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[Trekkin]

In a shiny new silicon body, you dont need FTL to go to another planet.

Technically you don't need FTL to go to another planet while still a rotting sack of meat, provided you can go fast enough for time dilation to reduce your apparent trip time to something you can accept.

Then again, you presumably meant going the slow way and simply assuming we can build a silicon brain that will still function after however many decades of exposure to space and its associated radiation with no capacity to recover from unforeseen failures, to say nothing of the starship that's to carry it around. I'm sure you're aware of the numbers for Project Longshot: even going to Alpha Centauri takes a century at 4.5% c. (And no, this isn't Breakthrough Starshot. This one slows down.) We don't know how to build electronics that can do that with any confidence, frankly.

Manned subluminal interstellar travel, absent a whole slate of key technologies well beyond our present capacity even to envision in any detail, is either a very expensive way of dying in space of mechanical failure, or an even more incredibly expensive way of dying in space from shielding failure. That's not to say I'm opposed to its proponents trying, mind you.

[wierd]

The shiny silicon body does not need oxygen, food, water, or large crew quarters.

This means the same form-factor starship (Effective length, width, and mass) can have a very beefy superstructure, and lots of heavy shielding (all the mass you would devote to having food, water, sanitation, and atmosphere reprocessing can all be shielding instead.)  Give it enough hydrogen-rich shielding material, and even cosmic "OH MY GOD" particles can be effectively prevented from reaching the main computer, where your consciousness lives.

At that point, it is "Do I have enough fuel to power my data core that long, will my ship's exterior suffer from radiation embrittlement, and will I go crazy from deep space with nothing to do for centuries at a time?"  rather than the normal questions.

As for radiation hardened electronics, we DO in fact know how to make these. The deal is that they cannot be made to also be "High speed", or "Low energy/High Efficiency."  They have very thick layers in the lithography process, have many redundant drainage gates and redundant standby logic gates in the design, and several other things.  They are indeed NOT magic bullets though, and DO fail under sustained, heavy radiation exposure. (So, prevent the heavy exposure.)  Combine radiation hardened electronics, with a slow processing speed, and VERY aggressive shielding, and you have the same apparent effect to the consciousness as time dialation, as seen from point of view of that consciousness. (At high velocities, every particle you encounter on your way to destination is effectively a direct impact with a high energy cosmic ray. Remember that. To try anything at very high speeds, you need a redunculous amount of forward facing shielding. Either "Slow, with slow hardware, and lots of shielding" or "Very fast on organic hardware, with lots of shielding" still requires lots of shielding, and in both cases, it seems as if less time has passed than has actually passed.)

[Trekkin]

At that point, it is "Do I have enough fuel to power my data core that long, will my ship's exterior suffer from radiation embrittlement, and will I go crazy from deep space with nothing to do for centuries at a time?"  rather than the normal questions.

"The normal questions" apparently not including the critical three: how do we shield the deceleration engine and fuel required to slow from our intended transit velocity to orbital velocity from radiation and particle bombardment for our expected trip time, how do we ensure that engine works for the last third of the trip, and how do we accelerate all the mass required for all of that up to our transit velocity in the first place? Making the third problem easier to solve makes the first harder, and vice versa, and none of our present solutions to any of them are compatible with our solutions for the other two.

Yes, it is easier in an absolute sense to send a computer to a distant star than a living human. We still cannot do either -- and if you're seriously going to claim that the relative mass of the two and their requisite support structures relative to their present usefulness at the other end are anything like the main reason why, I'd be very interested to know the payload mass fraction of the system you're envisioning.

[SalmonGod]

The whole mind upload thing is a sketchy idea, anyway.  The only way it succeeds in its goal unarguably is if the only goal is for the end product to sincerely believe that it's you.

[JoshuaFH]

Well, I suppose the idea of consciousness isn't the benefit to the person/thing that is actually experiencing the the consciousness, but rather to it's surroundings. So the idea of advanced AI consciousness is perhaps more beneficial in the sense that it allows any intelligence at all to resist the increasing entropy of the universe. Though, in the short term, the actual benefit is not just simpler space flight, but also shorter space flight, in that a voyage can conceivable head to planets that would be uninhabitable to humans, but OK for machines, allowing for a wider selection of 'habitable' planets, and therefore a better likelihood of finding one that is nearby and not requiring insane amounts of shielding or lightspeed technology, or crazy fuel tech, or whatever.

