Download Your Brain 1147
Nicholas Roussos writes "Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson predicts that death will be avoidable in the year 2050 by downloading your brain to a computer. Unfortunately, he is also predicting that the process will be only available to the wealthy for years after its release. I guess we should all start saving our pennies now."
It's a copy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Funny)
This is just for the vainglorious.
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Insightful)
A sad scientist was once heard to say,
To upload my brain, I have found a way,
But my memory contains
Things not public domain
And I'd violate DMCA.
Hello alcohol, goodbye Karma. 8) Seriously, I just got this image of the RIAA breaking into the lab 'cause the cloned brain remembered the Happy Birthday lyrics.
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a copy (Score:4, Funny)
Why would there be money in "young bodies"? Bio-bodies aren't exactly scarce; these days anybody can use their computer to choose an bodytype of any age from fastsimulation-grown vDNA, merge a selected brainpattern (your own backup, or JennaJamesonLITE(TM)) with an old bulky meatbrain or a more robust substrate, then output that from a your garden variety large-nanoassembler.
Maybe you're from some alternate universe where an evil power elite kept abundance scarce in order to preserve the hiearchical social order?
Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
bittorrent yourself... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Funny)
Well, until someone invents a person-capable teleportation device, i think the answer is No.
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Funny)
i say slap a beta label on it and release it to sourceforge. some kind soul will iron out the remaining bugs.
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on your SciFi. In Star Trek, absolutely. It "energizes" your matter into an energy stream and sends that actual energy to another place where it coalesces. It's your very quarks being transported.
The Outer Limits did a good story once about the more likely form of teleportation. Some dinosaur-looking aliens made contact with earth and they had the technology. It worked by cooling the person to absolute zero, scanning the subatomic part
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Outer Limits, cryonics, Alcor, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so you missed the whole point. The story deals with the person whose job it is to kill the original, not with the copying technology. I, for one, hadn't considered it before. It's worth thinking about.
You see, I have a contract with Alcor to have my brain vitrified in liquid nitrogen until I am able to be revived. I hope to awaken in a future where uploading is available as an option for superlong life and space travel....
How are they going to prevent ice crystal formation in your brain tissue? The ice crystals will break the dendrite connections - it's only those connections that define who you are as opposed to who I am.
And why are you so afraid of death?
Re:The Outer Limits, cryonics, Alcor, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most living things are afraid of death. Even an ant will quickly try to scurry away if your thumb misses it the first time. That's what keeps us alive. Sure, we can be trained not to fear death.. we have religion to give us a nice warm fuzzy about it, as one of the other posters noted indirectly by insinuating that the grandparent was afraid of hell rather than death. But it's a biological imperative that we fear death. We don't reproduce quite as fast as lemmings,
Re:The Outer Limits, cryonics, Alcor, etc. (Score:3, Funny)
Dear god I had them put me out to be reanimated just so I wouldn't have to live through it. I realize 30,000 years sounds like a long time to you mortals, But it's longer than that, When all you see is the inside of the same ship talking to the same people, you get REALLY REALLY bored. Think sitting in the Doctor's waiting room while they loop "Row Row Row your Boat" and they only have one copy of Highlights.
And no sooner do I get here, and you people have puked the place up so bad I'm rea
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, to really look at the problem you have to leave the supernatural at the door - I don't know what a "soul" is, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the physical universe and everything to do with the wishful thinking of humans. Your body is you. Nothing in the entire universe that I've ever heard of points to any part of "you" being anything other than a part of you
Re:It's a copy (Score:4, Insightful)
How would he/I know which was the copy?
If you're going to investigate personal identity via gedankenexperiments involving copying "minds", you have to consider cases where someone might be unknowingly copied.
Consider: some dark stormy night, a stranger who looks a lot like you shows up at your front door, explaining how while you were under general anaesthesia getting your wisdom teeth out a few years ago, they made a copy - you - and sent the original off on a top-secret mission...
