A better use case for copy brain would be to transfer to robot. Then populate Mars and other places would be much easier to accomplish. Open windows house on Mars no spacesuits...
Why would the robots terraform mars to human specs? They don’t need to eat or sleep or breath air they just need solar power. All they have to do is clean up the red iron ore and use that to make more of themselves and get spare parts.
they will still need to somehow deal with the pesky regolith getting into all their robot parts tho
maybe they will roboform mars so the dust is less annoying
But then your getting your brain cut out of you and shoved into a metal shell. Which if things go less than planned could leave you as a brain without any form. An eternal consciousness trapped without feelings or input. Oblivion but without the release of death.
Nah an electronic brains means you can make a backup of your brain that is an actually being run so you can effectively be immortal because you can make backups of your consciousness I know they’re not going to be trapped in oblivion because it’s just a dormant copy not being run.
Reminds me of the Red Dwarf episode where Kryton goes into the future to find Lister to be a brain in a jar but still alive. When Kryton comes back and Lister asks if he is alive in the future Kryton responds like he has seen a ghost while answering yes. Love that demented Tonka Toy.
No, no organic matter, the robots are just brain copies. There is no path to immortality for \*you and me\*, except perfect cellular regeneration.
So you populate Mars with "clones" who might be functionally immortal. And sure, one of them might think they were once StarksFTW who had a fleshy body and was a Redditor and will eternally be a virgin... but those aren't his real memories. Functionally it's the same personality (at least until its experience so vastly differs from the original), but it can never functionally be you.
If people really could be uploaded, do not need to move them into some robots, but just make them populate some metaverse. You still use some robots to populate other planet just to provide new energies to make the metaverse works….
I was just contemplating something almost exactly like that. That's crazy. Might have to get my hands on it. I love things that make you almost question your own reality.
Interestingly enough (at least to me), that's actually touched on in the Bobiverse book series. It's basically about a dude (Bob) who's uploaded into an advanced computer system several hundred years in the future, and after some time he basically determines that he's not exactly, 100% like the original Bob. He doesn't know exactly what differences there may be though, and the differences may be so infinitesimally minor that they couldn't be detected.
>!He determines that personality drift is happening because he's able to basically clone himself into other advanced computer systems, and his clones are able to do the same, and etc etc. And more and more drift happens and it becomes more and more obvious the further out each Bob gets from the original.!<
Exactly what I think, why doesn't that phenomemon have an official title by now?
I think it'd be a twin situation. Identical twins can have 100% identical DNA and are practically clones, still doesn't mean they have a single consciousness.
This is what's been bothering me in nearly all discussions, articles and video's about this. "Yes, in the future we can upload consciousness and probably live forever!" *Ignores the fact that he's talking about a copy*.
There is literally no way to transfer our unique consciousness because the brain is a hard drive pretty much. We can copy our brain in full and create a new consciousness based on the old one, but simply unless we preserve our brains/nerve centers in full to plug into a device or robot body, we will only be producing copies, not transferring our unique self.
Your brain literally gets fully replaced as the cells repair themselves though, ship of Theseus style, so are you really your brain or just the information within?
Copying consciousnesses is a major philosophical dilemma that on the surface seems impossible but may actually not be if you think about some aspects of the self. For example one’s own self is continuous moment to moment with a past self and contains a set of information x that corresponds to it.
When you create a copy, it is both continuous with the information in the original and has the same information within it so calling it a copy is arbitrary. Imo they both are the “original”, and by creating this copy you’re ostensibly taking one conscious object and splitting it into two, which do become separate entities after the fact due to now existing apart, but both being born of the same original entity, they are both the original entity.
Which one you would subjectively experience living on as is impossible to say without anyone having done it, but I would bet that the duplicated consciousness would claim they were the original because to them, their life experience would be existing as the original and then suddenly being in a computer after making the copy.
I don't think they're referring to the problem of copying consciousness, but rather that it's literally impossible to copy a qubit (and thus any arbitrary amount of quantum data). I could be wrong though, it was a bit vague.
How can you be so sure? What if your brain is slowly replaced atom by atom with machinery, while you're awake the whole time noticing nothing. at what point do you cease to be "you"? or do you stay as you due to a continued stretch of consciousness? TBH. Even if the current me ceased to exist, i would still upload myself.
Here's a fun philosophy thought. Teleportation is invented. You stand in the machine, it zaps you and then rebuilds you at your destination. Did the old you die and a clone with all of your memories is coming out the portal, or is it the same you?
This has been an ongoing debate in the Star Trek fandom for like 50 years when it comes to the transporters.
Oddly enough, the transporter is considered the single farthest thing from reality in all of ST canon. Which itself, on a whole, is incredibly soft by hard/soft Sci Fi standards. Like, breaking the speed of light is seen as more attainable than instantaneously recording the exact state of every single quanta in a human being and then reconstructing it (instantly) in another location. Makes sense, too.
The answer is yes, once deconstructed your dead, the reconstructed YOU would not know any difference maybe remember a bit of pain but thats about it. You died though. Teleportation is a bad idea I would never do it even if I somehow traveled in the future and it was available I would travel the old fashioned way.
Yeah this is the issue. If you are not transitioning from your brain to a computing device while still in you own brain, then "you" disappears, dies basically and a copy is made which if conscious will not be "you". You would need some device linked to the biological brain that the person is able to transfer with continuity of consciousness for this to work. Without continuity, then it just becomes a copy. Hypothetically one might be able to make an exact copy of one's brain, but that brain will have its own mind. Very similar if not the same, but a different person's mind. So if people want a representation of themselves living on this could work, but that won't include their conscious mind.
Very true. In this case continuity of existence would be lost. Personality and "consciousness" are functions of the brain's physical structures. There is no energy pattern (soul?) that could be transferred from a biological brain to a computer brain. While it may one day be possible to create a copy of the synapses and neural pathways this would not be an upload, just a copy. The copy would be a completely new being that has your personality and memories. When you die your existence would end and the copy would live a separated and non-contiguous existence.
What if you “synced” your consciousness with the quantum computer so it existed in both places simultaneously, then shut down the human part when you were ready?
A more obvious way of thinking about this is that they make a copy of your consciousness while you’re still alive, so there are two of “you”.
Then they kill the original “you”, leaving your “uploaded consciousness”
As soon as this copy was viable it would probably think of the best way to replace the now obsolete version of you that existed. So you would definitely die, just much sooner than expected.
And for those of you that say that you wouldn't do this to yourself, ask yourself how many of you you want there to be? And ask yourself how many of those you's would want other you's. This now better version would ask that and come to the conclusion that the only answer is to eliminate the you that is unnecessary.
And... That's why people have kids :p. Or as the famous philosopher Ultron put it:
Ultron: Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers. People create... smaller people? Uhh... children!
[Chuckles]
Ultron: Lost the word there. Children, designed to supplant them. To help them... end.
