&gt;What if instead of worrying about uploading brains for individual survival, we started turning into a connected colony organism?<p>Many (maybe most, maybe even all) agents will still desire fundamental autonomy and privilege&#x2F;consciousness separation, though. Perhaps humans may eventually all be set up with a &quot;dual-homed&quot; network, but there will be many humans who won&#x27;t want to disconnect from their original LAN. And to do that, there needs to be a way of uploading what they were initially given and subjectively &quot;switching&quot; to that upload.<p>At the least, the option needs to be there, I think. I think entirely merging your mind into a &quot;hivemind&quot; is a form of death, even if it&#x27;s something less bad than conventional death. People can choose to do that if they wish it, but those who do not want to to should still have other alternatives.