(This would be especially interesting if you were someone who held the belief that a "copy" isn't really a person, or is not personally-identical to the person before the copy.)
Your use of the word "just" reflects an unwarranted value judgement. If I am a machine, it follows that machines can be pretty damn wonderful. (I'm sure that using the word "machine" in that sense of "something that follows the `laws' of physics" is useful or informative - there would be nothing material that wasn't a machine.)
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I assume that the copy would either be limited to a videocamera, microphone, and speakers as an interface with the outside world, or else would be inside of a simulation. Most likely you would be able to tell it was a simulation, even if it was a very good one. If you were actually able to make a perfect copy of the entire human, I would suggest affixing a post-it note to the door of the "construction" chamber.
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
You are taking this way too personally. Are you sure you
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
"Nothing in the entire universe that I've ever heard of points to any part of 'you' being anything other than a part of your physical body."
How about what it's like to see the color blue?
I'm not being facetious. This -- the mind-body problem -- is actually a hot-button philosophical and scientific issue nowadays, and there is no easy answer to it. The physicalist explanation of consciousness is still full of holes. See:
http://consc.net/online.html [consc.net]
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
For reasons that continue to trouble me, the brain seems to be worse at this than Google.
Re:You Can't Copy Consciousness (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need to know exactly how something works in order to duplicate it. Example: "cp
And when you find out what it is, you'll realize that it can be neither copied, nor created, nor destroyed.
And your scientific basis for this is?
Ok, I'll take this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is not possible to understand why a rose is beautiful through any materialistic philosophy."
There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First, the thinking is absolute. As if one way of knowing is any more important than another. Second, a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because of material processes. Its DNA design has no inherent beauty code. Beauty is a judgement made by the viewer. Third, is the assumption that the experience of feeling beauty isn't something that could be given to a machine. The experience of beauty is very likely to be simple reaction. The "qualia" of an observed thing definitely depends on many factors inherent in the design of the brain. And the design of the brain has been evolved through millions of years of evolution. A fly probably doesn't have the same qualia from a flower as it does road kill.
Now, I have a real problem with anyone who tries to discount "materialism" as being outright wrong. Most of the people who do have a very hard time understanding the interconnectedness of physical and electrical systems. Many people who talk about the mind being some kind of spiritual energy have no idea of what they are talking about. Spiritual energy of what? What is that energy measured in, and what are the opposites which bring about this manifested energy? And how does this energy interact with physical systems? I say BS. Most of the people you've mentioned and the books you've stated are all from armchair philosophers who have very little knowledge of the world. Their understanding of the world is from a fairytale perspective that predicts nothing, and doesn't change our state of existance one iota.
We humans are animals. We have arms, legs, hair, ears, eyes, a nose, and a mouth. We belch, have sex, and eat. There is nothing that makes us any more special than a baboon except some skills with our vocal cords and hands. It is completely disingenuous to create some kind of fluffy comfy chair world where we can fly around in our heads and withdraw into a state of self denial.
Get real. Wake up and smell the coffee. Learn how to perform some integral calculus or Laplace transforms. Definitely learn some engineering and computer programming. Then and only then will I give my time for debate with overzealous flunkies like Casey and Silva.
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't consider myself religious by any means, I don't see any reason to disbelieve that Jesus, Achilles, or Buddha were real people. While there's not enough evidence to give me overwhelming reason to believe in their existence, as there is with, for example, Napoleon, there's not enough evidence to disbelieve them either.
This is history we're dealing with here, not science. Things in history, especially ancient history, don't need to be proven with overwhelming evidence, simply because such evidence just isn't available. What's important is to be aware of the facts surrounding any historical evidence, and keep in mind that it may not be completely accurate.
I believe that a lot of mythological things came from true happenings. Things happen, and people talk about them. Since we're dealing with ancient times, and primitive, uneducated people, they don't retell the stories very accurately, and the stories aren't written down immediately. Over time, reality turns into myth. For instance, Achilles may well have been a real Greek warrior, but certainly not with any supernatural powers. But he was so proficient that common people thought he had them. Over time, various stories are written down, and a guy who was just a great warrior turns into a demigod. Perhaps the reality of Jesus is similar.
