BUT.. are people really so pessimistic about technology and the future that the main thing that comes to mind when they think of digital immortality is.. this?
Your virtual body can be anything you want. You can't die as long as your digital code is backed up somewhere.
If you can't see the bright side of that stuff, there is some kind of psychological issue.
It has both effectively infinite possibility for goodness and infinite possibility for badness. Your virtual body can be anything you want... as long as you control the execution parameters. This is not guaranteed! What if $YOUR_LEAST_FAVORITE_COMPANY is the one in control? Or worse? Even the option of suicide can be removed from you. If Hell does not exist, there is a non-zero chance Man will make it for himself.
Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.
Iain M Banks most recent Culture novel, Surface Detail, dealt with the idea of Digital Heavens, and of course Digital Hell's. They are run by religious high technology civilizations.
A virtual hell is a nasty place where sinners are copied into post death, for eternity. Sometimes young sinners are given day trips there to straighten them out, before death.
>Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.
One might argue that these technologies are so advanced that they will not be developed until the current resource scarcities which govern our lives have been removed, and as such we wouldn't be subject to the same degrading economic pressures.
This makes some sense to me, but maybe I've just been watching too much Star Trek.
I'm pessimistic about this type of technology because it isn't "you" that we are talking about; it's a copy of you; you still get to die, and I don't think that knowing a copy of your mind exists will be of any real comfort.
Exactly. It baffles me that even very smart people can't see this bug. If it can theoretically exist separately while you are alive, it can't be you.
For example, if You and Digital You (tm) were alive at the same time, I could put you in one room, and Digital You in another, and smash Digital You without You having any idea. You could live your whole life not knowing if Digital You was "alive."
Whatever your definition of me is, it seems like me dying should have an effect on me.
In "Altered Carbon", a character that has lived for hundreds of years destroys an instance of his self in order to prevent the upload of a mind virus into a backup copy of his self. In doing so, he loses a few days of experience.
Is that situation utterly contrived because he destroyed his mind, or are you insisting on a limited definition of self?
(Let's set aside the part where there is mind replicating technology but no snapshots or version control)
The ability to see a bad side, and the inability to see the bright side are two different things.
Of course digital immortality is inestimably cool. There are so many amazing and obvious positives that we can even imagine on this side of the singularity.
However, if we only think of the positives, without considering the negatives, then we run the risk of stumbling blindly into a dystopia created by the few who did think of the negatives (and how to profit from them), or by optimists who failed to plan for a suboptimal outcome.
From another point of view, fiction about a perfect utopia is boring. You need some imperfection in order to provide the requisite tension to make a story.
BUT.. are people really so pessimistic about technology and the future that the main thing that comes to mind when they think of digital immortality is.. this?
Your virtual body can be anything you want. You can't die as long as your digital code is backed up somewhere.
If you can't see the bright side of that stuff, there is some kind of psychological issue.