Now there is an ironic typo/autocorrect, I think the word you where looking for is immortality, unless of course you are making a scathing criticism that the pursuit of self preservation for the purpose of interstellar travel is against the laws of morality.
Thanks for a chuckle.
I do think though that emulation of "specialized" hardware with generic hardware is a complex problem space. While it's now possible to recreate classic gaming systems with fpga's for example, some cases we are able to only offer an approximation. The computing power of the host exceeds the power of the emulated CPU by several orders of magnitude.
My thinking is to emulate wetware with hardware will require hardware several orders of magnitude more powerful than wetware and I suspect the wetware is already close the physical limitation of the universe for several key problem spaces.
Sure, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you're saying, and given all that, I still think it is the best chance.
#1: in the short term, the quantity of hardware doesn't matter. If you needed a full data center costing $10M per year, it would still be worth it for some people. The idea is to get into a host that is replaceable, and then you can work on making it smaller.
#2: in the short term, you don't need to run in real time. If you are just trying to survive until better tech comes along, running at 1% means the equivalent of 3.65 days per year: maybe enough to survive until hardware improves. Taking this to an extreme, 100 people could pool resources for protection and tech improvement while staying in deep storage and only running their minds very seldom.
Given the above two points, all that really matters to me is that I can find a way to upload my mind into binary data which I know can be simulated faithfully. All I need is upload, storage, and a recovery plan. If the recovery plan looks like it will take 1000 years, fine, I still prefer it to nothing. If I think there is a 1% chance of success over the next 1000 years for immortality, I believe I will do it.
#3: we know for a fact that the functionality of the brain/body is achievable in the space/power envelope of the brain/body. I could easily tolerate a 100x space and power increase. The human body is approximate 100 watts and 100 litres. So 100x is 10,000 watts and 10 cubic meters: 13 horsepower and the size of a compact car -- fine by me. I think I could survive immobile and incorporeal for 100 years with a good library, if, for example, I had to be anchored to the seabed somewhere and run off geothermal energy. The more you expand your lifespan, the more options open up. If you can run yourself at very slow speeds an immense amount of options open up.
For #2: why does your mind need to run in a simulation at 1% rather than just wait in cold storage until the technology allows for it to be run at 100%?
And then, what if I made the argument that because the universe will inevitably repeat itself again, it is technically its own form 'cold storage' that will one day awaken again to simulate you..?
This is how I've found a little peace with death. That given there is an infinite amount of time, why can't it happen again? It's already happened once...
So after I/we die, an unfathomable amount of time will pass in an instant. Our sun will expand and devour the Earth. Eventually the universe will collapse. But after a universe of universes have swirled around each other, being born and dying, one day - when the right conditions are met - we will awake again?
I think it begs a bigger question though. Should this life, should/does humanity deserve to be repeated infinitely? When you add up all of the pain and suffering and weigh it against the beauty, is it worth it? For now I think it is.
I would consider cold storage to be preferable, but running at a low speed might be necessary for self-defence and what essentially amounts to data verification, the ability to rebuild to a certain redundancy level.
In my view if time loops immutably I gain nothing: same program, same input, same result.
I fully expect to die and I think I am ready for it, but I'm going down fighting. In terms of abstract moral questions, ten years of Catholicism cured me of any curiosity I had for that sort of thing.
Now there is an ironic typo/autocorrect, I think the word you where looking for is immortality, unless of course you are making a scathing criticism that the pursuit of self preservation for the purpose of interstellar travel is against the laws of morality.
Thanks for a chuckle.
I do think though that emulation of "specialized" hardware with generic hardware is a complex problem space. While it's now possible to recreate classic gaming systems with fpga's for example, some cases we are able to only offer an approximation. The computing power of the host exceeds the power of the emulated CPU by several orders of magnitude. My thinking is to emulate wetware with hardware will require hardware several orders of magnitude more powerful than wetware and I suspect the wetware is already close the physical limitation of the universe for several key problem spaces.