Claim · 1989-12 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Moravec's lecture transcript of 1989 states that scanning techniques may make it possible to move the contents of human brains into other machinery, so that individual personalities may survive.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

The Robot as Liberation from Human Nature → articulates → Human minds transferred into machines

Where it appears

Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1979–2026 →

Claim and evidence

The Robot as Liberation from Human Naturearticulates ↓Human minds transferred into machines

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1989-12 · publication Records dated 1989 →
Wording attested: 2026-10-31. Wording read in the copy retrieved on 2026-10-31; the availability API reported no Internet Archive capture of this address. Not compared with any printed version.
Claimed date: 1989-03. The author's file header gives "March 1989".
Role: Articulation
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction

Scope and limitsStated as a possibility ("may").

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

The Robot as Liberation from Human Nature

Hans Moravec (author-hosted LaTeX file); the author's publication list gives it as the transcript of the 1989 Hull Memorial Lecture, Interactions 10, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, December 1989, pp. 32-42 · 1989-12

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“In time sophisticated scanning techniques may make it possible to move the contents of biological human brains into other machinery in a similar way.”

Location in source Opening section, before "Machines Who Think (Weakly)"

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-01

Source details and check notes

Authors: Hans Moravec
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 ba6e4f226341ccdbd0f0f83c27b98d527751e46a0c07b636dab4899c9cfeadd4). Author-hosted LaTeX file whose header gives "March 1989". It opens with the lecture text and continues with sections that repeat material of the 1988 Genetic Takeover file, ending with a footnote "Adapted from the author's book Mind Children". No capture located; printed version not inspected.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-31
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Hans Moravec, “The Robot as Liberation from Human Nature”, 1989-12.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, machine succession, scale and acceleration (research/heterodox-thought). The quotation (24 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A cross-family machine check (2026-11-01, item 26) classified the record’s passage blind and reached the same stance. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Machine-checked. Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.

Date. Interactions 10, December 1989, per the author's publication list.

Record ID ht-w03-moravec-1989-robot-as-liberation