6 ms·

Forty years is incredibly optimistic. But beyond that issue, I don't see how transferring my brain to a computer does anything for me. I don't want a copy of

Forty years is incredibly optimistic. But beyond that issue, I don't see how transferring my brain to a computer does anything for me. I don't want a copy of me to live forever, I want to live forever myself. Copying my brain won't copy my conscious self. (It can't; after all, if you can make one copy then you can make ten copies.)

kelnos 13y ago
If the computer can actually model the brain itself, copying your brain may well copy your conscious self as well. If true, this would raise quite a few metaphysical questions, to say the least.
jaggederest 13y ago
Ship of Theseus argument applies here - done gradually enough there's no perceptual difference between a brain running in a computer and on a biological substrate. You 'die' in that sense every time you lose conciousness - a different you wakes up. I think we have a much better chance of extending human life biologically in the next 40 years than we do running the brain in software. 100TB for a brain map is extremely optimistic - that's assuming a byte per connection, and I bet it's a lot higher than that. Like effective fusion power, it's always 50 years away, unfortunately.
- 011011100 13y ago
  "there's no perceptual difference between a brain running in a computer and on a biological substrate" Who "perceives" a brain running? What do you mean? Is there some higher order process that can do a "perceptual" comparison between a brain running in the world and an identical brain running in a computer? Is the brain doing this comparison? It may seem like I'm "nitpicking", but I'm not sure if your statement is even well-defined.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Another instance of me is not me; everyone will think it's me (I will think so too, however I see a nice psychological Philip K Dickian mess coming up with you thinking the rest of your life that you are not you) but it's not. I wouldn't really care at all for that kind of 'immortality'. I don't remember which sci-fi book it was, but I read that book (or story) a long time ago where the brain itself was, in a flash (no losing consciousness), turned into a kind of 'plastic'; literally every part, so you are you and after that nano machines would create the new cells, destroy others and create connections from that plastic mimicking the exact way the brain works. Give me one of those.
  - k__ 13y ago
    I think the point here is, that even the you from "now" and the you from "a moment ago" aren't the same. Consciousness is an illusion.
    - tluyben2 13y ago
      But like someone else already said; it doesn't solve the dumping of the brain and the feeling of self. Copy the brain onto a different substrate (I have no problem seeing that as a real possibility) but after you did that the two 'you's (one human, one something else) look at each other and only 1 is you. There is no magic 'soul' or whatever flying over during the transfer taking the self with it. The clone you won't believe it's you as he/she is aware of the procedure. And the original you will die as every human always did before. Maybe someone has some good articles about this, but I have a feeling they mean to slowly (for the definition of slow applicable here) replace tissue in the brain so you gradually turn 'silicon' (or whatever it may be) and 'hope' that it mimics every cell close enough and slow enough so that you will remain you after the transition? In which there will never be 2 'you's in this process, however it will be possible to clone/backup your brain after the process? I'm concerned with the 'hope' of it being like this and it would be very optimistic to think we can reach this kind of understanding of the brain within 40 years imho.
      - Houshalter 13y ago
        >but after you did that the two 'you's (one human, one something else) look at each other and only 1 is you. Why? A copy of me IS me. >There is no magic 'soul' or whatever flying over during the transfer taking the self with it. The information in your brain IS your soul, basically. What else defines "you" if not that? >Another instance of me is not me; everyone will think it's me (I will think so too, however I see a nice psychological Philip K Dickian mess coming up with you thinking the rest of your life that you are not you) but it's not. I wouldn't really care at all for that kind of 'immortality'. I can not understand this preference, it just makes no sense to me. As long as one copy of me lives on that is all that matters. It doesn't matter which copy. The specific atoms that make me up don't matter. Why would it matter if I live on being made up of one set of atoms or another?
- arethuza 13y ago
  I'm skeptical that it will happen in the planned timescale - but the current estimates for "effective fusion power" are actually 20 years away. This is based on ITER (currently being built) going well and the DEMO plant - which will actually generated power, being built after that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO For fusion there is at least a plan for getting there, and some understanding of what the engineering challenges are.
- adrianN 13y ago
  Slightly off-topic: Fusion power keeps being "50 years away" because nobody funds it. See this interview on Slashdot from 2012 http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-researchers-answer-your-questions http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusi... In particular note the funding graph in question 3.
  - zebra 13y ago
    And what about the following scenario: your brain and DNA gets transferred to a computer, and after millenia you get a young body and your brain transferred back. In this case we need to get funded only the brain to computer transfer technology.
- atlantic 13y ago