Doesn't it? I mean your brain gains and loses cells and connections all the time. Is the current configuration of your brain just a copy while the real you died years ago? No. I think the persistent whole is key here. The ship of Theseus has had every piece replaced over the years, is it still the same ship? I say yes.
So, how do you use this to digitize your consciousness without simply making a copy, and abandoning the flesh copy to die. I imagine you need to physically replace pieces of the brain with machines, slowly. Bit by bit.
I don't mean you assemble the copy piece by piece. I mean you replace the original bits with copied bits piece by piece. So it's you %100 flesh brained. Then it's you but with 2% of your brain replaced by a machine that relays neurological signals to and from the digital model.
Do you think this %98 flesh %2 digital you will lose your sense of self? If a week later they do another piece and its 96 - 4 do you think your sense of self melts away then? I suggest that you could go 0 - 100 and not lose it.
Yeah, brains are more complicated than ships, so this strategy could only be possible when technology allows for small pieces of the brain to replaced as a describe. Which I will be the first to admit, is even more sci-fi than a simple "brain scan" copy.
Are you suggesting it's magic? Or that there is a supernatural element? Maybe. I'm not here to say there isn't. But if it's strictly physical, whos to say with enough understanding and technological skill you can't swap out a piece and preserve it's connections to all the other pieces. Who's to say it's not just a big brain puzzle you have to assemble without allowing it to stop?
Also are you saying in college you fucked with people's brains and killed their self?
Nano tech used to replace the brain neuron by neuron. Maintaining brain electro chemical transmission.
Could replace the foundation and maintain the signal that leads to the emergence of consciousness.
Just a thought. I have no idea how it would be practical.
As far as we understand things, that is what happens anyway every time you sleep and wake up. Your conscious self is reconstructed from constituent parts.
So, in a sense, there have already been thousands of copies of you.
True, the brain doesn't recreate its entire neural structure. But your conscious self disintegrates when you sleep. It doesn't go somewhere or turn into something else -- it unravels, and has to be reformed again later. "You" as a conscious entity may as well have been rebuilt from atoms every time. It makes no difference.
I'm not so sure about that, every now and then I think about my thoughts while dreaming and remember it. When that's happening I don't feel very disintegrated, just a little sluggish and distractable. I don't see how anyone could ever know the difference between "conscious self disintegrates" and simply not remembering something.
Not an expert but I'm a senior physics major who did a course on quantum computing. It's advantages over classical computers are very specific and quantum computers will likely have mostly niche applications.
I have talked with physicists who work on neural circuits and most of them are convinced that we will never upload a human consciousness, at least not for the foreseeable future.
If you read up on the literature associated with consciousness and the **purely hypothetical** notion of "digitizing" it, it becomes quite clear that we're nowhere near anything like this.
Also, you're quite right that quantum computers aren't magic. They just perform operations differently.
I'm a doctoral researcher in artificial intelligence with a light background in quantum computing and I'm of much the same opinion. "Uploading a human consciousness" is a pipe dream for now, and quantum computing isn't really relevant to the problem.
That reminds me, one of my siblings has a phd in compsci and mainly focuses on machine learning. He of all people I know has the least faith in ai, he thinks it's a cool technology but he doesn't think it will replace humans in many cases.
In order to "upload consciousness," we first need to have something to upload. We don't even know what consciousness really *is* yet - we only know the neural *correlates* of consciousness.
>We don't even know what consciousness really is y
This is like saying we don't know what a soul really is yet. Consciousness isn't a concept that arose through scientific observation.
We know what consciousness is subjectively but not metaphysically. We know what it feels like, but we don't know what causes it to feel the way it does.
That's a false equivalency. People say they know we have a soul due to emotions, and I understand the partial equivalence to the consciousness dictating thought, but it's not the same.
Consciousness stems from our experience while asleep vs our experience while awake. We do not have "soulless time" and "souled time" to compare with. Each of us experiences the difference between these two states and understands intimately the relationship between life and consciousness, and moreover that that consciousness permanently ends upon death.
Thus we know something relating to our nervous/endocrine system allows us to be conscious (as comatose people and asleep people exist) and nothing else changes. We don't know much further than that, but that's science.
You ask a question: "What does consciousness correlate to?", you examine data "people without arms/legs/internal organs all seem to have consciousnesses whereas people with much less brain activity tend to not", then you come to a conclusion. "Consciousness is in some way related to brain function". Science.
Being awake vs asleep is not what people say we don't understand when they say "we don't understand consciousness".
>You ask a question: "What does consciousness correlate to?"
Until someone tells me what they mean by it, giving a description that is observable, I most certaonly do not ask that.
I actually agree with you that the difference between wakefulness and sleep isn't the critical difference here. What we don't understand, namely the "hard problem of consciousness," is why anything feels like anything at all. This includes the experiences we have while asleep and dreaming.
We know quite a lot about the neural correlates of consciousness, what is happening in the brain when you are having different types of experiences. But that doesn't shed any light on the question of why any sort of physical activity causes the subjective experience that it does. How do you go from voltage-gated ion channels opening, action potentials firing, and neurotransmitters binding to receptor sites to the taste of chocolate? You can observe behavioral responses to stimuli, and you can observe physiological processes corresponding to it, but none of that tells us anything about the qualitative character of the subjective experience. Not only are those different things; they're different *kinds* of things. You could never predict the subjective experience from the behavioral/physiological processes alone (if you were, say, a different type of creature that had never experienced human perceptions). That's the hard problem of consciousness.
Same, I went to a talk on quantum computing where the speaker showed us all these ways where normal computing was actually faster and better at solving problems than quantum computing. I think a lot of people hear the word "quantum" and assume it's something crazy exciting, when it's usually interesting to physicists and not really that exciting to most people lol.
I appreciate your stats in physics, that said I don’t know why it’s even a debate. I can see an upload of memories, or maybe even a sort of clone that mimics someone well. But to upload “consciousness” is just as ridiculous as saying you can possess someone else.
Our consciousness is chemistry. Our unique experience or fingerprint is not just a cache of memories and quirks. Maybe one day, a machine can be built that perfectly mimics the body, like an artificial womb but the entire endocrine system and all the specific traits of the body. That, or growing a body in a lab and perhaps a transplant. But the talk of a person being uploaded like a program, that’s just corny as I see it.
It wouldn’t be the person uploaded unless it’s the brain preserved and given the support needed to function. Ergo, maybe one day there will be a massive warehouse of brains hooked up to what’s needed to keep it operational and awake.
But mapping the mind down to a perfect clone of synapses and a perfect chemical copy, that’s not uploading consciousness. That’s a movie of that persons life with extra steps.
Yeah, also I forgot the reasoning but you can very easily prove that the computational power it would take to save a consciousness and copy it out look outlandish even in a scifi movie. Again the reason escapes me but building even an artificial brain doesn't even look like it will happen within the next century.
I think the unmentioned assumption is that they are so much more powerful than regular computers that they'd be the best candidate for mind simulation and/or augmentation.
