So a prediction exists, with some evidence towards it, that it's possible to do computation that doesn't consume negentropy?
Well, I'll grant you one thing: not quite sure what it is you're computing, but assuming your plan works, that was a surprisingly short path to conserving the universe's resources until your computational substrate suffers proton decay.
I still have only hunches of what computation has to do with actual lives. Please, explain your Evil Plan out loud.
At least you're openly admitting that's your plan. So, you know, we can drag you behind the chemical sheds and shoot you for Criminally Irresponsible Use of Applied Phlebotinum.
In others words make a domesday robot that remembers people before it kills them.
As they die, some will take solace in a religious belief that numbers in the machine represent everything they were and ever will be. Others will just die.
In his defense, if you're dying anyway, you might as well leave a "ghost" behind. The ghost might not be you, and it will certainly have some psychological issues to deal with due to knowing that it's one ontological level "down" from a real, flesh-and-blood person, but you were going to die anyway.
The question is not really whether such and such implementation is best. The question is, does changing implementation preserves subjective identity?
I bet many people here would not doubt the moral value of the emulation of a human (feelings and such are simulated to the point of being real), but would highly doubt that it would be, well, the "same" person as the original.
I assume that ontological security matters. If I know my consciousness runs on meat, I know that I have my own personal substrate. If I know I'm in the Matrix, I know that whoever has `root` access can alter or deceive me as they please.
The one thing nobody ever specifies about these crazy schemes, which would otherwise be a great way for humanity to get the hell off of Earth and leave the natural ecosystem to itself in our absence, is who will be root, and how he's going to forcibly round up everyone who doesn't like your crazy futurist take-over-everyone's-minds scheme. Hell, what's going to stop him from rampaging across the real Earth and universe, destroying everything in sight, while everyone else fucks around having fun in VR?
I'm really wondering why this nasty, insane idea has been cropping up more frequently lately in geek circles.
And that's not even starting into the sheer ludicrousness of claiming people's consciousness is pure software when we know that all kinds of enzymes and hormones affect our personalities!
Well, I'll grant you one thing: not quite sure what it is you're computing, but assuming your plan works, that was a surprisingly short path to conserving the universe's resources until your computational substrate suffers proton decay.
I still have only hunches of what computation has to do with actual lives. Please, explain your Evil Plan out loud.