I think the worst of this is watching Democrats pivot ideologically to support Obama and his methods. Extra judicial assassinations would have made most Democrats take to the streets under Bush. It's a very sad development for America when even the 'liberal' party supports executive powers so expansive tyrannical and unchecked.

Even if we presume the US government should have the unchecked power to act this way in the world, because it has a humble wise leader like Obama.... What happens when someone worse takes his place?

Most of these objections seem to be poor reasons for inaction. Ether it is possible, or it isn't, but we aren't going to find out because people decided not to try.

I started scripting visuals for projecting at parties when I was younger. Later I started scripting L-systems, and even designing L-system scripting languages. Eventually I was helping design a scripting language for the AI in video games, and writing all of the AI scripts.

I started feeling weird referring to it as video game 'artificial intelligence', as it never learned. In fact, concept acquisition is a great way to know if something is truly intelligent or is just emulating intelligence. Cleverbot just never seems to get the inherent structural similarities between sections of 3d fractals like the mandelbox/bulb and Christopher Wren architecture.

Anyway I settled on calling 'AI' from games emulated intelligence instead. It's meant to look intelligent, and not actually be intelligent. To be honest it was much easier to make a functional AI that acted human then I thought it would be... which says nothing about brain-uploading inherently.

Although I can say after years of scripting L-systems, I could visualize the behavior of the AI kinda like a branching result of an L-system script. When I first started making art for projecting at parties, I never thought it would lead to it becoming easy to write video game 'AI' scripts.

I wonder if something as seemingly unrelated makes brain-uploading a much easier task then it seems currently.

Although, even if it isn't possible, if we try and fail we at least know that. The knowledge that it isn't possible could have all kinds of benefits we wouldn't anticipate. Not to mention what we might gain along the way trying.

I would say in response to this, 'people don't actually realize that not everyone is concerned with being a nice person.'

I knew an older Jewish women who walked with Dr. King. (She had an NAACP card that was older then I was) She was an awesome soul, and used to teach death row inmates collage level stuff.

She thought the same as you at first. That deep down everyone truly thinks they are a good nice person, that murderers and rapists all had something happen to them that 'turned' them bad. (Like a bad childhood etc.)

I'll tell you the same she told me. "I used to think down deep in each person was a kernel of some thing good, that it was just buried for some people. I no longer believe that. Some people are just evil, and are proud of their evil, and have nothing 'nice' or 'good' about them."

Some people act negatively not because there's some situational reason that turns them from being a nice person. Some people are sadistic, hate-filled evil and have no qualms about being a 'nice person'. Not because of some abusive drunk step-father, but just because they enjoy luring shy girls into their apartment to rape them.

I think this line of thought is more an expression of naiveté then anything else. Making statements this broad about all of humanity is usually a bad direction, even if it seems intuitive.