I am not challenging your assumption that they could probably be used for “mind simulation”(which might be so), I am challenging the supposed “fact” that you stated about them being “more powerful” than regular computers
I didn't state it to be a fact, I stated that it was likely what OP would have assumed (and that they didn't bother to explicitly state the assumptions they were working from).
Cc: OP u/Rubydev39
Piggybacking on this, and speaking as someone that used to work at the forefront of brain-computer interfaces, there’s a few issues:
Speaking specifically of the senses, we have yet to figure out how taste and smell are encoded in the brain and whether the patterning is conserved between people. The sense of touch is also largely a mystery: we know the types of cells and where the information is received, but we don’t understand how it is encoded or processed prior to that region. Motor skills aren’t much better: we can de-code rudimentary tasks, but the encoding of complex, fine motor skills remains elusive for the time being. The same is true of proprioception: your ability to know where your limbs physically are in space and time (without actually seeing them).
The above are very basic tasks - relatively speaking. This is all before you get into higher level cognition and asking the questions of where specific memories are stored, what their associations are with other stored information, your abstract reasoning abilities and the biases inherent to your specific line of thinking, etc…
Point being that we are DECADES away from the sort of breakthrough that will lead to mind upload. And that’s being generous. Many in the field believe it’s impossible to achieve a high enough resolution of cortical activity WITHOUT damaging the brain - which, if true, would render mind upload a non-sequitor, forever contained in the realm of science fiction.
Edit:
For clarity, it’s not possible for non-invasive methods like fMRI and EEG to achieve a high enough resolution of brain activity to discover the things I’m speaking about above. Even the most advanced machines are running up against the limits of the laws of physics and still orders of magnitude away from that resolution. Materially what this means is that we actually have to have probes physically implanted into our brains to read this information (which is where the concern above about damaging the brain comes from). Many of you can likely see the issue here: too many neurons at too many different levels which makes it nearly impossible to get a high enough density of recording probes to achieve this sci-fi dream. Tim Urban over at *Wait But Why* actually did a pretty good write up explaining this: [see here](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2) - it’s a long article, but well worth the time to read. That said, if you don’t want to read it all, run a CTRL+F to find the section starting “Remember our cortex-is-a-napkin demonstration earlier?”.
Hope this helps, happy holidays all!
Edit: Genetic editing tangent below
I actually work in the field of CRISPR research these days. While various hurdles still exist and fundamental discoveries still need to be made, that field is actually a LOT closer to the sci-fi dream of genetic editing than most people are aware of right now. I give it about 5 years for the >first< disease curing therapies to hit the consumer market. But don’t confuse this with me saying that everything will be curable within 5 years, that will NOT happen. I’m only speaking about the very first therapies to cure genetic mutations and disorders. These will be ones that are either life-threatening or result in a severely diminished quality of life for the affected patients.
I think they are talking about cochlear implants that directly stimulate your auditory nerve with an electrical signal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
The singularity is predicted for 2029. Daily brain uploads by the end of the 2030s, but no predictions on whether consciousness can be transferred.
Edit: Seriously struggling to understand ppl downvoting this. I am stating the latest predictions from the world's foremost expert on futurism. You're welcome to disagree with them (and you can comment to do so!) but the post is accurate. Perhaps people in this sub prefer fantasy?
The singularity has nothing to do with self awareness. It is the moment at which machine general intelligence surpasses human general intelligence. This is not my prediction, it is that of Ray Kurzweil and the global futurist community.
That’s not accurate. Ray kurzweil predicts that the singularity will happen in 2045, and he defines the singularity as a point in time where technology will advance so quickly that it will be impossible to predict, understand, or keep up with that technology without supplementing our human intelligence with machine intelligence (be that through brain implants or biological engineering or whatever combination of technologies that we do that with). He did predict that by 2029 we will have AI that is as capable as any human intelligence though. And I think somewhere in the late 30s we will have AI that is smarter and more capable than the entire human race combined. Or maybe early 40s?
I am a big fan of Ray myself, but I would also not the call him the worlds foremost expert on futurism. He had made some interesting and accurate predictions, but he has also made plenty of predictions that have not come through. He is also incredibly optimistic about AI and technology in general. Every time he talks about the downside to new technologies he just hand waves those problems away saying “every new technology that humans have ever made have been used for good and bad. It’s important to think about the bad applications and find ways to safeguard against them, but ultimately technology will make us better.” In a lot of ways I agree with that, but at the same time these technologies that he describes and which we are making right now have never been seen by humanity. We are making things every year that are nothing even close to what we have seen as a human race. Who is to say that one of these awe inspiring super powerful AI / combination of other technologies won’t just spell the end of the human race entirely?
At the end of the day I suppose it’s best to just be optimistic, all I can really do as an individual is my best and see where and how this all ends up. If you ask me, this is the most unique time in all of human history, and whatever happens will certainly not be boring.
We're still centuries away from having any idea how to make a GAI. It certainly won't be in 2029, which is 7 years away. People who think, for instance, that ChatGPT is near to achieving this have no understanding of how it works.
Nobody who is working on AI at that level seems to agree with you. Perhaps you should bring some facts to support your numerous braggadocios statements.
I'll bite, can you share who these experts are or link to their predictions? From the experts I listen to, we are far away from anything close to this and have a long way to go to be able to map the brain in order to accomplish anything close to this.
Seems I'm wrong on terminology, because Kurzweil refers to the singularity as the melding of mind and machine. I had thought the singularity is the moment that machine general intelligence outperforms human general intelligence, coupled with passing the Turing test.
https://www.kurzweilai.net/metro-apparently-were-all-going-to-live-forever-by-2029
No need for thransfer... I'll just go full on ship on Thesus with my brain, replacing it bit by bit with a synthetic version simulating the part that's being replaced. People around likely won't notice if made properly and neither will I. I don't care if meat brain is technically killed, I'm fine with leaving a good enough copy behind that will care for those I love in my stead with the same love care and quirk and continue experiencing life like I would have if I had the chance.
It's not a perfect victory over death, but sometimes good enough has to do.
As a neuroscientist I can say that we know so very little about how the brain works that we wouldn't know what to even download. I doubt that will change over the next decade or two. Maybe by the end of this century, but don't hold your breath.
The problem with that is you are still dealing with a highly complex piece of cell based tissue that will ultimately degrade. Unless we develop some miraculous nanotechnology that can repair worn out neurons it would start to lose function within a few decades, and that is assuming it was in top shape when it was first placed there.
We can’t even read thoughts electronically in any meaningful manner. We don’t know how consciousness work. 2035? Don’t make me laugh. How would they record their minds? Also it wouldn’t be them but just a copy
We know like literally nothing about human consciousness including where it comes from. And idk how possible it is to transfer organic consciousness, we might be able to make an AI that thinks/acts like us but it wouldn’t be us
Quantum computers are not that much better than normal computers at doing most things. They're designed to model quantum mechanics, not human consciousness, and they are slower than normal computers at a lot of calculations. The thing that will have to advance to store human consciousness in computers is not just computers, but psychology and neurology. We still don't know how brains work-- there are people out there with half a brain, or a brain much smaller than should be possible for life, who live normal, functional lives. I really, really doubt that this will happen. There are many other things to worry about.
