Welcome to Life

[Lorizael]

That sounds about right. However, you can do some Nacirema-style squinting to make modern civilization look like that (sans the tech) as compared to ancient civilization or hunter-gatherers. So I'd still want to be uploaded after death, even if it meant an ad-funded life. The only part I'd seriously object to is the thought scrubbing.

[Ben Kenobi]

It would be a horrifying existence. Do not want. We assume that the body means nothing and that the mind is the only important part. We're going to discover in a terrifying way that we're wrong about it - and we won't be able to do anything about it.

[Traianvs]

Ruined by lawyers only? Sounds more like it's ruined by unadulterated capitalism and 20th century IP bigotry.

OTOH I await with much anticipation an open source libre P2P based system. But when I really come to think of it actually, when I'm dead I'd rather just remain dead.

[Jon Miller]

Considering all of the scientific evidence that things like our gut biome effect our brain, I think that the idea of uploaded our minds to a digital computer is a little outdated.

JM
(I Didn't watch, sorry Lorizael)

[Elok]

As all legal precedents are based on actual warm bodies being people--and such a project would be prohibitively resource-intensive--I doubt it would take off even if possible. My guess is that the first digital immortality startup, after the manner of startups, would find its project vastly more expensive than it initially anticipated. Most expensive asset to be sold off: lots and lots and lots of computer storage legally indistinguishable from any other hunks of silicon. A few dozen early-adopter millionaires getting their digital souls wiped, and the hardware auctioned off for peanuts, should kill enthusiasm for such projects nicely.

[Aeson]

If we can transfer consciousness we must be able to duplicate it. So at the very least maintain your meat sack consciousness until it can verify that it is actually experiencing the computer reality. Don't trust the computer, as it will of course think the transfer worked even if it didn't.

[ColdWizard]

I'm pretty sure I'm already living Tier 2. I'd be more sure if there were billboards in the area.

[Proteus_MST]

"Delete of copyrighted works" (or paying 18k / month to keep the memories)

If this includes my memories of movies, music and maybe even scientific books, I would see a big problem in there.
Lots of memories contain music ... and a lot of my knowledge comes from scientific books, so, to erase it, would delete a significant part of me

[onodera]

Considering all of the scientific evidence that things like our gut biome effect our brain, I think that the idea of uploaded our minds to a digital computer is a little outdated.

JM
(I Didn't watch, sorry Lorizael)

Well, they would have to simulate your gut flora and various glands.

[Elok]

Problem: our animal lives inevitably wear out and fall prey to sickness and death.

Solution: perfectly (or almost perfectly) simulate our animal lives using a computer, thereby vastly increasing both the complexity of the process and the resources consumed. The resultant simulacrum will be far more durable and reliable, allowing eternal life.

???

Seriously, how does multiplying the possible points of failure make a process more robust?

[Lorizael]

Meh, it's just a piece of technology. Of course it'll be buggy and prone to catastrophic failure at first. Then, eventually, it won't be. Or the bugs'll be manageable, at least.

No, the real problem with uploading is not that it might be (a) really hard to pull off at all and/or (b) prone to failure/possibly horrifying; the real problem is that you're dead and a copy of you is alive. That's why I support a slow, smooth transition from biological to electronic components, ensuring that the separate instances of my consciousness are, in fact, contiguous.

[giblets]

What's the point in advertising to dead people living in a simulation who have no money?

[Lorizael]

Maybe you can get a simulated job.

[giblets]

Or make a copy of yourself to do the work for you

[Elok]

You're seriously underestimating the complexity of such a project. It would involve at least two nested layers of simulation to actually replicate human experience; first it would need to have a very accurate simulation of physical reality, then it would need to have a simulation within that one, obeying its rules, to simulate the processes of a human body. Except the whole point of this is that a human body breaks down, so you'd need a simulation of biology with all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks. So you'd have to essentially construct a workable, convincing physical utopia to simulate, without straying so far from reality as to make the simulated person effectively not him/herself. Then get enough hardware to actually simulate it.

In place of a fallible human body, you have a rejiggered simulation of a human body, inside a rejiggered simulation of a world, running on a very complicated and energy-sucking set of electronics. Risking two different kinds of software failure, plus hardware failure, all dependent on a set of economic factors extrinsic to the world you're inventing. Which brings up the difficulty of making it interesting; you can either make the world completely self-contained and therefore both boring and irrelevant, or allow interface with actual messy reality and introduce yet another potentially catastrophic source of destabilization. How do you keep people from dumping viruses into your virtual playground?