Maybe, but I doubt it. Many people objected to heart transplants... but only briefly, because when it came right down to it, those given the choice preferred not to die. Uploading will be the same thing — there will be arguments and debates and opposition right up to the point where it is available; and then, people facing the choice will overwhelmingly ignore all that and choose not to die. (And the few Luddites who do prefer death to uploading will get their wish sooner or later — a self-correcting problem if there ever was one.)Jeff Peachman wrote:But if he is right about it being feasible, then I'm having trouble accepting that 'the masses' will allow the singularity to happen as he imagines it. If almost half the country is against abortion today, imagine the outcry over mind uploading!
Well, most thinkers about the Singularity reason that, by its very nature, it happens so quickly that most people don't even realize it's imminent until it's already happened. Even ignoring the possibility of superhuman AI, already progress is made by billions of small advances in hundreds of different fields, such that nobody has a complete picture of how it all adds up (though this is what futurists attempt). And as you approach the Singularity, this total progress advances faster and faster, until things are changing so quickly that you can't predict what tomorrow will bring. (Though there are alternative visions of how it might play out, as nicely explored in a talk by Vernor Vinge.)This is a level of future shock that is going to blow people away. I don't think society will let it happen that quickly.
But even if many people find that disturbing, how are they going to stop it? Stop what, exactly? There won't be any one lab in particular causing the Singularity; it'll just be labs and universities and business going about their daily work as they've always done, just getting better and better at it (again as they always have). Who are you going to point to and say "stop that?"
Even mind uploading will not be a sudden event — it'll be a series of quite reasonable steps (see next post), until it can be applied to save the terminally ill or injured. And at that point, if someone were to say, "hey, I object to that procedure, I think you should die instead" — well, you can imagine how that will be received.
Best,
- Joe