[MURG] fixing defects (was off-topic posts)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 08:25:31AM -0400, Ed Minchau wrote:

> For anything beyond trivially fixable defects, I think
> this would be orders of magnitude more difficult than
> mind uploading.  

I think whole body + environment emulation is ridiculously complicated. It is
far easier to modify the execution image, or modulate the execution. Of
course, whole-body emulation is a great enabler for diagnosis and
modification.

Drugs and lesions are terribly crude tools in comparison.
 
> Also, what is a "defect"?  Things like schizophrenia,
> manic/depression, and any number of other disorders
> must have some evolutionary advantage or they would
> have been selected out of the gene pool long ago.

No, not necessarily. Anything manifesting itself well past reproduction age
is selection-neutral (e.g. Chorea Huntington).
 
> Many such defects must be two sides of the same coin,
> conferring some advantage in one area while proving a
> disadvantage in another.

No arguing with that.
 
> Suppose for a moment that John Nash was uploaded, and
> his schizophrenia removed... would he still be the
> same person?  Would he still grasp mathematics in the
> same way?

That's solely for him to decide, isn't it?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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