I interpret this as pandering to people who cannot presently comprehend how you can be alive without a body. I doubt it is a serious plan. But I think its more likely there is no plan to do anything but get funded.
So you would contrive to make it illegal and/or impossible for an upload to do any productive work? At least none that they receive more benefit from than the average of all others?
I still find myself tempted to make fun of people who are just today learning the lesson of that comic - e.g. those original down-voters.
This "mechanism" provides no facility for spontaneous generation of new matter and energy resources.
You probably shouldn't spend 100% of your time exploring even very high quality counter arguments. Rather, you should probably spend some time on it.
I'm interested in your ideas for such an app - how would you interact with it? The only ideas I come up with amount to window dressing on a journal.
Yes, 100% is my expectation for both outcomes as well. Otherwise it wouldn't be a fork.
Other issue is that it is a hostage situation, and even in normal human hostage situations, whenever you should, or should not give the money to the hostage holder, depends solely to whenever you have higher probability that the hostages will be killed (or tortured) if money are given, than if money are not given.
Actually in real life, we also consider the future consequences of unspecified potential future hostage takers who may be motivated to take hostages if they see a hostage taker paid off. This is ostensibly why the USG will not (directly) pay off a hostage taker.
Also, we have to consider the value of the money, and our next best... (read more)
I'm sure this is true in some cases but not all of them. I've barely ever talked to anyone about my own fall from grace as a child and then again after a relapse in my teens, it was almost a completely introspective experience although what is interesting is that my relapse into Christianity was very much a social product. Still, atheism has never been an important part of my identity. In my mind the fact that I don't watch televised sporting contests sets me further apart from my peers than the fact that I'm an atheist.
I de-converted my wife just by being an atheist and never making a big deal about it one way or another; I think she just needed to see an example of someone getting along fine without the theism.
It has been well over a year since I first read Permutation City and relating writings on the internet on Greg Egan's dust theory. It still haunts me. The theory has been discussed tangentially in this community, but I haven't found an article that directly addresses the rationality of Egan's own dismissal of the theory.
In the FAQ, Egan says things like:
I wrote the ending as a way of dramatising[sic] a dissatisfaction I had with the “pure” Dust Theory that I never could (and still haven't) made precise (see Q5): the universe we live in is more coherent than the Dust Theory demands, so there must be something else going on.
and:
... (read 206 more words →)I have yet
I've never seen this or even imagined it can happen. I can't even write comments or pseudo-code that fast (without pause) because I can't design that fast.