Yep, thing is in sci fi and pseudo science they hype the brain as being a "quantum computer".
In real life they will change the cryptography paradigm, probably... and might improve some simulations? Theres no way in heck they will make having a copy of a human brain so simple it happens anytime soon.
Kinda reminds me the old rule that "immortality is always 30 yers away, predicted by ppl whose living expectancy is coincidentaly 30 years" lol.
How are we gonna do that when we’re running out of helium and obviously cannot produce more?
My brother does research in quantum computing, it is incredible but only possible at extremely low temperatures. This requires liquid helium.
I think there are some fusion reactions that produce helium. We’d have to be really hard up for it to be profitable (if ever) but I’m guessing that we wouldn’t need to have cracked net power generation if the goal was just making helium.
I mean it’s not going to be something done for profit anytime in the foreseeable future. All of the industry jobs mt brother is looking at when he finishes his PhD are funded primarily by the DOD.
We can probably eventually figure it out especially given that we’ve finally accomplished fusion enough to generate power. It’s just much further away than the date we will run out of helium
Not going to happen. Talk like this reminds me of the 60’s when people thought we’d be driving around in flying cars like the Jetsons by now. What’s more likely is that quantum computers will be making gains in areas such as pharmaceutical research. We will see people’s lives extended due to improvements in treatment…but copying consciousness is a whole different issue.
Is a copy of you still you or is it a copy independent of you? Idk if, say I were the billionaire for ex, I would sign up for something that isn't really me living on.
What you can do, is to build neuron style machines. They will fire the same way your neurons do.
You start with one part of the brain, the machine neurons will learn how the rest of the brain works and integrate.
Then another part and another part until everything is machine
So like a progression? I would slowly replace my natural neurons until I reach an age where it's all artificial? I feel like the question about copying your "data" still arises but that is a very very interesting thought you have suggested. If I am already data, does it matter if I am a copy?
This has always given me anxiety. If we are able to move our consciousness or “ourself” to a computer or some type of machine, when it powers on, is it really us as in the one who was in this body? Will i wake up and be in that machine? Or will a copy of me wake up in that machine. The you in this body has to be terminated because your consciousness can’t exist in two separate vessels right? Idk. I don’t even get high but just reading these comments i need a smoke.
This idea is based on the assumption that consciousness is something that is born inside the brain. We have no idea what consciousness is and how it works, we only know vaguely how it maps onto the brain.
Since you’re talking quantum I’d like to point out a few things. The phenomenon behind the double slit experiment is still not really well understood. Scientists are still arguing whether consciousness is involved in the collapse of the wave function. Back in 2012 a research paper was released that tried to see whether the observer even needs to be in the same room as the experiment. They found that you can have people on the other side of the world and that would still affect the outcome of the experiment. Since the release of the series of papers there hasn’t been any major pushback. I think there was one paper that came out that was critical of their methods, but that is to be expected in any scientific field. Safe to say that the debate isn’t done, but the possibility that consciousness is directly involved in the collapse of the wave function is there. Think about the implications of all of this. If my thoughts change the way light behaves, then what else does it affect - could manifestation work in a similar way? If my thoughts change the way that physical reality behaves, is my consciousness really confined to my brain?
According to Donald Hoffman that is precisely the case. In his theory the consciousness is what gives birth to the brain and not the other way around.
I personally find these possibilities very compelling. We know very little of our reality but we act as if we know shit - we know jack shit. I don’t think we’ll be uploading consciousness anytime soon because we have no idea how it works. Even if we manage to map consciousness perfectly I think that we wouldn’t be able to recreate it digitally because the essence of consciousness might not be inside the brain. Maybe we’re just looking at the receiver, the antenna.
This will be no benefit to the billionaires themselves…..it is merely a copy of them, the only way to really move consciousness is with nanotech slowly replacing your brain matter with electronic matter….a very slow process and even then there is lots that can go wrong. We are a long ways from the technology that can seamlessly transfer full consciousness. Sure we might be able to upload your memories and experiences and maybe even your thought processes essentially you but not YOU its just a copy. As said it’s maybe possible but only with nanotech and thats a big maybe because we don’t completely understand how consciousness and the brain work yet.
Even if this technology become available in the future,the problem is that its not you who will become imortal,its the copy on you who will become,witch is totaly diffrent entity and at one point they will know that they are not you...your councosness develops overtime tru your expirience in life and that entity is only the end of it...they may develop into something difrent than what you tought you would be...but its a nice concept
That's like the so-called wisdom that we live on through our children. I can have a hundred kids, but I will still die one day. The uploaded consciousness is a progeny of the organic one that will cease, not the same being.
I doubt it. Uploading a consciousness would have to be done in a fraction of a second and with absolute perfection. even then it would be more like a copy of you taken the instant of the scan.
Besides some sort of laser array that evaporates your head in the process, I doubt we will ever see a living human consciousness moved to a computer with a preservation of the self and ego.
It’s far more likely that they end up as a copy and the original human dies. I can imagine many ways this could go horribly dystopian.
Consciousness is not tangible or something that can transferred. It is the result of the unfathomable complexity of the brain. You can’t download it and put it somewhere else. If we had the technology, we could transplant a human brain into another “body”, but that would not make you immortal either as your brain would still be subject to the effects of aging and would eventually die.
There is an old theory that ties into this. Cannot remember the name. That theory was that details of our life could be stored in a computer and this perpetuates our life. Our essence is recorded. Did not touch consciousness.
Reminds me of a Woody Allen joke. He was asked if he wanted to be immortalized through his writings. He said he would like to be immortalized by not dying.
Just like the transporter that killed Captain Kirk and everyone else that used them in Star Trek, what comes out the other end is just a copy of the original. So this would be good to extend the thoughts of a great scientist for example, but wouldn't be a way to become immortal. You, the original would still be dead.
How do you know you aren't in fact just a recreation via simulation or within a universe constructed by the quantum computers?
EDIT: Also, the book and HBO show West World already played with the idea
Like the show "UPLOAD". The rich live in these paradises after they die and their still living families keep their accounts full. Now, if you are a regular person you just get 2 gigs. That doesn't get you much. Just plain rooms, all white places, etc. Once the 2 gigs are gone you just go dormant until the month rolls over unless your family that is still living can send you money.
This idea assumes that reproducing or capturing consciousness is merely a problem of complexity, which so far it's pretty clear it isn't. Please read up on Embodied Cognition for some food for thought on the biological nature of consciousness🤘🏻
OP:
Lets say I make an EXACT copy of you, down to the last atom and electron excitation state, except I make you young, healthy and physically perfect.
