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<< I for one believe that one of our main motivations to suceed on this earth is the fact that we are mortal. All the great inventors/scientists etc have been driven becuase they wanted to achieve something great before they died (or turned 30 in the case of mathematicians). If that drive were not there, I think innovation would proceed at a much more lesurely pace simply because there is no need to prove yourself within the next 10 years. >>
I still consider curiosity to be the most important reason for innovation. I simply don't see how mortality could influence this. None of the observations I've made are consistent with your statement. You might want to give some examples. >>
Obviously, I cant just point out a person who said "well, the reason I invented this was cos I am going to die" but, to me, curiosity plays a big part in discovery but people will not have the intensity to discover they once did. Why should I HAVE to find out what this is if I could do it next week, or next year... or after 2 centuries? Obviously, this discussion is based on our beliefs and no argument can convince either of us. Just keep it in mind
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<< Also, with immortality, there would be no people being born which would mean that all the same prejudices kept within the population. Thomas Kuhn once said that a scientific theory does not become accepted because the current generation of scientists see the light but, rather, when the current generation die off and the new generation is indoctrinated in the new theory. With no new generation, all our prejudices would remain. >>
This argument is false. >>
The best example I could come up for this is the fact that Einstein formulated the theory of relativity while working as a patent clerk, he was not immersed in the entire culture of the physics community so he was able to make this radical change of thinking. The thing is, we all have our prejudices which mean that we instantly dismiss or think some things are impossible, When a new person is born, he forms new prejudices. I highly reccomend you read "the structure of Scientific revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn, he can explain it better that I can. Basically though, with immortality, discovery will only be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
And, just to preempt your reply, no, Scientific revolutions are NOT a process of logic, it entails a readjustment of the way you think about things, the mathematical equivilant would be changing the axioms under which you work. No amout of logic will tell you what are the right axioms.
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Prejudices will remain in a population, even if its individuals are mortals. The magic word here is 'culture'. 'Immortality' would free individuals from many limits, enabling them to use logic in ways unimagined because of their increased processing power. Mental tasks which now take a Human hours to complete could be finished by an 'artificial' Human in merely a few minutes or even seconds.
By optimizing the neural networks, one could change virtually everyone into a genius. >>
Ahh, the age old eugenics argument? What is a genious? a person who can think faster than other people? no, all we can make is somebody who can think fast, not genius's. And BTW: this ties in with my argument about us being bored with the physical world, whats the point of moving 1 meter if it is going to take you 2 weeks of subjective time to do it?
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<< Now, I want to get down to some nitty gritty aspects of your plan.
Would the value of Human life be reduced because there would always exist a copy somewhere, would crimes such as Rape become marginalised since they rely on the premise of violating a human body. >>
Without the need to procreate, sex would disappear. Rape would become a thing of the past.
<< First of all, Intellectual theft would become a vastly different beast, what do you do if a person hacks into your brain and downloads a copy... or 10? What if it (using geneder neutral pronouns) had the ability to change your memories. Could it act out some sick fantasy of his and turn you into a gibbering idiot or a mindless fan? >>
1. You're assuming that everyone is connected to some kind of WAN like the internet. Well, they're not. They're individuals, not computers. They're just as free as Humans are today.
2. Security could be introduced to protect the system against tampering. >>
1. The WAN seems like the next obvious step to go, why limit yourself to incredibly inefficent voice communications when you can form a high bandwidth communication link with anybody and everybody.
2. Experince has shown that any form of computer security will be trivial to break into.
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<< The basic notion of intelligence as an asset would be removed if other people could access the said intelligence, what if I, as a chemical company, stole the minds of the top workers at another company and then deleted the records so that they only exisited with me, would that amount to kidnapping? What If I then made 1 million copies of those people and had them work in a massive colaborative effort? essentially as slave labour? >>
In order to obtain a copy of a person's mind, that person would have to be physically present, unless a backup is somewhere stored. Either way, it would be illegal. >>
Illegal but not hard to do. Obviously, it would be prudent to have many backups of you to ensure you cannot be killed, it would not be hard to get a copy of somebody
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However, I don't think that such practices would form a problem, nor that they would occur reguarly. >>
I think it would be a very BIG problem, and it would be very hard to stop people doing it. If people are willing warez software today, then they will be willing to warez personalitys tomorrow
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<< Could some crazy maniac wreak a virus upon the system which would destroy every mind with a certain belief? >>
Again, everyone is not connected to a WAN.
A virus could disrupt the activity of the person, but once the person noticed it, s/he could shut down and restart, after which the virus would be gone. >>
Okay, what I was describing was probably more of a trojan horse rather than a virus, what if I sold brand X hot dogs (or whatever sells in your future), I could just release a virus that would tailor each mind it encounters to think "mmm, I could really go for some of those brank X hot dogs right now". To that person, that would seem like a perfectly natural activity. Now, say instead, i put in a message saying "I really hate all people believing in Belief Y".
In my experience, these problems are anything but trivial.
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