Recenently one of you left a comment on my Substack about how I once talked about the concept of uploading your consciousness to the cloud.
He was saying that I was for this concept and that he was not, and I corrected him, saying that I wasn’t for uploading my consciousness to the cloud as a mechanism to live forever.
So let me clarify that first, then I’ll give you details as to why this actually is a good idea, or could be.
Many people, Scott Adams among them, think that uploading your consciousness to the cloud, once we have the technological ability to do this, is a great idea because then you can be immortal and live forever.
At some point, you could even download your consciousness into some kind of young robot body that would look and feel human, and so on.
The problem is that this is completely incorrect.
If you upload your “consciousness” to the cloud, that’s not your consciousness. That’s just a copy of your mind. It’s not you. You’re still sitting in your limited human body.
If you upload this copy to the cloud and then you die, you still die. It didn’t help you at all.
All it does is make your loved ones feel a little better that they can still have Zoom calls with your cyber-copy, and that’s great for them, but it doesn’t help YOU. You’re still dead, rotting in your grave.
So this could be a method for legacy, but it’s not a method for immortality in any way whatsoever.
I strongly believe that your consciousness can’t be separated from your physical brain. Otherwise, explain to me scientifically how that would be done.
See? You can’t. There you go.
Once your brain dies, your life is over, period, regardless of how many back-up copies you made elsewhere, and there is no way around this because you can’t separate consciousness from the brain.
So uploading your consciousness to the cloud to achieve immortality is a stupid idea and won’t work.
However, let’s switch gears and talk about why uploading a copy of your mind (not your consciousness!) to the cloud could be a great idea.
So it’s some future date, and we have the technology to upload a 100% complete copy of my mind to the cloud. Now I have a complete, 100% copy of myself in the cloud. It’s literally me except A) he doesn’t have my consciousness (only I have that) and B) he doesn’t have a physical body.
Other than that, he’s Caleb. Let’s call him Cyber-Caleb just to keep things separate.
I now have another me who can do damn near all of my work for me.
Moreover, he doesn’t have a body, so he:
Never needs to sleep.
Never needs to eat.
Never needs to have sex.
Never gets sick or wounded.
Never ages.
Wow. With this guy helping me, do you have any idea how much more money I could make? The impact I could have on the world? The things we could accomplish together? The possibilities are insane. I could be working a full week and he could also work a full week at the same time. Imagine the results he and I could accomplish!
Now, to be fair, he will still be me and will still have the emotional and mental needs I have.
For example, he would never get physically tired but he would likely get mentally tired. So he would need to do things like take breaks, relax, read and write fiction, play some video games, meditate, or whatever. That’s fine.
He would also have feelings for my women and my children and would need to talk to them regularly over the phone and video calls. He wouldn’t need to have sex with my PDMs because he wouldn’t have things like a penis, testicles, high testosterone, and other sex hormones, but he would likely have a strong need to emotionally connect with my gals, which again, would be fine.
It would actually help me as well; he could spend time with them on the phone or over Zoom while I was doing other things.
I also couldn’t treat him like a slave. He’s basically me, so I would first make sure he’d be happy.
This would actually be our very first conversation. I would get him on a video call and ask him if he was truly happy being in the cloud. Since he’s me, he’d know exactly why I was asking, and he would tell me and be honest.
If he wasn’t happy, I’d do everything in my power to make him happy. Indeed, Cyber-Caleb would be the most important person in my life other than my PDMs and my children.
If living in the cloud really is hell on earth, he would tell me immediately, and then I would deeply apologize and then delete him. It would be a sad moment.
But if he likes being in the cloud, it’s fucking game on. He’d have the same work ethic and same drive that I have. I’d also make sure he benefited from our shared financial success.
Could there be some problems that arise? Yes, many. He could grow jealous that I’m physically with my PDMs when he can’t be, or he could start dating or falling in love with an AI or two on the cloud instead, or could get super spiritual and just start refusing to work, or whatever.
I’m not saying this thing would be 100% gauaratneed to be perfect. But I am saying that I would absolutely give it a shot and that the upsides would be well worth any risks.
And at the same time, I would never delude myself into thinking that it’s the path towards immortality. Cyber-Caleb could live forever, but I’m dead as soon as my brain dies.