Reality check
Lots of hooks for thought (in a prog philosophy jam way) here in Charles Stross’s demolition of the prospects for the singularity/mind uploading/Matrix-style simulations.
Need to dig up the Pigs In Cyberspace piece too: what would it look like if we were to give in and adapt to an online existence that wasn’t a physical simulation of some kind?
Sure, “what does it feel like to be an AI?” is about as unanswerable as “what does it feel like to be a bat?”, but even the vaguest notion of a consciousness driven by information rather than driven by sense impressions (sight for most of us; sound for the bats) is an interesting one.