We won't know the real truth about these people until someone invents a device which allows us to watch the past on a TV screen (check out Arthur C. Clarke's "Light of Other Days"). But this doesn't mean we should just discount that they ever existed in any form just because we don't have Achilles' diary in a museum.
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
There are three basic models: deterministic, random and probabilistic.
The three can be described by reference to a theoretical ability to form a perfect simulation of a person at a precise moment in time, including environmental and sensory data. In effect this is us
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you be worried if someone made a copy of you, and then killed the copy, leaving you alive? I think if that bothers you, then you simply have an ethical concern about conciousnesses equal to yours being ended. But if that wouldn't bothe
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Funny)
Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun.
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Subjective / Objective Viewpoints of Consciousn (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Interesting)
a person has a special chip inserted in their skull that records their brain state over the course of their lifetime. The chip is wirelessly connected to the backup system and keeps it constantly and updated. Would that be a valid backup?
Or how about this:
Over the course of a lifetime, a person has various parts of their brain replaced/augmented with technology.
Some of the implants replaced damaged brain functions (damage from a stroke).
Some augment the senses (heads up display).
Some add new capability (robo-telepathy).
Eventually, the person replaces their entire brain to the point that they no longer need a body and can exist in a virtual world.
When do they cease to be human?
Is it when the last brain cell is replaced?
Is it when the first one gets replaced?
Is it somewhere in the middle?
Re:It's a copy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski [wikipedia.org]
Alan
Re:It's a copy (Score:4, Informative)
That was the common consensus ten years ago but the last few years has seen that turned upside down.
For example with neurons:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro00/web
and ova:
http://pharyngula.org/comments/484_0_1_0_C/ [pharyngula.org]
Re:It's a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
To clarify:
I understand the cognitive dissonance [yudkowsky.net] a lot of people have to the idea of transhumanism, but that doesn't make it valid. People
Xerox it is. (Score:3, Informative)
As a humanist I don't believe in any sort of a supernatural soul, so your premise is incorrect. I do firmly believe however that my conciousness is firmly attached to the physical hardware that is my brain.
If you would like to prove me wrong, you could perform a simple scientific experiment involving a large rock and your brain.
Re:It's a copy. NO! Copy won't transfer. Goes like (Score:3, Funny)
I think that only happens in Soviet Russia...
Gives a whole new meaning... (Score:5, Funny)
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Funny)
I always wanted to buy the mailing list and phone numbers of people who subscribe to those New Age/Psychic magazines. Then I would call them out of the blue and say, "I'm a psychic and I sensed that you needed to speak to me!" Then get them hooked and charge them $$. Now with the DNC list, there's no point.
Mathologist (Score:5, Funny)
BS (Score:5, Insightful)
He picked those numbers for his theory because he'll be dead by then.
The end.
Woo-hoo. Or not... (Score:5, Funny)
"What are we going to do this millenium, Bill?"
"Same as we do every millenium, Ballmer..."
Unfortunately.... (Score:5, Funny)
Consciousness in two places? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is too much into the realm of metaphysics to talk about now. There is not enough factual data yet. We need to learn much much more about the human brain before we can approach such technology. Otherwise, talking about it sounds more like techno song lyrics than real science.
Re:Consciousness in two places? (Score:3, Funny)
The obvious question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Its like the Star Trek transporter beam, the copy of you transported to the new location is fine, but what about the original which is obliterated in the process?
Re:The obvious question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The obvious question... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't know because I'd be a copy. That does not negate the fact that a consciousness was destroyed even though a new one (me) exists. Destroyed meaning that subjective experience would cease, as in death.
When a person his or her subjective viewpoint ceases irrespective if one or more copies exist to take its place. Having copies, each with their own conscious view point, does not negate the death of the original.