Though I feel I'm talking way out of my depth here.

[TD1]

And then the problems associating with copy-pasting yourself.

[Hanslanda]

I had a massive bloody nose last night. My pillow looks like an exhibit in a murder trial. I woke up in a pool of blood with dried blood all down the right side of my face and all over both hands.

And I was still leaking so I stuffed the old standby of rolled up TP in my nose. Now I'll have big gobs of dried and semi-coagulated blood every time I sniffle, hawk, or sneeze for the rest of the day.

[JoshuaFH]

And then the problems associating with copy-pasting yourself.

I suppose there's some existential horror in it, but copypasting yourself, or rather a humanlike AI copypasting itself, would be a very beneficial thing I imagine. Suppose the AI needs to examine a problem from many different angles, it can copy paste itself and redundantly work on the problem, then they can all re-conglomerate into one AI, amassing all the simulated thinking and experiencing back into one Intelligence. Or other pragmatic functions like storing a backup of itself, or copying itself to send one copy of itself into it's own vessel, with the hope of meeting back up at some point and sharing their individual experiences. When you consider individuality to be a restraint rather than a benefit, it makes sense.

[Rolan7]

I'm sure everyone has considered at some point "Would I make out with my replica?"
I just took a moment to think about how that relationship might actually go.  Like, all the bad parts of a co-dependent enabler relationship, magnified since there'd be no filter at all.  Yet the positive reinforcement and cooperation could be so good too!  I guess it might lead the pair to differentiate themself (like I think many identical twins do), but that sounds super uncanny-valley:  Someone exactly like you in body and mind, but with a couple of subtle differences.  Brr.

Anyway, mind-upload would be amazing for spaceflight because you don't even need to run all the time.  As a simulation running on computers, you slow or stop computation in a way the brain (mostly) doesn't support, heh.  So the trip could be over in a few minutes, depending on how much you're "waking up" to check on situations.

And it's terrifying because you're (more) vulnerable to a I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream scenario.  Clinically immortal, and potentially being run at an accelerated rate (assuming amazing sci-fi processors, of course).  Why would anyone do such a thing?  Well, you're not a person, you're just a simulation of a person.  Just think of all the normally-horrific experiments we could perform on an accurate simulation of a brain.  An "uploaded mind" is literally just a simulation, after all, and we already run ghastly sims in order to advance medical technology and save lives.  A simulation can react to pain, but why would it be able to feel?

I'm of the opinion that simulations don't have consciousness in any meaningful way, but it's still disturbing to consider.

[SalmonGod]

Well, I suppose the idea of consciousness isn't the benefit to the person/thing that is actually experiencing the the consciousness, but rather to it's surroundings. So the idea of advanced AI consciousness is perhaps more beneficial in the sense that it allows any intelligence at all to resist the increasing entropy of the universe. Though, in the short term, the actual benefit is not just simpler space flight, but also shorter space flight, in that a voyage can conceivable head to planets that would be uninhabitable to humans, but OK for machines, allowing for a wider selection of 'habitable' planets, and therefore a better likelihood of finding one that is nearby and not requiring insane amounts of shielding or lightspeed technology, or crazy fuel tech, or whatever.

Though I feel I'm talking way out of my depth here.

The whole universe is basically made of information, so I'm ok with seeing my identity as the same.  My mind is software running on a piece of hardware that is my body.  But there's still no getting around a certain absolute notion of identity that can be lost.  Your current continuity of experience is a unique instance of you.  There's you as the set of information that comprises the software that is your mind, and there's you as the subjective experience sustained by the operation of that software.  If that continuity is broken in the process of backing up your mind like a save file to be copied, then that instance of you is gone, and the next is a copy.  The longer I dwell on this, the more comfortable I am with saying that it's still you.  Just not in an absolute sense.  I'd prefer to retain that absolute original identity as long as possible, but it will have to be given up one day.  At that point, I don't think there's anything wrong with loading up that save file on new hardware so that the program that is me can keep running.