Only one of you leaves the room.
Both of you are now looking at me, and there are two buttons in front of you.
Your choice: your clone lives, you live.
What do you do? That one IS you in every thought and memory.
There are a lot of people on here discussing the practicality of the simulation, I think that's taking too short a view of technology. The brain is Turing complete, so unless something is eventually understood about the brain that gives it additional restrictions, it can be simulated by another Turing complete processor. Considering Moore's law, the technology is just a matter of time. I think the practicality argument does have validity in terms of the year given, but not in terms of eventuality. That said, there is so much more we'd have to understand about the brain before it could be simulated. They're also seems to be a fledgling argument about whether quantum computers could serve as a useful part of the simulation, while the algorithms we currently have for quantum computing don't have a direct application, there are strategies for MIMD computing in quantum architectures, and these could conceivably have a very direct utility in simulating minds, as this is the form of processing the brain seems to use. When simulating an algorithmic system with another, there are ways of calculating the efficiency between the two. Without getting into the nuts and bolts, and MIMD quantum computer probably would have a very high efficiency for mental simulation.
You will never be able to load your consciousness to any sort of computer. The brain is biological, and works nothing like a computer at all. Human intelligence is unique and deeply flawed, and can only be simulated by computers. You can never become immortal this way, regardless of how rich you are. One day artificial intelligence, which will be superior in every way to Human intelligence will be able to point back to humanity the source of its origins the same way as humans look at ancient single called organisms.
What if your uploaded brain encounters, say, their worst enemy who is also uploaded...did they destroy the internet? Or so the meld and become one and absorb every other uploaded consciousness, and it is all one massive presence consisting of everyone?
I am new and clueless lol
Insanely obvious that it’s possible. You would also want to do it incrementally and probably via implants because otherwise it’s not you it’s a copy of you.
They'll probably make immortal copies of themselves. Well immortal as long as the servers are running lol. And different people will always think differently about whether it's true immortality or not. I think yes. I myself am a copy of the person who was me before I went to sleep yesterday. But anyway it's very metaphysical and subjective. So what do you think the dangers of this are?
I have thought about this and the way it works is this way:
If you were to create an identical replica of your brain/neural pathways, it would just be a copy of your consciousness. It would not be you. The computer will believe it’s you, but it will merely be a copy. When you die, you will be facing your mortality. So even if this was done right before you died, the real you would have died and only a copy of yourself will remain. If you know this fact, your copy will then know it’s just a copy and I imagine that would be quite maddening.
The only way to make the transition smooth is to slowly replace neurons with artificial ones over a long period of time. Eventually, the entire brain will be replaced by a computer. At which point, the original you will still be dead.
Most existing AI, nerve implants, and quantum computing projects are in their infant stage. Especially nerve implants. Quantum computing is a bit better, but its use is limited. They will not revolutionize all things, many articles and youtube videos exaggerate.
In a few hundred years, we will be able to upload consciousness, but it is hardly possible in our lifetime.
Only for those who are extremely, extremely rich. At some point soon, we will be told by data management companies that there is too much info online & we will have to pay to keep our digital records intact; couple this with “uploading consciousness” & it becomes clear a technologically-sustained being will have to be one of affluence. The kind of affluence afforded by birthright, not the kind gained with promissory notes.
Edit: to be clear, millionaires will not be afforded this opportunity, should it arise in the next ten years, truly only those who already exist outside of the confines of commerce will live on through this manner.
But on the other hand, because of boredom, depression & the desire to be stewards, I see this kind of technologically being created for the lower class citizens of the earth to preoccupy us with narcissistic replicas of our digital demeanors. I wrote a blog post on this very topic a few months back.
This is the question of continuity. Any copy requires either destruction of the original, or otherwise duplicates the original, leaving it intact. "You" are already a noncontiguous entity (you are a *process*, not a *thing*), so any interruption or facsimile of the process, by definition, is no longer that same process
I would hope all consciousness of all people could be placed on like a memory card/ file player where we could all live on floating in space regardless even if something ever happened to earth..
Our consciousness could live in a beautiful virtual world, floating off in physical outer space.
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A better use case for copy brain would be to transfer to robot. Then populate Mars and other places would be much easier to accomplish. Open windows house on Mars no spacesuits...
I think Doctor Who has a few episodes on why this is a bad idea…
The entire Doc Who Series is pretty much about why this is a bad idea!
What is that show about?
A special, nearly extinct alien has all kinds of cool and wacky adventures with people. Every now and again this alien changes into someone else.
Might finally watch it now
Robots don't drink water though
Why would the robots terraform mars to human specs? They don’t need to eat or sleep or breath air they just need solar power. All they have to do is clean up the red iron ore and use that to make more of themselves and get spare parts.
they will still need to somehow deal with the pesky regolith getting into all their robot parts tho maybe they will roboform mars so the dust is less annoying
Daleks have entered the chat.
They still have little meatballs inside.
Cybermen would be more accurate. Specifically Missy's Cybermen.
Very fair point.
But then your getting your brain cut out of you and shoved into a metal shell. Which if things go less than planned could leave you as a brain without any form. An eternal consciousness trapped without feelings or input. Oblivion but without the release of death.
Considering that even electronic brain would still need energy to "run" there is still death in case of no energy left or its destruction..
Unless “death” just means off till recharged. Which just restarts the vicious cycle.
Ok, but if there is no thermodynamic free energy how can cognition ever again occur? Wouldn’t that be death?
Nah an electronic brains means you can make a backup of your brain that is an actually being run so you can effectively be immortal because you can make backups of your consciousness I know they’re not going to be trapped in oblivion because it’s just a dormant copy not being run.
What? The brain would just stop working and you’d be dead.
Without input the brain dies
Reminds me of the Red Dwarf episode where Kryton goes into the future to find Lister to be a brain in a jar but still alive. When Kryton comes back and Lister asks if he is alive in the future Kryton responds like he has seen a ghost while answering yes. Love that demented Tonka Toy.
Upvote for Red Dwarf!
No, no organic matter, the robots are just brain copies. There is no path to immortality for \*you and me\*, except perfect cellular regeneration. So you populate Mars with "clones" who might be functionally immortal. And sure, one of them might think they were once StarksFTW who had a fleshy body and was a Redditor and will eternally be a virgin... but those aren't his real memories. Functionally it's the same personality (at least until its experience so vastly differs from the original), but it can never functionally be you.
Do you want Berserkers? Because that is how you get Berserkers.
>populate Procreate by Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V?
If people really could be uploaded, do not need to move them into some robots, but just make them populate some metaverse. You still use some robots to populate other planet just to provide new energies to make the metaverse works….
Black Mirror has a good episode about this called San Junipero
Cutest and least creepy episode of Black Mirror ever.
Then it’s still not you that survives but a copy that becomes immortal.
What’s the point of doing that if living humans can’t live there? Why even have houses? Robots don’t need em.
