How to Blend (Digital) Minds

In a previous question, I asked about whether a market for uploaded minds could exist. The overwhelming consensus of the answers was that it would pose astonishing ethical challenges and be radically disruptive of the present-day economy (why hire a mediocre physicist when you can have a mind-clone of Steven Hawking doing your bidding?), potentially leading to widespread unemployment among the flesh-bound remaining humans.

Now one of the problems with mind-clones is that they might not be willing to serve your goals (the 1000 Hawking mind-clones might have ethical problems with your dastardly plan to take over the world, um, severely reducing labor productivity).

So you decided that you want to blend several minds - one that is really good at math and physics, for instance, with another mind that is really good at unquestioningly taking orders and yet a third that has unlimited devotion to your cause (say an upload of yourself).

If that's even possible, how would it work? I've envisioned several possible pathways already, but I am hoping WB can tell me if they're far-fetched or not, of if other ways would work better:

• Easy Plug and Play: Library modules for themes : a library for physics skills, another for fanatical devotion, etc. You pick and choose.
• Hard Plug and Play: Library modules for physical areas of the brain - Broca centers, a bunch for the multitude of vision processing centers, 20 for various pre-frontal cortex areas, etc.
• Emulators All the Way Down: Integrating libraries from multiple minds is only possible after tediously constructing "translation tables" from one holistic mind-representation to another, effectively insulating the modules and changing the outputs from one module to another via translation.
• Grand Mal Seizure: No libraries are possible, trying to blend various minds leads to insanity, and any work you do must be squeezed in the few hours of sanity before the decay.
• Something else altogether ?

Note that the assumptions from the previous questions hold, i.e. no legal status for uploads ("just software"), nondestructive uploads possible and accurate, fully immersive Virtual Reality is mature tech and an easy way to interact w/ uploads. See the linked question and replies for more info.

posted about 8 years ago

Serban Tanasa‭

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