Re:The obvious question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Replace the neurons, or areas of the brain one at a time, by directly connecting them to the rest of the functioning brain. The remaining part would treat the new electronic parts the same as the old one, and consciousness would remain intact.
If you wanted to make a copy, then perhaps the new parts could be connected in parallel with the old parts. When your brain
Any brain surgeons reading /.? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I've read that in certain types of brain surgery, all electrical activity in the brain must be stopped for some period of time, and then "restarted". The person thus loses all the short term memory, but keeps the long-term, because that isn't dependent on continuous electrical activity. When that person wakes up, is he still considered the same old person, or just a "replica"?
Re:The obvious question... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
Re:The obvious question... (Score:3, Interesting)
He's wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not a subtle point.
Anyone who cannot grasp this either hasn't thought deeply about a subject, or is an idiot. Anyone who uses the title "futurologist" is likely the latter.
Re:He's wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you went to the "uploading clinic", and they put you under a general anaestheic, uploaded you, and terminated the leftover hunk of meat, how would that be different than simply going to sleep and waking up (albeit in a new "body")?
As you said,
Re:He's wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
This leads me to ask, why not? If you accept that information encoded as various mem
Re:He's wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I am is what I experience. When I no longer am able to maintain my subjective experience due to death then I no longer exist irrespective of how many copies may exist of me.
"If a copy of me was made, I would still consider that to be "me,""
Yes, it objectively be 'you' and have as much right to call itself WhiplashII as you do. However it has a experience viewpoint that is different than yours and the existance of its viewpoint does not stop the f
Re:subtle points (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets do a little Gedanken expirement shall we?:
Let's say your conciousness IS reducible down to bits and bytes and you download it. Once you have downloaded your brain there is NOTHING stopping a third party from then copying the result to a SECOND computer. Can two entities share a conciousness and still be just like 'you'? Any answer other than 'No' is clearly absurd so something went wrong alon
Re:subtle points (Score:3, Interesting)
Good to see you're approaching the question with an open mind.
Personally I see nothing at all absurd about multiple copies of a conscious mind-state, each of which is (initially at least) just like me. There's no "sharing" going on.
As the grandparent poster says, I don't see how you can deny such a possibility without lapsing into Car
Not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
News? (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought this was supposed to be 'News for Nerds', not 'Speculation for Halfwits'...
From TFA:
OK...so where does that put the Xbox?
Seriously, this 'explanation' of his 'logic' leaves much to be desired...but there's more.
Also from TFA:
Hmm...but what if the AI is a thrillseeker? Suicidal? Psychotic? What if it suddenly develops acrophobia? If we're going to have a true AI with emotions, these are issues that need to be addressed, don't you think?
Here's another few nuggets from TFA:
Well, that 'completely global debate' should be ready by the release of PlayStation 5...
'Smart yoghurt'? Sure I guess it's possible to think of that...about as possible as it is to think of magical elves, unicorn-riding gnomes, and smart futurologists.
One thing conspicuously missing from this article is speculation over the possible legal status of either a true AI or a downloaded brain. Apparently, that paragraph got bumped in favor of 'smart yoghurt'.
In short, this is the dumbest thing I've heard all day (and I work in IT support). I'm sure that if Dr. Pearson didn't already have such a sweet position as 'head of the Futurology unit at BT', he could make good money writing speculative fiction...or reading palms.
I prefer AI toasters to yogurt. (Score:5, Funny)
Lister: Mm-mm.
Toaster: Some nice hot crisp brown buttered toast?
Lister: Mm-mm.
Toaster: You don't want any toast then?
Lister: No.
Toaster: What about a muffin?
Lister: Nothing.
Toaster: You know the last time you had toast? 18 days ago. 11:36,
Tuesday the 3rd. Two rounds.
Lister: Ssshhh!
Toaster: I mean, what's the point of buying a toaster with artificial intelligence if you don't like toast?
Lister: I do like toast!
Toaster: I mean, this is my job! This is cruel, just cruel.