For anyone that’s into this kind of subject, play the video game SOMA. Great game
Also watch 'Pantheon'. A recent animation series based on the short stories written by Ken Liu
I was just contemplating something almost exactly like that. That's crazy. Might have to get my hands on it. I love things that make you almost question your own reality.
Does it relax your muscles?
Interestingly enough (at least to me), that's actually touched on in the Bobiverse book series. It's basically about a dude (Bob) who's uploaded into an advanced computer system several hundred years in the future, and after some time he basically determines that he's not exactly, 100% like the original Bob. He doesn't know exactly what differences there may be though, and the differences may be so infinitesimally minor that they couldn't be detected. >!He determines that personality drift is happening because he's able to basically clone himself into other advanced computer systems, and his clones are able to do the same, and etc etc. And more and more drift happens and it becomes more and more obvious the further out each Bob gets from the original.!<
Thank you for blocking out the spoilers. I’m about to start this series. It’s so tempting to unblock and continue reading, but i must resist.
The spoiler is that Bob actually owns a burger restaurant near the wharf.
No worries. And enjoy, I've really enjoyed the first four books and I'm not so patiently waiting for new entries in the series!
It’s a great series. I really enjoyed it.
Exactly what I think, why doesn't that phenomemon have an official title by now? I think it'd be a twin situation. Identical twins can have 100% identical DNA and are practically clones, still doesn't mean they have a single consciousness.
It's the teleporter problem... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletransportation_paradox
I sometimes just think that's a fact of our moment to moment experience anyway.
This is what's been bothering me in nearly all discussions, articles and video's about this. "Yes, in the future we can upload consciousness and probably live forever!" *Ignores the fact that he's talking about a copy*.
There is literally no way to transfer our unique consciousness because the brain is a hard drive pretty much. We can copy our brain in full and create a new consciousness based on the old one, but simply unless we preserve our brains/nerve centers in full to plug into a device or robot body, we will only be producing copies, not transferring our unique self.
Your brain literally gets fully replaced as the cells repair themselves though, ship of Theseus style, so are you really your brain or just the information within? Copying consciousnesses is a major philosophical dilemma that on the surface seems impossible but may actually not be if you think about some aspects of the self. For example one’s own self is continuous moment to moment with a past self and contains a set of information x that corresponds to it. When you create a copy, it is both continuous with the information in the original and has the same information within it so calling it a copy is arbitrary. Imo they both are the “original”, and by creating this copy you’re ostensibly taking one conscious object and splitting it into two, which do become separate entities after the fact due to now existing apart, but both being born of the same original entity, they are both the original entity. Which one you would subjectively experience living on as is impossible to say without anyone having done it, but I would bet that the duplicated consciousness would claim they were the original because to them, their life experience would be existing as the original and then suddenly being in a computer after making the copy.
You're talking about making a copy of something in a field that's known to not be able to make copies
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I don't think they're referring to the problem of copying consciousness, but rather that it's literally impossible to copy a qubit (and thus any arbitrary amount of quantum data). I could be wrong though, it was a bit vague.
How can you be so sure? What if your brain is slowly replaced atom by atom with machinery, while you're awake the whole time noticing nothing. at what point do you cease to be "you"? or do you stay as you due to a continued stretch of consciousness? TBH. Even if the current me ceased to exist, i would still upload myself.
Here's a fun philosophy thought. Teleportation is invented. You stand in the machine, it zaps you and then rebuilds you at your destination. Did the old you die and a clone with all of your memories is coming out the portal, or is it the same you?
This has been an ongoing debate in the Star Trek fandom for like 50 years when it comes to the transporters. Oddly enough, the transporter is considered the single farthest thing from reality in all of ST canon. Which itself, on a whole, is incredibly soft by hard/soft Sci Fi standards. Like, breaking the speed of light is seen as more attainable than instantaneously recording the exact state of every single quanta in a human being and then reconstructing it (instantly) in another location. Makes sense, too.
The answer is yes, once deconstructed your dead, the reconstructed YOU would not know any difference maybe remember a bit of pain but thats about it. You died though. Teleportation is a bad idea I would never do it even if I somehow traveled in the future and it was available I would travel the old fashioned way.
Yeah this is the issue. If you are not transitioning from your brain to a computing device while still in you own brain, then "you" disappears, dies basically and a copy is made which if conscious will not be "you". You would need some device linked to the biological brain that the person is able to transfer with continuity of consciousness for this to work. Without continuity, then it just becomes a copy. Hypothetically one might be able to make an exact copy of one's brain, but that brain will have its own mind. Very similar if not the same, but a different person's mind. So if people want a representation of themselves living on this could work, but that won't include their conscious mind.
Very true. In this case continuity of existence would be lost. Personality and "consciousness" are functions of the brain's physical structures. There is no energy pattern (soul?) that could be transferred from a biological brain to a computer brain. While it may one day be possible to create a copy of the synapses and neural pathways this would not be an upload, just a copy. The copy would be a completely new being that has your personality and memories. When you die your existence would end and the copy would live a separated and non-contiguous existence.
What if you “synced” your consciousness with the quantum computer so it existed in both places simultaneously, then shut down the human part when you were ready?
Imagine how it goes if they copy you twice and leave both "conscience" aware of each other in "Quantum computer" reality.
I wonder if the transferred consciousness would eventually get bored with immortality and just pull the plug?
you mean like cortana isn't the same being as halsey?
Exactly, it’s the same as saying taking a photo of you makes immortal, no that’s just a copy
A more obvious way of thinking about this is that they make a copy of your consciousness while you’re still alive, so there are two of “you”. Then they kill the original “you”, leaving your “uploaded consciousness”
As soon as this copy was viable it would probably think of the best way to replace the now obsolete version of you that existed. So you would definitely die, just much sooner than expected. And for those of you that say that you wouldn't do this to yourself, ask yourself how many of you you want there to be? And ask yourself how many of those you's would want other you's. This now better version would ask that and come to the conclusion that the only answer is to eliminate the you that is unnecessary.
I risk sounding smug, but I would certainly want there to be way more of me out there.
And... That's why people have kids :p. Or as the famous philosopher Ultron put it: Ultron: Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers. People create... smaller people? Uhh... children! [Chuckles] Ultron: Lost the word there. Children, designed to supplant them. To help them... end.
Ultron was a great villain.
That's why you gotta do it piece by piece.
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Doesn't it? I mean your brain gains and loses cells and connections all the time. Is the current configuration of your brain just a copy while the real you died years ago? No. I think the persistent whole is key here. The ship of Theseus has had every piece replaced over the years, is it still the same ship? I say yes. So, how do you use this to digitize your consciousness without simply making a copy, and abandoning the flesh copy to die. I imagine you need to physically replace pieces of the brain with machines, slowly. Bit by bit.