  Excellent point. But do we ever lose consciousness, though? Arguably, a continuum of consciousness is what defines us as individuals. If there was an absolute loss of consciousness, you would indeed die every time you fell asleep, but this is never the case. The impression of loss of consciousness is related to the fact that memories cannot (usually) be transferred between different states of consciousness. Moreover, when you talk about the substrate of consciousness, that begs the question of what consciousness actually is, and how it can be transferred. Creating an exact copy of the substrate (or an exact copy of the data pattern, but on a different kind of substrate), and then destroying the original substrate and crossing your fingers - this is a product of magical thinking on the part of scientists.
Udo 13y ago
> It can't; after all, if you can make one copy then you can make ten copies. Just because you find a notion inconvenient to deal with doesn't mean it's not factually possible. It basically comes down to your view on the supernatural, and by extension the role of your brain. If you're a materialist, we can talk. Otherwise it's just about religion (which is fine if that works for you personally) and in that case a conversation isn't really possible. Much like space flight and killer drones, this will one day mature from science fiction to reality and we'll have to deal with it in some form. At this point, you have a choice to make: either hang on to centuries worth of convoluted ideas about the soul made by people who didn't know anything about anything, or move on to a new substrate that is much better aligned with the way our minds actually work and better suited for moving us forward as a civilization. And it's most likely not going to be a do-or-be-damned choice. Barring unforeseen social dynamics, nothing is going to prevent you from choosing to stick with a biological existence.
- javert 13y ago
  > because you find a notion inconvenient to deal with doesn't mean it's not factually possible. That is a completely unjust accusation. Even from a materialist perspective, I think the guy was raising one of the most important questions.
  - Udo 13y ago
    I didn't mean it as an accusation. The argument was literally that this can't be possible because that would allow multiple copies of a person! > Even from a materialist perspective, I think the guy was raising one of the most important questions. I fail to see how that's even a debate at this point. Either you see that the mind is a process being executed on a certain kind of substrate, or you believe that something from outside the physical universe is making up the mind and the brain is just an actuator. Pretty much everything else derives from one of these points of view. If you think there is "special matter" and "ordinary matter", or that there is something special going on in the brain beyond its information theoretical content, that's not really a scientific/materialist position. If there's any defensible position in between, I'm genuinely interested in hearing it. Again, I don't mean to attack or upset anyone, please forgive me if I inadvertently gave the wrong signals.
nostromo 13y ago
If I made an exact copy of you, right now, you'd both swear you were the original. In fact, I'm not even so sure I'm not a copy, as most of the original stuff that made me is long gone.
- ewoodrich 13y ago
  That made me think, what if technology was developed that allowed a portion of the brain's processing functions to be offloaded to an external system. So, you would copy most motor functions to a "brain emulator" first. And after you have acclimated, you would continue to the copying process (I have very little doubt that if properly done, the brain wouldn't be able to readjust to this, just like a prosthetic limb or "seeing" through stimulation of nerves on the tongue). And this process is gradually performed until the entire "consciousness" is running on the external artificial computer. I wonder how the perception of self would be affected by such a method.
Fuxy 13y ago
I don't know what consciousness is but I'll be the first to volunteer to copy my brain and find out. Screw theory lets just do it and see what happens.
Houshalter 13y ago
Forty years isn't optimistic at all if you allow for the possibility of smarter than human intelligences speeding up technological progress in that time. A copy of you IS you. If you change the atoms that make up your brain you are still the same person. It's not like the atoms themselves are sacred. Likewise if you replace the computational substrate your brain runs on it's still you. Why do you care if it's neurons or transistors? Consciousness is a pattern, an algorithm maybe, not a physical thing.
- parasight 13y ago
  This has yet to be proven. The non-existence of something like a soul seems to be a general concensus but so far a person has never been copied.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    Define "proven" as that discovery would contradict pretty much everything we know about the universe. You might as well imply that magic hasn't been proven to not exist.
    - parasight 13y ago
      I don't have to believe in magic or even in god to have my doubts. There is so much we still can't explain. Especially about the brain. But let's suppose we are able to copy a human atom by atom. Even then a copy of me is not me. Maybe it is identical to me on a atomical level for a tiny fraction of time. But then it would be a different person with different impressions and different thoughts just because it looks in a different direction.
      - Houshalter 13y ago
        There is stuff that hasn't been explained, that doesn't mean you can therefore assume your hypothesis which is overly complicated, completely contradicts everything we know about physics, evolution, neuroscience, etc, has a non-negligible probability of being true. By your logic, the person who will call themselves "you" two seconds from now isn't "you" either. I'd still rather die with a copy of me with 1 second worth of different experiences then no copies at all.

