On 10/27/06, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(...)
2. What is human?
- If you make an exact copy of a human and kill the original, is it murder?
- What if you copy only the brain and put it in a different body?
- What if you put the copy in a robot body?
- What if you copy only the information in the brain and run it in a simulation?
- What if you put the memory in archival storage but don't otherwise use it?
All of them are human-equivalent to me, in an ethical sense. The last
case is equivalent to suspended animation.
I would like to point to what may be a fifth case described by David
Brin in his fantastic "Kiln People"
(http://www.amazon.com/Kiln-People-Books-David-Brin/dp/B0000DK4HM/sr=8-1/qid=1162212357/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7205949-4618306?ie=UTF8&s=books).
There people have the technology to produce "golems" - replicas of
themselves made of nano-modified clay (!), which carry the same
memories and thoughts of the original, but are disposable: due to
chemical energy storage limitations, they typically last for just one
day. In the end of the day they begin to dissolve and their only
chance of "survival" is to upload their memories back to the
long-lasting original. In fact biological people live their lives in
parallel, creating several golems in the morning (one for going to the
supermarket, one for going to the office, etc, while the original
dedicates himself to leisure time) and downloading them in the
evening.
Occasionally of course some golems are destroyed (either by accident
or "murder") before uploading to the original. What are the ethical
implications of that?
- What if you only copy part of the memory? How much do you need?
- What if you copy none of it, but reconstruct a plausible substitute based on
what you know about the person?
(...)
I think that those are questions of intellectual property and
plagiarism already extensively debated in the world of today. ;-)
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