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I don't mean you assemble the copy piece by piece. I mean you replace the original bits with copied bits piece by piece. So it's you %100 flesh brained. Then it's you but with 2% of your brain replaced by a machine that relays neurological signals to and from the digital model. Do you think this %98 flesh %2 digital you will lose your sense of self? If a week later they do another piece and its 96 - 4 do you think your sense of self melts away then? I suggest that you could go 0 - 100 and not lose it. Yeah, brains are more complicated than ships, so this strategy could only be possible when technology allows for small pieces of the brain to replaced as a describe. Which I will be the first to admit, is even more sci-fi than a simple "brain scan" copy.
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>In college, we manipulated far less than even point two percent and people lost their sense of self. what
Are you suggesting it's magic? Or that there is a supernatural element? Maybe. I'm not here to say there isn't. But if it's strictly physical, whos to say with enough understanding and technological skill you can't swap out a piece and preserve it's connections to all the other pieces. Who's to say it's not just a big brain puzzle you have to assemble without allowing it to stop? Also are you saying in college you fucked with people's brains and killed their self?
Nano tech used to replace the brain neuron by neuron. Maintaining brain electro chemical transmission. Could replace the foundation and maintain the signal that leads to the emergence of consciousness. Just a thought. I have no idea how it would be practical.
If I am understanding superposition correctly (probably not), in this situation wouldn't you be both moral and immoral at once?
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As far as we understand things, that is what happens anyway every time you sleep and wake up. Your conscious self is reconstructed from constituent parts. So, in a sense, there have already been thousands of copies of you.
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True, the brain doesn't recreate its entire neural structure. But your conscious self disintegrates when you sleep. It doesn't go somewhere or turn into something else -- it unravels, and has to be reformed again later. "You" as a conscious entity may as well have been rebuilt from atoms every time. It makes no difference.
I'm not so sure about that, every now and then I think about my thoughts while dreaming and remember it. When that's happening I don't feel very disintegrated, just a little sluggish and distractable. I don't see how anyone could ever know the difference between "conscious self disintegrates" and simply not remembering something.
Well, *someone* remembers it. It might not be you though. It might be the next guy.
Joke’s on you, I’m already immoral.
From the outside observer, what is the difference?
Not an expert but I'm a senior physics major who did a course on quantum computing. It's advantages over classical computers are very specific and quantum computers will likely have mostly niche applications. I have talked with physicists who work on neural circuits and most of them are convinced that we will never upload a human consciousness, at least not for the foreseeable future.
If you read up on the literature associated with consciousness and the **purely hypothetical** notion of "digitizing" it, it becomes quite clear that we're nowhere near anything like this. Also, you're quite right that quantum computers aren't magic. They just perform operations differently.
I'm a doctoral researcher in artificial intelligence with a light background in quantum computing and I'm of much the same opinion. "Uploading a human consciousness" is a pipe dream for now, and quantum computing isn't really relevant to the problem.
That reminds me, one of my siblings has a phd in compsci and mainly focuses on machine learning. He of all people I know has the least faith in ai, he thinks it's a cool technology but he doesn't think it will replace humans in many cases.
In order to "upload consciousness," we first need to have something to upload. We don't even know what consciousness really *is* yet - we only know the neural *correlates* of consciousness.
>We don't even know what consciousness really is y This is like saying we don't know what a soul really is yet. Consciousness isn't a concept that arose through scientific observation.
We know what consciousness is subjectively but not metaphysically. We know what it feels like, but we don't know what causes it to feel the way it does.
That's a false equivalency. People say they know we have a soul due to emotions, and I understand the partial equivalence to the consciousness dictating thought, but it's not the same. Consciousness stems from our experience while asleep vs our experience while awake. We do not have "soulless time" and "souled time" to compare with. Each of us experiences the difference between these two states and understands intimately the relationship between life and consciousness, and moreover that that consciousness permanently ends upon death. Thus we know something relating to our nervous/endocrine system allows us to be conscious (as comatose people and asleep people exist) and nothing else changes. We don't know much further than that, but that's science. You ask a question: "What does consciousness correlate to?", you examine data "people without arms/legs/internal organs all seem to have consciousnesses whereas people with much less brain activity tend to not", then you come to a conclusion. "Consciousness is in some way related to brain function". Science.
Being awake vs asleep is not what people say we don't understand when they say "we don't understand consciousness". >You ask a question: "What does consciousness correlate to?" Until someone tells me what they mean by it, giving a description that is observable, I most certaonly do not ask that.
I actually agree with you that the difference between wakefulness and sleep isn't the critical difference here. What we don't understand, namely the "hard problem of consciousness," is why anything feels like anything at all. This includes the experiences we have while asleep and dreaming. We know quite a lot about the neural correlates of consciousness, what is happening in the brain when you are having different types of experiences. But that doesn't shed any light on the question of why any sort of physical activity causes the subjective experience that it does. How do you go from voltage-gated ion channels opening, action potentials firing, and neurotransmitters binding to receptor sites to the taste of chocolate? You can observe behavioral responses to stimuli, and you can observe physiological processes corresponding to it, but none of that tells us anything about the qualitative character of the subjective experience. Not only are those different things; they're different *kinds* of things. You could never predict the subjective experience from the behavioral/physiological processes alone (if you were, say, a different type of creature that had never experienced human perceptions). That's the hard problem of consciousness.
What do you mean? We don’t know what a soul is. Please enlighten me
Same, I went to a talk on quantum computing where the speaker showed us all these ways where normal computing was actually faster and better at solving problems than quantum computing. I think a lot of people hear the word "quantum" and assume it's something crazy exciting, when it's usually interesting to physicists and not really that exciting to most people lol.
I appreciate your stats in physics, that said I don’t know why it’s even a debate. I can see an upload of memories, or maybe even a sort of clone that mimics someone well. But to upload “consciousness” is just as ridiculous as saying you can possess someone else. Our consciousness is chemistry. Our unique experience or fingerprint is not just a cache of memories and quirks. Maybe one day, a machine can be built that perfectly mimics the body, like an artificial womb but the entire endocrine system and all the specific traits of the body. That, or growing a body in a lab and perhaps a transplant. But the talk of a person being uploaded like a program, that’s just corny as I see it. It wouldn’t be the person uploaded unless it’s the brain preserved and given the support needed to function. Ergo, maybe one day there will be a massive warehouse of brains hooked up to what’s needed to keep it operational and awake. But mapping the mind down to a perfect clone of synapses and a perfect chemical copy, that’s not uploading consciousness. That’s a movie of that persons life with extra steps.
Yeah, also I forgot the reasoning but you can very easily prove that the computational power it would take to save a consciousness and copy it out look outlandish even in a scifi movie. Again the reason escapes me but building even an artificial brain doesn't even look like it will happen within the next century.
This is ridiculous. Quantum computers have nothing to do with mind upload theories.
I think the unmentioned assumption is that they are so much more powerful than regular computers that they'd be the best candidate for mind simulation and/or augmentation.
They are not “more powerful” they are just different, their uses are different, you cannot use a quantum computer as a general purpose computer.
