First, the link:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/space/20010628/sc/uploading_life_send_your_personality_to_space_1.html
In short: the guy proposes we send computers to other planets & then upload recordings of our personalities to them over interplanetary distances. This whole proposal bugs me. I don’t think that a “recording” of my personality is going to be the same thing as my conscious self, nor do I see any need to program some poor robot with my mind.
Maybe someone else’s mind, but not mine. UGH!
I happen to disagree with some of the guy’s comments (No breakthroughs in launch system technology can be expected in the near future? Hmmm. Sounds like that clerk who quit the US Patent Office in the late 1800s because, “Everything’s been invented.” :rolleyes: ), but if it gets “me” (or at least a reasonable facsimilie of me) into space, I’m all for it! Of course, suppose you do this, then have yourself cryogenically frozen, get revived in a time when cheap space travel is readily available, and bump into “yourself” somewhere among the stars? Could be sticky.
Well, you’d have to think that you’re electronic representation is actually you.
It would be an easy way to send personalities out to the stars, but is the personality the same as the person? I’m a romantic, and I say no. It just seems to me another form of sending out information, much the same as sending out radio waves would be.
The whole idea would have to be an exercise in artificial intelligence before it was settled. Even if it was, the electronic representations would not be human. If the AI was complete, it would be a new species of intelligent life making its way out into the stars. Not homo sapiens, though they would appear that way at first.
But hell, maybe that is what the evolution of this planet was aiming for anyway. Maybe these bodies were always unsuited for space travel, and these intelligences are the next level. Ready for that?
One critical factor of the equasion requires that the recorded personalities have the ability to report back to their original “selves”, and possibly take further direction from the originals. Otherwise, we’re merely creating a new life form (or something very close to one) and sending it along its way with little external input.
If that’s the case, communications will still be agonizingly slow, unless c can somehow be cheated to allow for faster information transfer.