Lister: Look, I'm busy.
Toaster: Oh, you're not busy eating toast, are you?
Lister: I don't want any!
Toaster: I mean, the whole purpose of my existence is to serve you with hot, buttered, scrummy toast. If you don't want any, then my existence is meaningless.
Lister: Good.
Toaster: I toast, therefore I am.
Lister: Will you shut up?
[He goes back to sniffing his way through the book. Rimmer enters.]
Lister: Rimmer, there's nothing out there, you know. There's nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say `Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing'. There's just you, me, the cat, and a lot of floating smegging
rocks. That's it. Finito.
Rimmer: Lister, if there's no one out there, what's the point in existence? Why are we here?
Toaster: Beats me. Do you want some toast?
Questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Will I than be able to "upload" my brain into a new body? A new cloned body? A completely new body?
If not, since my brain is just stored somewhere is it completely read only, or will my brain have an interface to the world, ie living through the computer? If not, why not. If so, why would I want to be uploaded back into a body?
Sure, I'll nod my head and say why not that you'll be able to download the entire human brain into a computer. But there are far to many other questions which would involve far to much more work to say this is a viable alternative for the rich.
And on another note, seeing as harddrives crash on me like nobodies business, we'd need a more reliable medium than what is currently available today.
self centered (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for you, for them (Score:4, Interesting)
Every once in a while, I wish I could ask them what to do about this or that, what they did when such and such happened, and so forth.
Sort of a Jor'El/Kal'El thing, though I usually don't need to save planets and such.
And when a spouse of 50 years dies, the other would like to talk to them.
It's no way to cheat death, but it is a way for those around you to avoid dealing with the fact that you're gone.
Old T Shirt (Score:5, Funny)
Adult Swim Predictions (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently he's been watching the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex [ghostintheshell.tv] series on Adult Swim [adultswim.com].
In addition to the brain-puter, he has predicted that the future will also have power-hungry bending robots with a penchant for booze, smoking and thievery.
Yeah, whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)
And once you have the chemical composition and the electrical composition, you ALSO need to know the wiring - the wiring between the neurons is unique to an individual, and isn't going to be easy to determine.
Ok, so now you have all of the core information. Is it still useful? Well, no. You now need to know the physical layout of the brain - all the folds, the exact proximity of A to B, that sort of thing.
Ok, is THIS enough? Still no. You still lack information on sensory input. You need to know what the range is on different nerves, because the brain is going to adjust to what the nerves deliver. If you don't know what the nerves deliver, then you don't know what sort of data the brain is expecting.
NOW, is that enough? No. You need to know what the data is that is being fed into the brain. For example, those with tetrochromatic vision will be getting data in a whlly different format from those with trichromatic vision, and both will be different from those with bichromatic vision.
Once you have all of this information, you MAY be able to reconstruct a person's brain well enough to be able to function identically. The keyword is MAY. As technology improves, our knowledge of the brain is improving. It is still seriously incomplete, but it is improving. There is so far no proof that we will ever know enough to actually duplicate the brain, although there is also no proof that we won't. All we have proof of, right now, is that we can't, right now.
It's interesting when someone makes a statement... (Score:3, Insightful)
From Neuromancer (Score:5, Interesting)
He turned on the tensor beside the Hosaka. The crisp circle of light fell directly on the Flatline's construct. He slotted some ice, connected the construct, and jacked in. It was exactly the sensation of someone reading over his
shoulder.
He coughed. "Dix? McCoy? That you man?" His throat was tight.
"Hey, bro," said a directionless voice.
"It's Case, man. Remember?"
"Miami, joeboy, quick study."
"What's the last thing you remember before I spoke to you, Dix?"
"Nothin'."
"Hang on." He disconnected the construct. The presence was gone. He reconnected it. "Dix? Who am I?"
"You got me hung, Jack. Who the fuck are you?"
"Ca--your buddy. Partner. What's happening, man?"
"Good question."
"Remember being here, a second ago?"
