I always thought those “I get uploaded, my body is killed before waking up, there was no murder” scenarios were closer to the trolley problem than an actual policy proposal. Sort of strengthening the opposing argument—“destructive uploading would be murder”—before countering it.
By “destructive uploading” I mean something like freezing, slicing and scanning a brain, which by default kills the source. Proposing a process that harmlessly uploads a living (but unconscious) person, and then kills it (before it regains consciousness) is a strengthening of the associated moral dilemma. My memory tells me I heard the weaker argument/question discussed a long time ago (7-10 years) but not recently; I don’t trust my memory much, though.
So I don’t think of it as “should the source die after upload”, but rather as “wouldn’t actually be murder if it did”, thus it is not (necessarily) murder to upload someone, even if destructively.
Taking the question at face value, I agree with the moral attitude—it’s not murder to kill the source after upload (barring obvious things like the operation being involuntary, which might need a more nuanced approach.)
It’s not quite my policy—I don’t see a general reason to get rid of the source. But if something like the particular individual no longer being interested in being incarnated, or resource limits favoring digital-only people, happens to be the case, that might be enough reason.
From a practical point of view, I think it’s more likely that at first, and probably for quite a while, we won’t have a choice, i.e. uploading will be destructive, and if and when we’ll be able to do a live upload (or at least one where the body wakes up after) we’ll have bigger moral problems to solve (of which this might be just a special case).
I always thought those “I get uploaded, my body is killed before waking up, there was no murder” scenarios were closer to the trolley problem than an actual policy proposal. Sort of strengthening the opposing argument—“destructive uploading would be murder”—before countering it.
By “destructive uploading” I mean something like freezing, slicing and scanning a brain, which by default kills the source. Proposing a process that harmlessly uploads a living (but unconscious) person, and then kills it (before it regains consciousness) is a strengthening of the associated moral dilemma. My memory tells me I heard the weaker argument/question discussed a long time ago (7-10 years) but not recently; I don’t trust my memory much, though.
So I don’t think of it as “should the source die after upload”, but rather as “wouldn’t actually be murder if it did”, thus it is not (necessarily) murder to upload someone, even if destructively.
Taking the question at face value, I agree with the moral attitude—it’s not murder to kill the source after upload (barring obvious things like the operation being involuntary, which might need a more nuanced approach.)
It’s not quite my policy—I don’t see a general reason to get rid of the source. But if something like the particular individual no longer being interested in being incarnated, or resource limits favoring digital-only people, happens to be the case, that might be enough reason.
From a practical point of view, I think it’s more likely that at first, and probably for quite a while, we won’t have a choice, i.e. uploading will be destructive, and if and when we’ll be able to do a live upload (or at least one where the body wakes up after) we’ll have bigger moral problems to solve (of which this might be just a special case).