I'd support qup's comment, there's too many good books in the world to drudge your way through a book that doesn't click :)

The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ

It is a great intersection of copyright maximalism and the dangers of making general purpose AIs without proper care in developing their goal function.

"EctoLife: The World’s First Artificial Womb Facility"

It reminded me of Keiichi Masuda's "Hyper Reality":

https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs

That video is fantastic. I hope it comes.

Oh jeez, I see why people were upset. The video makes a stupid moral argument about genetic engineering. Maybe that will be an issue someday, but the tech isn’t there; we just want babies.

Still feels quite valid and the future we're heading towards.

dd for a human amirite? Maybe one atom at a time, but you'd have to make sure you get all the bacteria that helps control your personality as well right?[1] Then you need to simulate the changes in that system, based on how you interact with the rest of a virtual world, including relationships with other people[2], so you'd have to have an accurate copy of that too. What do you do if your virtual self needs to interact with a still living, breathing human? How do you simulate the changes to your micro-biome that occur there? How do you simulate what your copied human "eats" and how it processes that food?[3] Having a copy of all your atoms is a start but you also need to simulate all of those processes accurately if you want it to be truly "you."

Then what you end up with is -- assuming we know everything that makes up a human being and how it behaves -- a perfect copy of you along with a perfect copy of your world.

[1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rul...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9

[3] http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/interme...

There is no 'you' - just an unbroken chain of chemical interactions stretching back to the first self-replicating molecule. 'You' is a concept that the pattern replicating event predictor engine that evolved to live in your skull is desperately clinging to. It has no real physical basis.

I probably should have just said that IMO we humans don't know the beginning of what consciousness is.

A fascinating and complex concept there.

In contrast, animals don't seem to go through the same "mourning" process (in a way that we would recognize).

So the sense of "you" persists, yes, but it's a foundational change to the sense of "self" and it's definitely affected by amputation.

Who would? Me? I'm dead at this point.

'You' is indeed a pretty complex concept. It's one of those things that works as long as you don't squint too hard at it, but if you do start to think through some of the cracks in the idea you quickly reach a point where the only reasonable response is existential horror.

Better than current reality, where "no" is shoved on your throat and most people insist you better be grateful about it

You should reconsider that statement. I mean, this is literally "at gun point" kind of situation.

It's literally a button that lets things go the way so many people claim to be necessary and proper. They can press it if they think the alternative is so dreadful

In a world where immortality is a given, being able to off yourself is one of the most important things an individual should have a right to do

You could compare the process to how the cells of your body (in particular your brain) eventually all get replaced, yet the stream of consciousness flows uninterrupted through a number of these replacements.

Now, the physical consciousness may wish to live a separate life instead of fully "passing over" or ceasing to exist eventually (i.e. to die). But who will be considered "you" from that point? The physical "you" or the virtual "you"? Can the virtual "you" force the physical "you" to die?

I expect it would. Much of my experience has to do with the "hardware" (so to speak) of my body. It's difficult to imagine what it would be like if my brain was mechanical (physics-based) instead of biological (chemistry-based), for example. Abstract thought seems like the only thing that even could be the same.

(Also, continence -> consciousness. I'm literally pissing myself over that. :D)

I'm not a physicist, as you can guess, just a layman pondering.

PS: My god I have always known writing about this stuff is hard because language is inadequate for recursive thoughts, but I never thought I would see a day when it will practically affect my daily discourse. These were discussions I usually had under the influence of specific substances.

I’ve always thought the obvious result is that both the physical and the digital consciousness would wake up. Physical you would have some convincing personal experience of “I did not experience a transfer”, meanwhile digital you would have some equally convincing personal experience of “I did experience a transfer”.

> the real organic you

It’s part of the concept that there is no “real” you; they are both equally real.

Edit: in fact, “The Upload” almost seems like it came directly from this short.

It’s a disaster that these things exist quite as long as they do

Gung fgbel vf zber bs n serr sbe nyy, jurer crbcyr qb nalguvat naq rirelguvat gb na hcybnqrq uhzna.

     How do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.

The book calls this "false memories", where we call it "hallucinations"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload_(TV_series)