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> You are mostly the mind (software) that runs on the brain (hardware) in your head; your brain and body are tools supporting your mind. If our civilization doe

> You are mostly the mind (software) that runs on the brain (hardware) in your head; your brain and body are tools supporting your mind. If our civilization doesn’t collapse but instead advances, we will eventually be able to move your mind into artificial hardware, making a “brain emulation”. With an artificial brain and body, you could live an immortal life, a life as vivid and meaningful as your life today, where you never need feel pain, disease, grime, and your body always looks and feels young and beautiful. Let's start by assuming science-fiction is true...

dragontamer 5y ago
To be fair, assuming that science-fiction is true is the cornerstone of that entire genre. Lets start by assuming time-travel exists, but it only goes back to the point where you turned on the machine. Or lets assume hyperdrives were invented and we're entering a period of space exploration (Star Trek), etc. etc. It turns out to be pretty fun. ----------- So lets say it were possible that "saving your brain to software" was possible. How would it work? We know that worms and jellyfish have memories but no brains for example. Their simple nervous systems store memories in the nerves themselves. Surely, our nerves in our muscles and fingertips are storing some of our memories: the "software" we download out of our bodies would probably have to include that! (A common joke is that my fingers know my passwords but my brain does not. Maybe its true: muscle memory is a real thing after all). Ultimately, it is clear that to "transfer our memories", we need to rebuild a nervous system, and maybe a good chunk of our bodies (if memories are truly stored in the nerves in our muscles, then to perform an adequate transfer, we need to recreate those nerves with the same "settings" as our hypothetically downloaded software) Its fun to think about, because we don't actually have to solve the problem. Its just fantasy. We can think and discuss the problem as much or as little as we'd like, without in fact doing any hard work. IE: The fun part.

dragontamer 5y ago

To be fair, assuming that science-fiction is true is the cornerstone of that entire genre. Lets start by assuming time-travel exists, but it only goes back to the point where you turned on the machine. Or lets assume hyperdrives were invented and we're entering a period of space exploration (Star Trek), etc. etc. It turns out to be pretty fun. ----------- So lets say it were possible that "saving your brain to software" was possible. How would it work? We know that worms and jellyfish have memories but no brains for example. Their simple nervous systems store memories in the nerves themselves. Surely, our nerves in our muscles and fingertips are storing some of our memories: the "software" we download out of our bodies would probably have to include that! (A common joke is that my fingers know my passwords but my brain does not. Maybe its true: muscle memory is a real thing after all). Ultimately, it is clear that to "transfer our memories", we need to rebuild a nervous system, and maybe a good chunk of our bodies (if memories are truly stored in the nerves in our muscles, then to perform an adequate transfer, we need to recreate those nerves with the same "settings" as our hypothetically downloaded software) Its fun to think about, because we don't actually have to solve the problem. Its just fantasy. We can think and discuss the problem as much or as little as we'd like, without in fact doing any hard work. IE: The fun part.