I had an on-camera conversation recently with a filmmaker who is putting together a documentary about how evolving technologies might, in the long term, change the human condition. He was particularly interested in the sorts of conjectural views that center around everybody uploading their minds into a computer.
As the discussion evolved, it became pretty clear that from his perspective, I represent the relatively staid voice of old-fashioned humanism. In fact, I am not really interested in those sorts of questions, and I consider them a distraction.
Of course I understand why people are so fascinated by these possibilities. We all have a strong instinct to want to not die, and the idea of uploading yourself into the Cloud, and thereby becoming some sort of immortal being, can be very compelling.
When I told him that I wasn’t really interested in those sorts of conjectures, he was surprised. “Wouldn’t you want to live forever,” he asked, “if you had the chance?”
I told thim that I thought he may be missing the point. Sure, if you lived forever there would be many things to reconsider. But that’s not the important question, is it?
“What’s the important question?” he asked.
The most essential quality of the self, I suggested, is not our mortality, but rather our uniqueness.
“If you were to meet another you,” I asked him, “or ten thousand other versions of you, which one is you? For example, if for some reason only one of you could survive, which of you should get to live?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer for that.