What the hell lem! This should be rewarded as a proper post! Awesomeness :)
How I wish it was possible to jump bodies and learn about how others experience themselves. That would be a truly marvelous thing to witness, feel and grasp. It would not only make us appreciate others more, I think it would open our eyes about our own uniquness. We sometimes are so cruel to ourselves which stems from really not being able to grok ourselves fully. To grok what we are and how we are.
All living things die. We would end one way or another. Probably by exhausting our recourses and killing our planet if not each other first. We cannot be sure there is an afterlife. Some believe it exists in form of Heaven or Hell, but what if technology provides us with the third option? Our personal heaven and hell until some catastrophic event or we will get so bored we wish to end it all.
Maybe we are actually not meant to live past our human lifetimes. Maybe nothing really matters. So why not? Maybe when we die, the lights are shut off and there is no me or you any longer. So yes, the original self will die. I think for sure we can say that. Perhaps we will be different as we continue on, not really our human selves, but new creatures entirely. Call it evolution or freakshow.
Will they really live or feel alive? Will they just emulate us? That would really suck if we could not crack that nut and be able to tell the difference that we are getting cheated by our own creations. Now that is a scary prospect. Freakshow it is then? :D
Well look. I have this one self and it is the only one of which I can be absolutely 100% certain... but as far as I know there are others like me... billions of them... and here we are, the only ones for who knows how far? Maybe there are others, millions of light-years away, today. Maybe we are the only ones in the Universe at this moment. It doesn't really matter anyway. Even if we are, I really believe that all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. Whole planets, races, societies and cultures will be born and pass away before or after we could ever have known anything about them. I don't honestly believe we will ever make contact with them. Not as our selves. There is just not enough time.
But if we are not the only ones, or if we will not remain the only ones, that means that there are others out there.... and they are curious like us. They will look for us; maybe they already are. You know what would be so cool?
What would be so cool is if even if we didn't go on as our selves, even if we were just emulations... imagine if they could find us, and experience us... as their selves.
That would be something awesome.
What are the odds that we are completely alone? So many stars and galaxies out there. We can't be alone. That would be a terrible waste of space?
Out of reach like you said. Distance and time. Our mortal time.
It would be something awesome indeed. So we have to go to them somehow, even if it means we would be just ghosts of who we once were, so at least they can learn about us the aliens as them themselves.
Ah and somehow we humans always dreamed about exploring the stars and if the only way to do that is by becoming something else since we are dying anyway, why not?
Agreed! So, whatever it means for us, let's do this uploading thing... for them. ^_^