Upload or Death?

This is more philosophy over anything else.

Seeing the new GitS trailer pop up on IGN's RSS made me excited. Seeing it made it worse. I love the series as should lots of others. Deep and intuitive, whatever. A question that me and my friends always posed to each other was would we choose to die someday, have an end and go nowhere from there, or would we want to be uploaded into some new world where we could change how the world works and run the world into the future or into the ground.

I always went the upload route. Death is scary; it is unknown and dark. When we are kids our instincts are to be able to see what is ahead of us, so most of the time we are scared of the dark. We adapt and look ahead of us while we go down stairs in the dark to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. Until that point we run all through the house turning on the lights because something might get us. We don't know, nor should we. It's how our brain develops. The same goes in adult life and nothing is all that different. Will we have our jobs? Will we get cancer? What is cancer? Why is cancer? Why is this that and the other. We are always searching for information but eventually we hit that wall of endlife and we can't go any further. Why stop when you can just keep going? Your thoughts and memories and feelings stay and you get to continue what you always wanted to be doing. The only difference is you don't have walls in the way, you don't have to bump into things that make you life harder; you just.... go.

A story to end. Not exactly connected, but not exactly far from it. One of my friends is studying to be a neurosurgeon. She sent me a picture that she said perfectly described something that happened in her lab one day and maybe some of you reading have seen it. A student in a class is entering a lab where they have to identify the structured in a human brian. They can cut in and look for things and they have to identify every area before they can leave. The girl walks to the table and picks the brain up. She freezes and looks at each of her friends next to her and back to the brain. To her, in her hands is every memory, choice, bodily function, failure and success, relationship, choice, and step in life that the person made. It is in her hand and she can do with it as she pleases. The rest of the story is my friend quitting that lab and skipping it because she didn't like the situation.

Still, it stands. Would you upload? Would you die? Why.

Note: Religion can be an answer to anyone, no need to shit on that. To me religion doesn't make sense because I see everything on a scientific view and it makes sense to me.

Very deep thinking here.

To be honest, and religion aside (I see it just as you), I think maybe, just maybe, I would go the end route. With the upload route, sure it will be fun to control the world for a while. But what happens after that gets old? Life becomes meaningless, boring, repetitive. Then again, the same could be said for this world which we cannot control. I think I'd rather live my life now and when its over, let it be over.

Curious to see what other responses come around.

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