Gizmodo on mind uploading, featuring Anders Sandberg

[Drashner1]

Technically they're not wrong, in that an uploaded copy of your mind would indeed cease to be human, as it's now a sophont computer program rather than a sophont animal. But it's still a person, just not a human person.

Agreed that an upload would be a person and that they would no longer be a biological human. However, the definition of 'human' is something of a moving target. Various groups have been deemed 'inhuman' by other groups throughout history. This has led me to generally find the term distasteful, along with other imprecise and often manipulated concepts like 'liberty' and 'freedom'.

I find the implication that you don't believe in the possibility of doing evil rather disturbing. Presumably it's absolute moral standards you don't think exist, not that there's no such thing as wrongdoing? If there's anything I've learned here, it's that we tend to use the same words to mean very different things.

In my view the concepts 'good', 'evil', 'right', and 'wrong' have the same level of imaginary (and mostly worthless) reality as the concept of 'morality'. If by 'absolute moral standards' you mean the idea that there is some cosmic absolute set of rules for how people should live and what is and isn't 'good' or the like, then you're correct - I don't believe in that either.

Out of curiosity - Can you prove that any particular action is objectively 'good' or 'evil'?

As to whether or not 'wrongdoing' is a real thing - When a person is presented with the actions of another person they will often have an opinion about them, either positive or negative. They will tend to characterize the things they feel positive about as 'good' or 'right' and the things they feel negative about as 'wrong' or 'evil'. If a large percentage or the majority of the people in a society agree that particular actions make them feel positive, then they will probably characterize those actions as good and structure their laws accordingly - if they agree that the actions make them feel negative, they will probably characterize those actions as 'bad' and structure their laws accordingly. None of this tells us anything substantive about the nature of the actions themselves or whether or not they have/will have a positive or negative impact on the society in any objective sense. And none of it matters in the slightest to the universe in any objective sense.

The idea that altering the human condition is inherently some kind of crime against nature is quite laughable, though.

Agreed.

Todd