"No."
Re:No, its the Hitchi (Score:3, Interesting)
Very good book, almost as good as "Gateway," and *way* better than "Neuromancer."
ObSpock (Score:5, Funny)
--Spock, to Dr. McCoy, in "The Ultimate Computer"
"The wealthy... (Score:5, Insightful)
The second thing that comes to Senor Programmer, futureologistismo extroadinaires mind is...
Once again those who wait will benefit from the excursions and expense of early adopters. The first thing was tooo involved to type fast and follows with SP's predictions as coda.
Thing the first. Why is it that these arts and letters types, and Ian surely is one, Otherwise he'd be out working on brain loading rather than trying t get his arse in the history books as the prognisticating dude who ripped off my AC comments to
That why the heck is is always "the rich" or "the wealthy" with these A&L futurologists? I'll tell you why. Because it fits their hidden agenda of control through class warfare, that's why. Keep those brain loading researchers in their place by pointing out that they are working for THE MAN and not for the community good. But what does he care? He's a wealthy futurologist. Oh yeh, his position of wealth is both secure and non-suspect if he maintains his position as 'one who knows best' between the evil technocrats, scientists, engineers, and the 'po folk'.
Coda follows as it by definition must.
BZZZZTTTTTTT Ian's full of shit.
First. It's not a matter of 'loading' ones brain into some bit of hardware. It's integration of that hardware into the brain function to the degree that, as has been observed for decades with other prosthetics, the brain ceases to recognize the machine as distinct from itself. As brain function is slowly replaced and integrated there will come a point at which the brain is totally aware of it's self yet that self is totally contained within the hardware which replaced it. WIth the rapidly declining cost of hardware and synthetic diamond for physical interfacing, it's more likely that somone will discover that he has been a machine for many years rather than consciously set out to 'load' his self into that machine. See the machine. Become one with the machine. Be the machine. But in this case, machine becomes you instead.
PS
If anyone is interested in a FOSS hardware-software project that will show up THE MAN and put the first consciousness, I propose a dog because you never know with cats and monkeys tend to toss unpleasant stuff about, in hardware, please let me know. Seriously. Well maybe not the dog part but the ever growing in functionality brain prosthetic would be FUN.
PSS volunteers will be considered in order of descending donor ranking
Re:"The wealthy... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd never do it (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would I want to give my neural contents to someone I don't know, who could later sell them to someone I dislike, to be used as a "mental slave"?
I can think of no better definition of hell than if I were somehow "aware" of what was going on, but powerless to stop it.Ma-ma-ma-MAX HEADROOM (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I think it would be handy - dupe the skillset into a ROM construct and cut the sucker loose on photoshop. He can sit on IRC and CG my comic pages while I write and ink the sucker. Perfect division of labor, creatively speaking.... but I'm one of those creative types who needs multiple instances of himself, not collaborators clouding the idea stream.
Where am I? (Score:3, Insightful)
And you thought philosophy was no fun. ;-)
Ob. Futurama reference (Score:4, Funny)
-George Foreman's Head
Natures Copy Protection (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, how many quacks have been saying this sort of thing over the past 50 years???
I thinks Mother Natures copy protection is quite effective. Although I have no doubt we will be able to genetically modify the human race to extend lifespan significantly (i.e. the wealthy and the powerful that is...), I doubt forever.
Thinking we can build a machine to do it I think speaks volumes of our ignorance about how the brain really works and if it truly is the part that provides "conscious" thought.
Note, I am not sure if we REALLY understand the difference from conscious thought and intelligence.
Do the two require each other for example?
Exactly what IS UN conscious thought if so?
We have lots of crack pot organizations right now that measure intelligence for example, like MENSA.
I am not even sure we know what intelligence is let alone how to measure it.
I have a PhD sitting next too me who I think is clueless half the time and I do not find him intelligent. Meanwhile, the guy who use to do Tattoo's for people has written genuinely interesting and useful software for our customers and is self taught. His work pays for the over inflated EGO and salary of the PhD guy.
