On managing personal identity

[Radivis (Michael Hrenka)]

@AlonzoTG

The thing is that so few people seem to be thinking seriously about how transhumanism will actually work that it’s frightening.

Yes, but maybe that’s a variable adjusted by the simulators to motivate people like us to become more active

@AlonzoTG

You know what? I’d love nothing more than to be slapped in the face with a thick ream of papers about all the subjects I’ve raised throughout my 25 year involvement with transhumanism and more that I haven’t thought of… At least I’d feel a little less lonely. You know, that there is another mind out there thinking of things too. =\

I think you might be interested in my current novel project called “Countersurge”. It’s mostly about AI and AI safety, but there are also other interesting topics, for example how collective intelligence or reputation incomes change the way society operates.

@AlonzoTG

For the sake of argument, lets say you go on a crime spree and shoot three people on the street. The first was a human, so you get one count of first degree murder. The second was an instance of an upload, the victim’s backup copy was pretty fresh and decided not to press charges. The third was a part of a cybernetic network that was able to make a partial recovery from the attack but still suffered significant data loss and loss of functionality and is really pissed.

I think in such cases we should distinguish between the damage to hardware and the amount of data lost. Hardware can be compensated for by its equivalent monetary value, as long as the hardware can actually be replaced. That’s why I think that the purely “material” damage is the smaller problem. The greater challenge is how to deal with the lost information or data. If it’s truly lost, there’s no certain way to judge the value of what was lost due to the offense. It might be possible to reconstruct the data approximately by guessing its possible content and checking it for consistency with clues distributed in the environment (for example recorded public behavior). The value of that information could be judged by the effort it would take to generate a comparable amount and quality of data. You could then multiply that effort with a certain factor, let’s say 10, to gauge the height of the compensation for that offense.

@AlonzoTG

The state (should) operate in the mode of protecting victims from perpetrators. Given the nature of the world within which we live, the only available mode of this protection is to punish perpetrators after the incident.

Deterrence is only one option. Other options are to prevent people from being able to harm others, by either restricting their access to instruments with which harm can be caused, or directly inhibiting their actions shortly before they are about to harm someone. Alternatively, people could invest more in personal security, wear bullet proof armor and helmets, carry effective weapons, fortify their homes, and make backups of their data (and mind). I’m not sure why you want to restrict the discussion to deterrence alone.

@AlonzoTG

Consider the case that you can have several bodies.

What problems do you see with such a setup? Anyway, I think the situation depends a lot on your ability (or lack thereof) of controlling multiple bodies at the same time. But even that consideration doesn’t change too much, I think.