> it's creepy.
It's awesome.
People's ick around bodies, which are machines, have always held us back.
It wasn't until we started cutting them open that modern medicine was developed.
We might have brain uploads already had we not been so averse to sticking brains with electrodes.
I'll go further: had we not been so scared of cloning, we'd probably have cured cancer and every major ailment if we'd begun cloning monoclonal human bodies in labs. Engineered out the antigens and did whole head transplants. You could grow them without consciousness or deencephalize them, rapidly grow them in factories, and have new blood / tissue / organ / body donors for everyone.
New young bodies means no more cancer, no more cardiac or pulmonary age. It's just brain diseases left as the final frontier once we cross that gap. And if we have bodies as computers and labs, we'd probably make quick work on that too.
Too tired to lay out the case / refute, so past discussions:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I don't think anyone objects to curing cancer and better figuring out how our bodies work, but getting into conciousness/ mind uploads/ simulated humans is another can of worms ethically speaking. I'm assuming you've already read the fantastic story about Lena by qntm [1], if not, enjoy some existensial dread.
[1] https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
Sounds like a high tech hell.
High tech hell is reversing the light cone, pulling everyone who ever lived throughout history back into consciousness by simulating them at the neurotransmitter level, and then forcing them into actual hell / torture simulators with no way to die. All without consent, mind you.
That's also sci-fi. I hope.
What I described before - using clonal technology to solve nearly every disease - is a medical miracle that will vastly improve the state of people's lives throughout the world.
The two scenarios come in a package though. If you make one possible, the other one comes for free.
The same technology can also be used to force people to live with bodies engineered to make their existence a living hell. Similar things can be done with brain uploads.