???
So what is intelligence?
I think it is any organisms ability to modify its environment to an extreme (i.e. make its own environment to sustain itself even when the outside environment would kill it.)
So if you build a house in response to winter, or air conditioning units in response to heat I would consider that intelligent.
(if you move into outer space and do it, your not just intelligent, your going to likely live forever...)
However, I do not think you need to be conscious to do these thinks and explore the Universe, simply intelligent.
Sort of like the creatures in the new War of the Worlds remake.
-Hack
Future Incomprehensive (Score:4, Informative)
This is pathetic. The average reader/viewer/listner has no chance to form a coherent picture of the future, or even our current ideas of it. But sadly, this is typical for news coverage of all topics. And it's actually one of the problems - that we treat such items as "news", where you get a notable person speak, then a few hundreds of nearly identical articles appear, then silence. In the best case the meme of "Playstation 5 will be as powerful as a human brain" will spread and settle in the brains of the public.
Instead of starting a decades-long discussion of all the implications of the future changes, instead of purposefully changing our societies to adapt to the scientific and technological advances, instead of basing our research budgets on the goal of achieving the most desirable of all possible futures, we just live as if nothing important is happening. This is beyond sad.
I don't know how you can change that, may be it's impossible in the world of corrupt democracies and commercialised mass-media, but if you personally want to understand where we are heading, check out the links in the end of this post.
Ian Pearsen is late. I remember the idiotic 21st century forecast that BT produced five years ago. Only now he starts to get things that better thinkers realised a decade ago. For some people the idea of mind uploading is not new and they already managed to present a much more comprehensive picture of the future.
Here are some of the resources outlining it:
Re:download? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:download? (Score:5, Interesting)
The extropians have been using the term "upload" for many years, as has science fiction. It's based on standard use of computer industry terminology.
I routinely use my laptop to initiate either uploads to or downloads from a server. And sometime the server initiates uploads from or downloads to my laptop (e.g., Z-modem). The terminology has nothing to do with which side initiates the transfer. It is a convention based on "up" being "to the (conceptually) bigger system". I certainly don't want to transfer my mind into a system that has less capacity than my current brain, so I want to upload it.
And your "facility" claim doesn't even make sense. My brain does have the facility to initiate an upload, just as much as it has the facility to travel to Australia. My brain can choose to have my body buy an airline ticket and drive to the airport, or just as easily, to drive to an upload center, walk in the door, and sign the appropriate paperwork.
The big questions are whether I will live long for the service to be available, and whether I'll be able to afford it. In his book "The Age of Spritual Machines", Ray Kurzweil makes a reasonably convincing argument that I will, thanks to Moore's Law.
Ray points out that even if Moore's Law runs out of steam with regard to MOSFET technology, that there is good reason to believe that it will apply equally well to new technologies, since the known laws of physics still have "lots of room at the bottom" (as observed by Richard Feynman). He shows that Moore's law actually extrapolates fairly accurately all the way back to late 19th century mechanical calculators.
Re:download? (Score:4, Interesting)
But you do, by manipulating a remote device to pull the data from your brain. Your brain does not need to push. Upload and download are just fancy terms for the pushing and pulling of data from one system to another.
The extropians have been using the term "upload" for many years, as has science fiction. It's based on standard use of computer industry terminology.
Actually more based on a misunderstanding of computer industry terminology. The lesser/greater system originated from people who didn't understand upload/download and were trying to explain -- poorly -- to laymen. At the time, it looked to be correct as they were the common types of systems which uploading and downloading were performed, but it was never the nature nor capacity of the machines involved that determined the terms.
FTP's GET is always a download and its PUT is always an upload, even if the FTP server was on your laptop and you're directing it from a mainframe, and even if that direction is through a Telnet connection from your laptop.
