientifically plausible), the mainline copies can do that as well, which means talking about wall clock time at all is misleading; the new subjective timescale is the appropriate one to use across the board.
As for the rest, people are just as greedy today as they will be in the future. Organized criminals could torture you until you agree to sign over your property to them. Your girlfriend could pour petrol over you and set you on fire while you're asleep. If you sign up for a delivery or service with Apple and give them your home address, you're trusting them not to send thugs around to your house and kidnap you. Ever fly on an airliner? Very few, perhaps no one, will have the engineering skill to fly without someone else's assistance. When you're on the plane, you're trusting the airline not to deliver you to a torture camp. Is anyone worthy of that trust? And even if you get home safely, how will you stay safe while you're asleep? And how will you protect yourself against criminals?
Does committing suicide today sound a more plausible idea now?
Which is not a plausible scenario in today's world.
If em torture is viable in the future, and I don't think I can defend myself, I will seriously consider suicide. But rwallace comment was regarding today's world.
The comment holds regardless. In today's world, you can only be tortured for a few decades, but by the same token you can only lose a few decades of lifespan by committing suicide. If in some future world you can be tortured for a billion years, then you will also be losing a billion years of happy healthy life by committing suicide. If you think the mere possibility of torture - with no evidence that it is at all likely - will be grounds for committing suicide in that future world, then you should think it equally good grounds for committing suicide today. If you agree with me that would be insanely irrational today, you should also agree it will be insanely irrational in that future world.
Also, in the absence of any evidence that this is at all unlikely to occur. But notice the original poster does not dwell on the probability of this scenario, only on its mere possibility. It seems to me you're disagreeing with some phantasm you imported into the conversation.
Also, in the absence of any evidence that this is at all unlikely to occur.
If you think the situation is that symmetrical, you should be indifferent on the question of whether to commit suicide today.
But notice the original poster does not dwell on the probability of this scenario, only on its mere possibility.
If it had been generated as part of an exhaustive listing of all possible scenarios, I would have refrained from comment. As it is, being raised in the context of a discussion on whether one should try for uploading in the unlikely event one lives that long, it's obviously intended to be an argument for a negative answer, which means it constitutes:
Advocacy of death.
Do you have some substantial disagreement with the possibility of the scenario?
With the possibility? Of course not. Anything that doesn't involve a logical self-contradiction is possible. My disagreement is with the idea that it is sane or rational to base decisions on fantasies about being kidnapped and tortured in the absence of any evidence that this is at all likely to occur.
Gwern notes that when you create an upload of yourself, you risk that upload being abused. A sadist could copy your upload millions of times and torture you for subjective aeons.
If you think that kind of argument holds water, you should commit suicide today lest a sadist kidnap you and torture you in real life.
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I will go out on a limb and assert that this man has a higher-than-average IQ. However, for his statement to be true he would have to be what some call "profoundly mentally retarded". That is, someone with an IQ below 25. To my knowledge, there have been an exceedingly small number of individuals in the range of 10x that IQ score -- amongst them the highest IQ yet recorded. So there are real problems of scale in his underlying assumptions.
Only if you take 'ten times smarter' to mean multiplying IQ score by ten. But since the mapping of the bell curve to numbers is arbitrary in the first place, that's not a meaningful operation; it's essentially a type error. The obvious interpretation of 'ten times smarter' within the domain of humans is by percentile, e.g. if the author is at the 99% mark, then it would refer to the 99.9% mark.
And given that, his statement is true; it is a curious fact that IQ has diminishing returns, that is, being somewhat above average confers significant advantage in many domains, but being far above average seems to confer little or no additional advantage. (My guess at the explanation: first, beyond a certain point you have to start making trade-offs from areas of brain function that IQ doesn't measure; second, Amdahl's law.)