I asked this question on IRC before and got some surprising answers.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, you get cryo-preserved and eventually wake up as an upload. Maybe meat->sim transfer ends up being much easier than sim->meat or meat->meat, or something. Further suppose that you are not particularly averse to a digital-only existence, at least not enough to specifically prohibit reviving you if this is the only option. Yet further suppose that sim-you is identical to meat-you for all purposes that meat-you cared about (including all your hidden desires and character faults). Let's also preemptively assume that any other attempts to fight this hypothetical have been satisfactorily resolved, just to get this out of the way.
Now, in the "real world", or at least in the simulation level we are at, there is no evidence that telepathy of any kind exists or is even possible. However, in the sim-world there is no technological reason it cannot be implemented in some way, for just thoughts, or just feelings, or both. There is a lot to be said for having this kind of connection between people (or sims). It gets rid of or marginalizes deception, status games, mis-communication-based biases and fallacies. On the other hand, your privacy disappears completely and so do any advantages over others the meat-you might want to retain in the digital world. And what you perceive as your faults are out there for everyone to see and feel.
As a new upload, you are informed that many "people" decided to get integrated into the telepathic society and appear to be happy about it, with few, if any, defections. There is also the group of those who opted out, and it looks basically like your "normal" mundane human society. There is only a limited and strictly monitored interaction between the two worlds to prevent exploitation/manipulation.
Would you choose to get fully integrated or stay as human-like as possible? Feel free to suggest any other alternative (suicide, start a partially integrated society, etc.).
P.S. This topic has been rather extensively covered in science fiction, but I could not find a quality online discussion anywhere.
Yes, it's about concentration. I imagine that some things are multiplicative, for example traits like "learns a lot about X" and "spends a lot of time doing X" give better output if they happen to be the traits of the same person (as opposed to one person who learns a lot but does nothing, and another person who does it a lot but doesn't understand it).
It's not just about agents, but about resources like memory. I don't know how well and how fast could the telepaths use each other's memory, or habits, or mental associations, or things like this. Seems more efficient if "caring about X" and "remembering many facts about X" are in the same person, otherwise there are communication costs.
Sure. To the degree that I assume that telepathy does not successfully bridge the distance between minds, such that between-mind operations remain less efficient than within-mind operations, then I agree with you... in that case, a telepathic society is more like the real world, where minds are separate from one another, and the between/within mind distinction matters more.
But (for me) the important issue is the degree ... (read more)