I'm scared of a future in which uploading minds into computers and precisely simulating them becomes possible.
The concept of "the right to life" has been widely discussed.
I think there's an important right that all of us should also have - the right to die.
If I want to stop living, I should be able to stop living. Nobody should be able to force me to continue living (and possibly suffering).
When we're able to copy someone's mind exactly and save it in a computer, and then replicate it endlessly, we take away that person's right to die.
We enter the dark world shown in some episodes of Black Mirror (e.g. White Christmas or Black Museum) - where any person can hold a mini computer with a copy of someone else's mind where that someone is being constantly tortured. They can't even die. They are forced to suffer.
This possibility terrifies me to the point where I would consider killing myself (in a way that irrecoverably destroys my brain) just to prevent my mind from being copied.
The concept of "the right to life" has been widely discussed.
I think there's an important right that all of us should also have - the right to die. If I want to stop living, I should be able to stop living. Nobody should be able to force me to continue living (and possibly suffering).
When we're able to copy someone's mind exactly and save it in a computer, and then replicate it endlessly, we take away that person's right to die. We enter the dark world shown in some episodes of Black Mirror (e.g. White Christmas or Black Museum) - where any person can hold a mini computer with a copy of someone else's mind where that someone is being constantly tortured. They can't even die. They are forced to suffer.
This possibility terrifies me to the point where I would consider killing myself (in a way that irrecoverably destroys my brain) just to prevent my mind from being copied.