I'm somewhere in between. I think it might be possible to create a machine that does what the brain does, or even to "upload," though I don't see the latter any

I'm somewhere in between. I think it might be possible to create a machine that does what the brain does, or even to "upload," though I don't see the latter anytime in the foreseeable future. But if so, I don't think it'll be with a standard von Neumann machine. Not that such a computer couldn't perform the required computations... it's Turing complete. But I think it would be a very poor fit for the problem domain. You'd want some kind of radically different incredibly highly parallel architecture. You also might want it to be analog or analog-like. There's been some interesting renewed interest in analog computers for a little while, and in probabilistic processors that can run incredibly fast by discarding the requirement of perfection.