kelnos 13y ago

If the computer can actually model the brain itself, copying your brain may well copy your conscious self as well. If true, this would raise quite a few metaphysical questions, to say the least.

jaggederest 13y ago

Ship of Theseus argument applies here - done gradually enough there's no perceptual difference between a brain running in a computer and on a biological substrate. You 'die' in that sense every time you lose conciousness - a different you wakes up. I think we have a much better chance of extending human life biologically in the next 40 years than we do running the brain in software. 100TB for a brain map is extremely optimistic - that's assuming a byte per connection, and I bet it's a lot higher than that. Like effective fusion power, it's always 50 years away, unfortunately.

011011100 13y ago
"there's no perceptual difference between a brain running in a computer and on a biological substrate" Who "perceives" a brain running? What do you mean? Is there some higher order process that can do a "perceptual" comparison between a brain running in the world and an identical brain running in a computer? Is the brain doing this comparison? It may seem like I'm "nitpicking", but I'm not sure if your statement is even well-defined.
tluyben2 13y ago
Another instance of me is not me; everyone will think it's me (I will think so too, however I see a nice psychological Philip K Dickian mess coming up with you thinking the rest of your life that you are not you) but it's not. I wouldn't really care at all for that kind of 'immortality'. I don't remember which sci-fi book it was, but I read that book (or story) a long time ago where the brain itself was, in a flash (no losing consciousness), turned into a kind of 'plastic'; literally every part, so you are you and after that nano machines would create the new cells, destroy others and create connections from that plastic mimicking the exact way the brain works. Give me one of those.
- k__ 13y ago
  I think the point here is, that even the you from "now" and the you from "a moment ago" aren't the same. Consciousness is an illusion.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    But like someone else already said; it doesn't solve the dumping of the brain and the feeling of self. Copy the brain onto a different substrate (I have no problem seeing that as a real possibility) but after you did that the two 'you's (one human, one something else) look at each other and only 1 is you. There is no magic 'soul' or whatever flying over during the transfer taking the self with it. The clone you won't believe it's you as he/she is aware of the procedure. And the original you will die as every human always did before. Maybe someone has some good articles about this, but I have a feeling they mean to slowly (for the definition of slow applicable here) replace tissue in the brain so you gradually turn 'silicon' (or whatever it may be) and 'hope' that it mimics every cell close enough and slow enough so that you will remain you after the transition? In which there will never be 2 'you's in this process, however it will be possible to clone/backup your brain after the process? I'm concerned with the 'hope' of it being like this and it would be very optimistic to think we can reach this kind of understanding of the brain within 40 years imho.
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      >but after you did that the two 'you's (one human, one something else) look at each other and only 1 is you. Why? A copy of me IS me. >There is no magic 'soul' or whatever flying over during the transfer taking the self with it. The information in your brain IS your soul, basically. What else defines "you" if not that? >Another instance of me is not me; everyone will think it's me (I will think so too, however I see a nice psychological Philip K Dickian mess coming up with you thinking the rest of your life that you are not you) but it's not. I wouldn't really care at all for that kind of 'immortality'. I can not understand this preference, it just makes no sense to me. As long as one copy of me lives on that is all that matters. It doesn't matter which copy. The specific atoms that make me up don't matter. Why would it matter if I live on being made up of one set of atoms or another?
arethuza 13y ago
I'm skeptical that it will happen in the planned timescale - but the current estimates for "effective fusion power" are actually 20 years away. This is based on ITER (currently being built) going well and the DEMO plant - which will actually generated power, being built after that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO For fusion there is at least a plan for getting there, and some understanding of what the engineering challenges are.
adrianN 13y ago
Slightly off-topic: Fusion power keeps being "50 years away" because nobody funds it. See this interview on Slashdot from 2012 http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-researchers-answer-your-questions http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusi... In particular note the funding graph in question 3.
- zebra 13y ago
  And what about the following scenario: your brain and DNA gets transferred to a computer, and after millenia you get a young body and your brain transferred back. In this case we need to get funded only the brain to computer transfer technology.
atlantic 13y ago
Excellent point. But do we ever lose consciousness, though? Arguably, a continuum of consciousness is what defines us as individuals. If there was an absolute loss of consciousness, you would indeed die every time you fell asleep, but this is never the case. The impression of loss of consciousness is related to the fact that memories cannot (usually) be transferred between different states of consciousness. Moreover, when you talk about the substrate of consciousness, that begs the question of what consciousness actually is, and how it can be transferred. Creating an exact copy of the substrate (or an exact copy of the data pattern, but on a different kind of substrate), and then destroying the original substrate and crossing your fingers - this is a product of magical thinking on the part of scientists.

