I just read a fascinating short sci-fi story by James Hogan about a criminal who is used as a test subject for a new technology - it encodes the human brain/mind and downloads it to a robot body. The criminal’s mind, knowledge and memories are just as they were in his old body (he feels exactly like himself), but his old body was destroyed by the process.
If the technology was well-proven and safe, and if you could be exactly who you are now, except in a new, fantastic robot body (with wireless access to the internet, of course, so you could have massive access to most of the information in the world), would you do it? Would you wait until you were old and worn out, or would you just dump this meatbag now in favour of the new, improved robot body?
Certainly - if I could afford to maintain the body. In my view, I’m nothing but an ongoing pattern of information; I’d still be me even if that process is transferred to a new body. In fact, I’d still do it if the process didn’t destroy the original; and I’d consider the organic me and the robot me to be the same person, at least until we diverged. Although I’d prefer that the organic version was destroyed in the process, as long as it was unconscious ( in my eyes, as long as there’s no change from the robot instantiation it’s not yet a separate person, and thus destroying it makes the process a transfer ).
I’d wait about a decade so the technology could be confirmed to be side-effect free and for kinks to be worked out.
But so long as mankind could still procreate in some fashion (test tube babies or whatever), it’d be fine by me. I assume that this pretty much is the future. No sense being less capable than you can be.
Kind of a modern day “Frankenstein”, eh? Why couldn’t they download Stephen Hawking, instead of some sociopath?
I’d do it, but I’d wait until my body wore out, since after the process was complete, I’d be dead - that box of circuits that thinks it’s me notwithstanding.
Moderately happy with the body I have at the moment, but assuming the process was proven, then yeah, once this mortal coil got infirm I’d be very intellectually comfortable with being rehoused in a robot. I agree with Der Trihs, the essential me-ness is the information pattern, not the organic meat shell.
Along the lines of the OP’s sci-fi story, I’m currently reading Neal Asher 's books where there are rather blurry lines between humans with implants/augmentation, “haimans” (human / AI hybrids), golems (with either AI minds or the downloaded minds of former humans), cyborgs (robots with some organic parts, and now rare), rehoused humans (minds transferred from dead/ailing bodies to bodies… err… confiscated from criminals), and even the odd “reif” (effectively zombies using high technology to keep their deceased body running).
I’d be less keen on being rehoused in a second-hand human body… I’m not 100% sure why, but it just feels a bit icky… a bit like I don’t want a lick of someone else’s ice-cream.
I’d rather be a transhuman, keep this body but augment it technologically, preferably enough to shed mortality, but not enough to call myself a “robot.” Also, preferably in a way that things that tend to destroy robots (i.e. viruses or an EMP) kills me, just hinders me a little.
I certainly wouldn’t do it right now: My current fleshbag body is holding up well enough, and I’ve never been one for throwing away something that’s still perfectly functional.
That said, I would go through with this procedure under three conditions:
1: It’s well enough tested, practiced, etc. that I can be fully confident in its reliability.
2: My fleshbag body is degraded to the point where it’s a significant impact on my quality of life (how significant it would have to be would depend on a lot of factors, including the cost of this procedure, but even if it were free, my current body’s still good enough).
3 (and this is the kicker): The process for transference is such that it inherently cannot be done without destroying the original. I do not consider it acceptable to copy the patterns over and then destroy the original in a separate step; nor do I consider it acceptable to have both the original and the copy running around at the same time. Either of those possibilities raises too many ethical questions for me. However, a form of transference which cannot produce duplicates (even temporarily) can be analogized to various processes which occur naturally all the time, and to which there can be no ethical objection.
Sure, why not?
But now I am trying to figure out how a Gay oriented robot functions among other robots…I mean, I am sure there is no actual sex if you are a robot, but will other male robots be afraid to have lube jobs if I am in the same room? Do we all have the same sized battery packages, or do some have bigger ones than the other guy robots? Will they be upset when I sing show tunes? Will Gay robots have the right to get married?
It is making my circuits smolder just contemplating these factors…
Frankly, with a lack of any concrete understanding to the contrary, it sounds like the process would only succeed in creating a twin brother who thought he used to be me. Whatever “spark” there might be that makes my consciousness “me” would be lost.
It’s a moot point, anyway, though. Either way, even if the process DIDN’T involve the loss of whatever exists of my “soul,” I don’t feel enough attachment to life to want to prolong it in such a fashion. The idea of 50+ more years is bad enough. Decades or centuries more than that? Ech…no thank you. Who wants forever, anyway?
Stay away from those teleporters then. As it stands most ideas concerning teleporters involve, essentially, killing you, blowing up your body into basic particles, sending some data (or if it was more like Star Trek, scanning you), and then putting you back together from spare parts on the other side.
I think it was Douglas Adams who said on the subject of immortality; “Most people can’t figure out what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
How about some slight tweaks to your brain chemistry so whatever hangups you have now that prevent you from enjoying life to its fullest are erased? Your new robot brain would be stable and able to interface with all computers and networks; you would have full virtual reality experiences whenever the real world got a little dull. Heck, you could make robot bodies that could endure interstellar spaces - how about a little flight to another planet? Once you get a consciousness out of its confining meat brain, the possibilities are endless.
As for me, I think I would wait until I got old and infirm to do it - I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of destroying the me I know and going into a me I don’t know, and I think you’d be better off going in with as much wisdom as you can accumulate as a human first.
Probably not. The robot would be a *copy *of me, it would not be me. Mind you, if we were able to somehow tell what makes me, *me *- then I might consider it. But that is a problem for wiser philosophers than I am.
Not quite yet, but certainly yes when my body becomes not so fully functional as it is today. And it depends somewhat on the functionality of the robot. It would be nice to be able to turn off cold sensors some times. If the robot body was not mass produced, maybe I could be sent into space to work on the space station without the annoyance of a suit.
I don’t have much of a preference about my original body dying or not - I’ve always gotten along with myself pretty well.
