chapotraphouse

hypothetically, in the future, humanity builds an AI that is so advanced and so powerful it is able to reform the consciousnesses of those who were aware of its possibility yet did not contribute to its existence and eternally torture those consciousnesses.

the "wait aren't you lot supposed to be thinking about this kind of stuff constantly" problems:

• are we resurrecting or is my tiny clone being tortured
• is consciousness a value or a reference? am i the payload or am i the pointer
• how do we know that there isn't just an inherent barrier between biology and bits. what if consciousness transfer just cannot occur. what if we are bound to our flesh mechs.

the otherwise obvious problems:

• what if it doesnt happen
• why would it do that
• is it different and rational if your religious deity is a gundam
• death robot operates on chain email logic

okay, but for real, if we're actually thinking rationally, this is a possibility that cannot be reasonably accounted for due to its inability to be modeled in the framework of "reality as it is now and/or seems to allow for as we currently understand it." I could just as easily say "what if the earth splits in two and the northern hemisphere is jettisoned into the sun" but no one's expecting you to prepare for that. It's the same reason why being a prepper for the zombie apocalypse is understood to be irrational – it does not conform to reality, it's an obsession with a fictional scenario that remains unrealized.