Udo 13y ago

> It can't; after all, if you can make one copy then you can make ten copies. Just because you find a notion inconvenient to deal with doesn't mean it's not factually possible. It basically comes down to your view on the supernatural, and by extension the role of your brain. If you're a materialist, we can talk. Otherwise it's just about religion (which is fine if that works for you personally) and in that case a conversation isn't really possible. Much like space flight and killer drones, this will one day mature from science fiction to reality and we'll have to deal with it in some form. At this point, you have a choice to make: either hang on to centuries worth of convoluted ideas about the soul made by people who didn't know anything about anything, or move on to a new substrate that is much better aligned with the way our minds actually work and better suited for moving us forward as a civilization. And it's most likely not going to be a do-or-be-damned choice. Barring unforeseen social dynamics, nothing is going to prevent you from choosing to stick with a biological existence.

javert 13y ago
> because you find a notion inconvenient to deal with doesn't mean it's not factually possible. That is a completely unjust accusation. Even from a materialist perspective, I think the guy was raising one of the most important questions.
- Udo 13y ago
  I didn't mean it as an accusation. The argument was literally that this can't be possible because that would allow multiple copies of a person! > Even from a materialist perspective, I think the guy was raising one of the most important questions. I fail to see how that's even a debate at this point. Either you see that the mind is a process being executed on a certain kind of substrate, or you believe that something from outside the physical universe is making up the mind and the brain is just an actuator. Pretty much everything else derives from one of these points of view. If you think there is "special matter" and "ordinary matter", or that there is something special going on in the brain beyond its information theoretical content, that's not really a scientific/materialist position. If there's any defensible position in between, I'm genuinely interested in hearing it. Again, I don't mean to attack or upset anyone, please forgive me if I inadvertently gave the wrong signals.

nostromo 13y ago

If I made an exact copy of you, right now, you'd both swear you were the original. In fact, I'm not even so sure I'm not a copy, as most of the original stuff that made me is long gone.

ewoodrich 13y ago
That made me think, what if technology was developed that allowed a portion of the brain's processing functions to be offloaded to an external system. So, you would copy most motor functions to a "brain emulator" first. And after you have acclimated, you would continue to the copying process (I have very little doubt that if properly done, the brain wouldn't be able to readjust to this, just like a prosthetic limb or "seeing" through stimulation of nerves on the tongue). And this process is gradually performed until the entire "consciousness" is running on the external artificial computer. I wonder how the perception of self would be affected by such a method.

Fuxy 13y ago

I don't know what consciousness is but I'll be the first to volunteer to copy my brain and find out. Screw theory lets just do it and see what happens.

Houshalter 13y ago

Forty years isn't optimistic at all if you allow for the possibility of smarter than human intelligences speeding up technological progress in that time. A copy of you IS you. If you change the atoms that make up your brain you are still the same person. It's not like the atoms themselves are sacred. Likewise if you replace the computational substrate your brain runs on it's still you. Why do you care if it's neurons or transistors? Consciousness is a pattern, an algorithm maybe, not a physical thing.

parasight 13y ago
This has yet to be proven. The non-existence of something like a soul seems to be a general concensus but so far a person has never been copied.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  Define "proven" as that discovery would contradict pretty much everything we know about the universe. You might as well imply that magic hasn't been proven to not exist.
  - parasight 13y ago
    I don't have to believe in magic or even in god to have my doubts. There is so much we still can't explain. Especially about the brain. But let's suppose we are able to copy a human atom by atom. Even then a copy of me is not me. Maybe it is identical to me on a atomical level for a tiny fraction of time. But then it would be a different person with different impressions and different thoughts just because it looks in a different direction.
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      There is stuff that hasn't been explained, that doesn't mean you can therefore assume your hypothesis which is overly complicated, completely contradicts everything we know about physics, evolution, neuroscience, etc, has a non-negligible probability of being true. By your logic, the person who will call themselves "you" two seconds from now isn't "you" either. I'd still rather die with a copy of me with 1 second worth of different experiences then no copies at all.