A great one!

Some remarks and questions: How many kilometres does it take for a mountain to qualify as "a really tall" one? Would apatheism (yeah, I know that my blatantly militant atheism is not for every not-quite-believer) be better than the classical "we-are-bound-not-to-knwo" agnosticism? You have radiophobia (and what do you mean by that - fear from radios or from radiation; either way, fascinating)? How do you feel about uploading as the way to open-ended longevity?

And this actually made my day, thank you very much indeed!

In my opinion tallness of mountains is quite relative in both actual height and the level of difficulty of ascent, but at least 3000 meters and more than a weeks ascent should prove sufficient. Being atop of Olympus Mons would be perfect though.

Apatheism would probably be an even better outcome, sadly in the following thousand or so years it could take root as the main spiritual stance only if most of mankind was eradicated as some concept of deity seems to be necessary for most. Making people doubt their beliefs or turn away from the concept of one, distinguishable, sentient god would be the best first step. I myself, usually take the "I don't care because there is neither a way nor a benefit of knowing" stance.

I have a rational fear of radiation - I am not scared of decayed plutonium samples, but I dislike taking X-Rays before determining how many millisieverts I'll receive and I abstain from going in the sun without heavy sunscreen, because lets face it - DNA damage is not fun. But as I said - it wouldn't be hard to leave it behind if I got a chance to, for example, work at CERN or be abroad a manned space shuttle. Geiger counter is one of my to-buy things and I still have a fallout map stashed somewhere, just in case though.

Uploading... It actually depends. If it's on the lines of becoming a sentient, cybernetic organism (e.g. development of cyberbrain as in some science-fiction franchises) , I would probably be first in line. For all other types of mind-uploading sentience would be the first perquisite and singular or conscious parallel existence the second.

And you are quite welcome.

I am currently leading some debates about the methods of rationality (Bayesian Conspiracy!) and about rational thinking as such and, oh boy, have the people ever heard about the need of falsifying their hypotheses instead of trying to hold on to their arguments far beyond absurd. What is actually scary, that even people who are, in ordinary contexts, seemingly intelligent, become confounded when confronted with an actual need to consciously shape and revise their thoughts. So, we have a long way ahead towards a godless or god-indifferent society, yet it is a way most worthy of pacing.

Totally with you on the point about radiation, although it could be mentioned that working in CERN would be, I speculate, not all that much more subject to excess rays than walking abroad in daylight without CERN ID card in pocket - the collisions happen deep underground in magnetically shielded tubes and all the excess radiation is nevertheless thrust into heavily protected beam dumps. But yes, Geiger counter is in my To-Acquire list too (I am currently in favor of the Gamma-Scout (it even seems to have Linux support, kernel level), although it has seemingly irreplaceable battery).

And what good is uploading without sentience, anyway? The good thing is, we are probably not that far this possibility.

I believe that part of the problem mentioned lies in the fact that almost every study-program out there teaches facts and patterns according to which facts can be manipulated, but more often than not leaves out the underlying concepts or in simpler terms teaches what to think, not how to think. As much as I hated (mainly due to the tedious assignments and incompetent teacher) the Theory of Knowledge course we were forced to take, I'm glad it placed such a great emphasis on doubt and necessity to reason.

I remember reading somewhere that people working at CERN are exposed to approximately the same radiation dosage as people working at airlines (e.g. pilots and stewards), which is still greatly inside the "safe" zone. I can't quote the source from the top of my head though. And Gamma-Scout actually looks interesting and sometime-in-the-future affordable.

If we were completely selfless beings uploading with lack of general sentience could actually be very beneficial to quite a few. And again using a science-fiction example - think Bene Gesserit. Them passing along and accessing genetic memory isn't all that different from the general concept of non(or semi)-sentient uploading and it is one of the main reasons why the Bene Gesserit are a force to be considered.

Yes, they do not know how to think.

About the Bene Gesserit - they have this genetic memory only as a (quite mighty, to be honest) supplement to their ordinary human consciousness. It is more like having one and a half mind (or simply having an external plug-in memory bank which you got from your predecessors) or something along these lines, I guess.