RE: Downloading Consciousness So You Can Live On Forever. Would You Want To? Conversation Starter!
I ask people the following question:
If a pill would exist that give you eternal life without the possibility to ever die whatever happens, would you take such a pill or not?
The response that I generally get: "No, I do not want to take such pill since I cannot bear the fact that I continuously loose loved ones". A good point, and I think it'll be hard indeed to over and over loose people you got really attacted to.
Personally, I do not have a 100% answer myself. Being immortal, and never have to chance to step out of immortality, is something that is hard to imagine. I can imagine at some point in time, I do not want to live anymore, maybe that is already after 200 years, maybe after 1.000 years or even 10.000 years, who knows. I don't!
But THE argument, for me, to consider taking such pill is to be able to experience the complete transition of todays world into a full robotised world with AI passed singularity and see with my own eyes and experience with my own mind IF humans were able to survive; If humans were able to take the benefits of an AI operated world; If humans were able to find absolute happiness.
Coming back to your question, if I would choose for immortality by the ability to download my consciousness (mind) and plant it into a robot, my answer is "YES" under the assumption that when my mind is downloadable and uploadable, my mind is also deletable, hence my life can be ended at some point in time, preferably (maybe even required) decided by my own mind.
I would definitely take the pill! For the losing loved ones, yes, it would be difficult, but love in the physical state isn't forever, if it was, it wouldn't be so special. So I would ache at the loss of loved ones, but find joy in what once was.
I'm a believe in a spirit reincarnating itself into another person, So It'd be a mission to find past loved ones, in their new body.
I would like to believe, if this does come about in the future, that we would have the ability to delete our consciousness, decided by our own mind. If not, that's when things get tricky.
It is a real possibility that this can actually become the situation. That we are not able to decide ourself. That we may be backup all the time into media that are not in our control, maybe they are in the control of AI? Maybe because copies of our mind are living in Blockchains? Since these are real possibilities, I have no conclusive answer. But I stick to my statement in previous message: IF I can control myself when I should be deleted forever, than I go for the dl/up thing. The pill is another thing though, unless we can also dl/ul/dl minds so that through that mechanism I can end my mind.