After Uploading
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2026 7:29 pm
What would life look like after uploading? My position is that Whole Brain Emulation would be fairly easy and low tech. We already have the basic technology to perform the scan, and we're just trying to scale it up. In this post, instead of estimating how many years in the future it might be, I'm just going to describe it as superimposed upon the world we currently live in. That's a fairly accurate way of thinking about it. Sure, the computers of that future would be better, but it wouldn't really be very different from today.
What I want to talk about is what would happen next. In this scenario, roughly 1/3 of the people around you would have uploaded. The others either couldn't quite afford it yet, or they would still be afraid of the idea. But basically, it would have been widely adopted. What would happen next? The scanning process would still probably be very expensive, so many people would go into debt to afford it. Fortunately, running the actual emulation at normal speed would be relatively inexpensive, so living expenses could go down after uploading. But many people who could afford it would choose instead to increase the speed somewhat. Because my scenario is low tech, we also would not know how to significantly enhance our minds. I also suspect that we would gradually accumulate mild corruption. Biological humans already accumulate corruption. We call it addiction, brainwashing, extremism, religion, depression, trauma, etc. Since the emulation would be using basically the same algorithms, we would continue to be susceptible to corruption. I'm hoping that doctors might have some ability to tweak our minds gently back toward an accepted normal when that happens. We would not yet be capable of enhancing our minds. We would just be surviving at this point. I think we would live for many decades in this way, just existing with the same minds as in the past, very gradually growing as technology improved. Some who were impatient and had nothing better to do might choose to slow down their processing speed to cause their perception of time to speed up. I think that's a lazy approach.
What would a WBE do all day long? It's probably best to think of it as very much like today. They would work, hang out with friends, spend time with family, travel, play, watch entertainment, etc. At least at first, it's reasonable to assume that emulations would need sleep as part of a computational process. It's also reasonable to assume that we might be able to speed up that process. So let's assume that they would need to sleep 2 hours per day at first. Eating would not be necessary, so any sort of simulated eating is likely to quickly fade in popularity. But when they worked, what kind of work would they do? Probably the same work they did before uploading. I started with a list of the 20 most common jobs.
These first 16 are ones that would still be relevant:
Retail salesperson
Cashier
General and operations manager
Laborer / freight and material mover
Customer service representative
Office clerk
Stocker and order filler
Janitor / building cleaner
Secretary / administrative assistant
Heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver
First-line supervisor of retail workers
Software developer
Bookkeeping / accounting clerk
Elementary school teacher
Maintenance and repair worker
Construction laborer
The last 4 would no longer be needed:
Fast-food and counter worker
Registered nurse
Waiter / waitress
Home health and personal care aide
You might object that many of those jobs in the first list would be replaced by AI. Sure, fine, but that misses my point. Assuming that anyone at all has any jobs, then my claim is that only a small portion of those jobs would become irrelevant after uploading becomes popular. If someone was working before, they could generally continue in that same job after uploading. I also think looming job losses are very overhyped and will instead progress much more slowly. I also don't think things will be very different by the time we upload because it's not far enough in the future.
It's very possible that both robots and VR would be of lower quality than original human bodies. In other words, we would be subjected to a temporary downgrade in sensory input quality. This is a compromise that people would be willing to make. I think many people would alternate between inhabiting a robot and existing in VR because neither of those two environments would be fully satisfactory. Spending some time in the physical world could help keep people grounded and happier. This means they would still need their house. They might still have memories there. They might want to garden or restore an old car. They would still have all their memorabilia and wouldn't need to immediately downsize. They would probably even keep their computer hardware in their house that ran their emulation, with careful backups in remote locations. They would also need a place to store their robot avatar and even their car. Yes, a house would have less utility than before, but with house prices dropping, they might not be able to sell it for very much, so why not hold onto it?
One of the most important things to understand is that uploading would not dramatically change the world all at once. Many current human activities would easily transition into the new reality. It's not a glorious nirvana or anything. It's just the same minds running on different substrates.
What I want to talk about is what would happen next. In this scenario, roughly 1/3 of the people around you would have uploaded. The others either couldn't quite afford it yet, or they would still be afraid of the idea. But basically, it would have been widely adopted. What would happen next? The scanning process would still probably be very expensive, so many people would go into debt to afford it. Fortunately, running the actual emulation at normal speed would be relatively inexpensive, so living expenses could go down after uploading. But many people who could afford it would choose instead to increase the speed somewhat. Because my scenario is low tech, we also would not know how to significantly enhance our minds. I also suspect that we would gradually accumulate mild corruption. Biological humans already accumulate corruption. We call it addiction, brainwashing, extremism, religion, depression, trauma, etc. Since the emulation would be using basically the same algorithms, we would continue to be susceptible to corruption. I'm hoping that doctors might have some ability to tweak our minds gently back toward an accepted normal when that happens. We would not yet be capable of enhancing our minds. We would just be surviving at this point. I think we would live for many decades in this way, just existing with the same minds as in the past, very gradually growing as technology improved. Some who were impatient and had nothing better to do might choose to slow down their processing speed to cause their perception of time to speed up. I think that's a lazy approach.
What would a WBE do all day long? It's probably best to think of it as very much like today. They would work, hang out with friends, spend time with family, travel, play, watch entertainment, etc. At least at first, it's reasonable to assume that emulations would need sleep as part of a computational process. It's also reasonable to assume that we might be able to speed up that process. So let's assume that they would need to sleep 2 hours per day at first. Eating would not be necessary, so any sort of simulated eating is likely to quickly fade in popularity. But when they worked, what kind of work would they do? Probably the same work they did before uploading. I started with a list of the 20 most common jobs.
These first 16 are ones that would still be relevant:
Retail salesperson
Cashier
General and operations manager
Laborer / freight and material mover
Customer service representative
Office clerk
Stocker and order filler
Janitor / building cleaner
Secretary / administrative assistant
Heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver
First-line supervisor of retail workers
Software developer
Bookkeeping / accounting clerk
Elementary school teacher
Maintenance and repair worker
Construction laborer
The last 4 would no longer be needed:
Fast-food and counter worker
Registered nurse
Waiter / waitress
Home health and personal care aide
You might object that many of those jobs in the first list would be replaced by AI. Sure, fine, but that misses my point. Assuming that anyone at all has any jobs, then my claim is that only a small portion of those jobs would become irrelevant after uploading becomes popular. If someone was working before, they could generally continue in that same job after uploading. I also think looming job losses are very overhyped and will instead progress much more slowly. I also don't think things will be very different by the time we upload because it's not far enough in the future.
It's very possible that both robots and VR would be of lower quality than original human bodies. In other words, we would be subjected to a temporary downgrade in sensory input quality. This is a compromise that people would be willing to make. I think many people would alternate between inhabiting a robot and existing in VR because neither of those two environments would be fully satisfactory. Spending some time in the physical world could help keep people grounded and happier. This means they would still need their house. They might still have memories there. They might want to garden or restore an old car. They would still have all their memorabilia and wouldn't need to immediately downsize. They would probably even keep their computer hardware in their house that ran their emulation, with careful backups in remote locations. They would also need a place to store their robot avatar and even their car. Yes, a house would have less utility than before, but with house prices dropping, they might not be able to sell it for very much, so why not hold onto it?
One of the most important things to understand is that uploading would not dramatically change the world all at once. Many current human activities would easily transition into the new reality. It's not a glorious nirvana or anything. It's just the same minds running on different substrates.