[Trekkin]

Arguably you break that continuity of experience every time you sleep, though, so it's not like being copied or restored from backup would be a wholly unparalleled experience; we at least have grounds to hope that the experience would be less jarring than its existential ramifications would imply.

[SalmonGod]

It's not fully broken by sleep.  More like temporarily transitioned to an alternate state.  Near death experiences would be a better analogy.  But even then, presumably people whose bodies shut down don't come back from their brain activity 100% shutting down.  Although a quick google found at least one reported case of someone reporting an NDE while flat on a brainwave monitor.  I'm guessing there's still brain activity going on that such a monitor (especially one from the early 90's) just doesn't pick up.

Basically, you as a program are still running, so long as there's still brain activity, imo, even if you are not consciously experiencing anything.

[JoshuaFH]

Well, I suppose the idea of consciousness isn't the benefit to the person/thing that is actually experiencing the the consciousness, but rather to it's surroundings. So the idea of advanced AI consciousness is perhaps more beneficial in the sense that it allows any intelligence at all to resist the increasing entropy of the universe. Though, in the short term, the actual benefit is not just simpler space flight, but also shorter space flight, in that a voyage can conceivable head to planets that would be uninhabitable to humans, but OK for machines, allowing for a wider selection of 'habitable' planets, and therefore a better likelihood of finding one that is nearby and not requiring insane amounts of shielding or lightspeed technology, or crazy fuel tech, or whatever.

Though I feel I'm talking way out of my depth here.

The whole universe is basically made of information, so I'm ok with seeing my identity as the same.  My mind is software running on a piece of hardware that is my body.  But there's still no getting around a certain absolute notion of identity that can be lost.  Your current continuity of experience is a unique instance of you.  There's you as the set of information that comprises the software that is your mind, and there's you as the subjective experience sustained by the operation of that software.  If that continuity is broken in the process of backing up your mind like a save file to be copied, then that instance of you is gone, and the next is a copy.  The longer I dwell on this, the more comfortable I am with saying that it's still you.  Just not in an absolute sense.  I'd prefer to retain that absolute original identity as long as possible, but it will have to be given up one day.  At that point, I don't think there's anything wrong with loading up that save file on new hardware so that the program that is me can keep running.

You know, this is just my opinion, but using that kind of technology to preserve the consciousness of an individual seems like a waste of such highly advanced tech, and honestly perhaps harmful towards its practical uses. If the AI of the person is being used so they can continuously perform a task (like piloting a spacecraft) that a normal human can't be expected to do, that's great, but if it's simply being used to assuage a person's existential fear of dying, that seems to be an abuse of the tech towards a pointless end. Kinda reminds me of the end of the game Soma, if you've played that.

Spoiler: Soma Spoilers (click to show/hide)

At the end of the game, you've been someone's AI that has been autonomously piloting a robot suit for the whole game, but you're at the bottom of the ocean and Earth is fucked and the only 'escape' is to upload your consciousness into a space pod that's set to get launched from Earth. You do so, and right when the upload finishes... nothing happens! Your character is justifiably like "WTF Why am I still here?" and your sidekick is like "No stupid, you just made a copy of yourself! You're still going to die here, but your copy gets to live on!"

It was the best blue balls ending to a game I've ever seen.

I guess you could use it so that your living family can always stay in touch with you, decades and centuries after you die your descendants can talk to their predecessors who all upload their consciousness into the big family harddrive right before they die. But again, that's for the benefit of people of the people still living, wanting to extend your "life" via vicarious digital doppelganger seems like an over-appraisal of one's own life and the experience of living. Even for the life of your Digi-doppleganger, what value is his life if it's just a bunch of circuits firing off endlessly in a simulated dreamscape?

I guess you could do cool stuff though, like upload your consciousness into a computer at each stage of your life, so you can always load up the save file and then 'talk' to your 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and so on yr old 'yous' and do an objective comparison of yourself as you get older, like a nostalgia machine.

[scourge728]

Personally, I'm terrified of dying and hope any of the possible ways to live forever pan out in my lifetime

[Hanslanda]

Personally, I'm terrified of dying and hope any of the possible ways to live forever pan out in my lifetime

Everyone fears death. Why do you think religion is a thing? It's the first terror management tool. Personally I wouldn't choose immortality if given the chance because it's basically saying, "I'd rather die violently than from senescence."