Thus also saying the RIAA and MPAA are only going after "uploaders" is incorrect. Everyone on P2P is downloading, pulling data towards themselves. They are going after servers just as the ATF would go after someone who puts free alcohol, tobacco, or firearms out for unregulated taking by any member of the public. They aren't pushing those products to people, only making them available to be taken in a manner contrary to law.
Not really living. (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, a new "smart bomb" that kills the very rich without harming the poor has been discovered... they call it an EMP.
Re:Not really living. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not really living. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they will restrict the operation to those who do things to their brain other than try to deaden it and give way to instinct.
As Aldous Huxley said, "An intellectual is someone who has found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
And EMP wipes electronics, but doesn't destroy the contents of hard drives. You would be safe as long as you weren't stupid enough to download your brain to flash memory.
Re:Not really living. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they will restrict the operation to those who do things to their brain other than try to deaden it and give way to instinct.
As Aldous Huxley said, "An intellectual is someone who has found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
Huxley also thought mescaline was one of those interesting things. Quit being such a knee-jerk prude.
I do not think your parent poster's point requires a belief that drugs and sex are the only pleasures or interesting things in life for it to be valid. It merely req
Bravo. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for posting that comment. Now, if we could just get more people to realize the simple truth of your statement.
Re:Not really living. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sep 19 13:51:22: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Better use RAID, and have a trust setup for maintenance...
Re:Futurologist? (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly which website would that be?
Re:Soulless (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't that imply your soul is organic? I thought the point of a soul is a mechanism for an afterlife?
Here's an interesting thought experiment. Say you have very good prosthetic and nanotechnology available. As you age your natural body starts to fail. You have organs, limbs, bones, even blood replaced over time. As your skin fails a nice polymer replaces it (with excellent nerve replacements of course so you don't notice a difference).
Do you still have a soul at that point?
OK, now your body is failing even more. Over another couple decades you've replaced everything in your body except for your brain with mechanical systems.
Do you still have a soul at that point?
Now, your nerves start to degenerate and your brain isn't signaling well. You get some nano-bots in there to replace the dendrites and get the neurons signalling right again.
Do you still have a soul at that point?
Finally the neurons are starting to go and you get some more nanotech in there that can replace failing ones on the fly as they go with more stable structures. Over the next 20 years all of your neurons are slowly replaced by nanotech, but it's very gradual so you don't ever notice it.
Do you still have a soul at that point?
The trick in this experiment is picking the point at which you don't have a soul, if ever, and identifying the change that caused the soul. Of course, if you can identify the change that lost the soul, it follows you've identified the temple of the soul.
Discussion encouraged.
Re:Soulless (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Soulless (Score:3, Interesting)
Much like in "Ghost in the Shell". Even if you believe in the 'soul' (whatever you define that to be), what if your brain, whichever hard(or wet-)ware it runs on, is able to generate a 'soul'? Is the soul a product of the brain, or the other way around?
Re:Bunk (Score:3, Insightful)
Forty years ago, there was no plausible way for a machine sitting on a desktop to contain billions of bits of memory and hundreds of millions of logic gates, yet today such machines are commonplace, and even routinely get thrown away.
Naysaying bunk does not debunk bunk (Score:3, Insightful)
(ca. 1880) FUTURIST CLAIMS MANNED FLIGHT WILL BE POSSIBLE BY 1930, though initially cost will limit it to the wealthy.
"There is no plausible way for replicating the structure and billions of individual, minute biological connec
Re:Ok, so my brain is copied... (Score:3, Funny)
Me too. Fucking science is always screwing with my delusions!!!
OK, it was funnier in my head.. er I mean brain.. er I mean consciousness... er I mean soul. Screw it, you get the point.
Re:can't be avoided, only delayed (Score:3, Interesting)
Certainly. But it doesn't guarantee that it stays there, or that it moves where and when it is supposed to. Errors can still arise due to thermal energy, external radiation sources, contamination, etc.
Use of redundancy to decrease failure rate does not require nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology has many potential advantages, but a zero failure rate is not one
Re:Utter Bovine Excrement (Score:4, Interesting)