Preventing A Transhumanist Infinite Loop

Yesterday I was talking with some of my friends about ideal/utopian worlds and came across a potential infinite loop problem. My ideal world was that of a transhumanist vision. Humans still look and even feel the same, but their insides are mechanical and computerized.

Possibly Non Necessary Information

This ascended humanity is able to live and colonize most worlds without too much concern as they are largely independent of their environment. They also do not need to terraform planets, as they can just alter their sensory inputs to make the planet look however they want to. They can live out their lives for as long as they desire, free from work as lesser robots and AI would perform all the manual labor necessary for them. Even if their new bodies decay, they can be brought back into a new one from a backup that is constantly being copied and stored on servers constructed wherever they go. They are still allowed to permanently kill themselves if they wish as well as work to their heart's content.

Necessary Information

Ascended humans have the option of leaving the real world entirely and can retreat into their own mind or on servers and live out life in a virtual reality. This last part, however, is where the potential problem occurs.

If for instance an ascended delved into their own mind, but decided for the sake of immersion to block out or even delete parts of their memory, they could end up going into an infinite loop. If they had immersed themselves into a world where a transhumanist utopia was also getting ready to be developed, they could end up doing the same thing over and over again infinitely, just with slight variations. Each iteration would lead to the creation of a new personality for the original person as each one would have grown up in a different environment and had different experiences.

I imagine that this would quickly begin to take a toll on the servers as even one person would consume a lot of data and computer space. So if one person or, worse, thousands or hundreds of thousands started to essentially reproduce asexually we would see the computers and servers become overloaded and run out of memory. I also doubt that the robotic servants would be able to keep up in creating the required space and computers necessary for these new personalities or people. I don't really know exactly, but if it caused too much overload it might even cause the servers to crash and result in the extinction of the ascended.

Even if the computer space was not a problem though, there's also the potential problem that instead of the personalities being separated and treated as separate individuals, they become one confused mess and drive the person insane. Thus leading to a group of unpredictable, psychotic, spacefaring androids.

Question

Regardless if you think a transhumanist utopia is possible or not, how do you avoid/prevent/fix this infinite loop in this transhumanist scenario?

Note: I would prefer it if free will was kept intact as much as possible.

posted almost 8 years ago

Devin‭

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