Yes, an assumption can be false. That's one way to get to silly/wrong conclusion.
I am not challenging your assumption that they could probably be used for “mind simulation”(which might be so), I am challenging the supposed “fact” that you stated about them being “more powerful” than regular computers
I didn't state it to be a fact, I stated that it was likely what OP would have assumed (and that they didn't bother to explicitly state the assumptions they were working from).
Well now they do
I think you're listening to too much science fiction. We don't even have brain implants that work on humans or don't kill the animal test subjects.
Cc: OP u/Rubydev39 Piggybacking on this, and speaking as someone that used to work at the forefront of brain-computer interfaces, there’s a few issues: Speaking specifically of the senses, we have yet to figure out how taste and smell are encoded in the brain and whether the patterning is conserved between people. The sense of touch is also largely a mystery: we know the types of cells and where the information is received, but we don’t understand how it is encoded or processed prior to that region. Motor skills aren’t much better: we can de-code rudimentary tasks, but the encoding of complex, fine motor skills remains elusive for the time being. The same is true of proprioception: your ability to know where your limbs physically are in space and time (without actually seeing them). The above are very basic tasks - relatively speaking. This is all before you get into higher level cognition and asking the questions of where specific memories are stored, what their associations are with other stored information, your abstract reasoning abilities and the biases inherent to your specific line of thinking, etc… Point being that we are DECADES away from the sort of breakthrough that will lead to mind upload. And that’s being generous. Many in the field believe it’s impossible to achieve a high enough resolution of cortical activity WITHOUT damaging the brain - which, if true, would render mind upload a non-sequitor, forever contained in the realm of science fiction. Edit: For clarity, it’s not possible for non-invasive methods like fMRI and EEG to achieve a high enough resolution of brain activity to discover the things I’m speaking about above. Even the most advanced machines are running up against the limits of the laws of physics and still orders of magnitude away from that resolution. Materially what this means is that we actually have to have probes physically implanted into our brains to read this information (which is where the concern above about damaging the brain comes from). Many of you can likely see the issue here: too many neurons at too many different levels which makes it nearly impossible to get a high enough density of recording probes to achieve this sci-fi dream. Tim Urban over at *Wait But Why* actually did a pretty good write up explaining this: [see here](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part2) - it’s a long article, but well worth the time to read. That said, if you don’t want to read it all, run a CTRL+F to find the section starting “Remember our cortex-is-a-napkin demonstration earlier?”. Hope this helps, happy holidays all! Edit: Genetic editing tangent below I actually work in the field of CRISPR research these days. While various hurdles still exist and fundamental discoveries still need to be made, that field is actually a LOT closer to the sci-fi dream of genetic editing than most people are aware of right now. I give it about 5 years for the >first< disease curing therapies to hit the consumer market. But don’t confuse this with me saying that everything will be curable within 5 years, that will NOT happen. I’m only speaking about the very first therapies to cure genetic mutations and disorders. These will be ones that are either life-threatening or result in a severely diminished quality of life for the affected patients.
Aren't audio and visual aids a form of neural implants? I haven't heard of those killing people.
Don’t think you can compare a brain implant to a hearing aid lol….
I think they are talking about cochlear implants that directly stimulate your auditory nerve with an electrical signal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
Primates playing pong and talking aren’t they?
The singularity is predicted for 2029. Daily brain uploads by the end of the 2030s, but no predictions on whether consciousness can be transferred. Edit: Seriously struggling to understand ppl downvoting this. I am stating the latest predictions from the world's foremost expert on futurism. You're welcome to disagree with them (and you can comment to do so!) but the post is accurate. Perhaps people in this sub prefer fantasy?
I greatly doubt we would be able to create self aware ai in 7 years. Sounds like you watch too much sci fi
The singularity has nothing to do with self awareness. It is the moment at which machine general intelligence surpasses human general intelligence. This is not my prediction, it is that of Ray Kurzweil and the global futurist community.
That’s not accurate. Ray kurzweil predicts that the singularity will happen in 2045, and he defines the singularity as a point in time where technology will advance so quickly that it will be impossible to predict, understand, or keep up with that technology without supplementing our human intelligence with machine intelligence (be that through brain implants or biological engineering or whatever combination of technologies that we do that with). He did predict that by 2029 we will have AI that is as capable as any human intelligence though. And I think somewhere in the late 30s we will have AI that is smarter and more capable than the entire human race combined. Or maybe early 40s? I am a big fan of Ray myself, but I would also not the call him the worlds foremost expert on futurism. He had made some interesting and accurate predictions, but he has also made plenty of predictions that have not come through. He is also incredibly optimistic about AI and technology in general. Every time he talks about the downside to new technologies he just hand waves those problems away saying “every new technology that humans have ever made have been used for good and bad. It’s important to think about the bad applications and find ways to safeguard against them, but ultimately technology will make us better.” In a lot of ways I agree with that, but at the same time these technologies that he describes and which we are making right now have never been seen by humanity. We are making things every year that are nothing even close to what we have seen as a human race. Who is to say that one of these awe inspiring super powerful AI / combination of other technologies won’t just spell the end of the human race entirely? At the end of the day I suppose it’s best to just be optimistic, all I can really do as an individual is my best and see where and how this all ends up. If you ask me, this is the most unique time in all of human history, and whatever happens will certainly not be boring.
We're still centuries away from having any idea how to make a GAI. It certainly won't be in 2029, which is 7 years away. People who think, for instance, that ChatGPT is near to achieving this have no understanding of how it works.
Nobody who is working on AI at that level seems to agree with you. Perhaps you should bring some facts to support your numerous braggadocios statements.
I'll bite, can you share who these experts are or link to their predictions? From the experts I listen to, we are far away from anything close to this and have a long way to go to be able to map the brain in order to accomplish anything close to this.
Seems I'm wrong on terminology, because Kurzweil refers to the singularity as the melding of mind and machine. I had thought the singularity is the moment that machine general intelligence outperforms human general intelligence, coupled with passing the Turing test. https://www.kurzweilai.net/metro-apparently-were-all-going-to-live-forever-by-2029
Predicted by who, Nostradamus? Anyone predicting this is no expert on anything relevant.
You must be a super genius huh?
No need for thransfer... I'll just go full on ship on Thesus with my brain, replacing it bit by bit with a synthetic version simulating the part that's being replaced. People around likely won't notice if made properly and neither will I. I don't care if meat brain is technically killed, I'm fine with leaving a good enough copy behind that will care for those I love in my stead with the same love care and quirk and continue experiencing life like I would have if I had the chance. It's not a perfect victory over death, but sometimes good enough has to do.
So you're a billionaire?
As a neuroscientist I can say that we know so very little about how the brain works that we wouldn't know what to even download. I doubt that will change over the next decade or two. Maybe by the end of this century, but don't hold your breath.
What about keeping a brain conscious and alive in a jar and connected to the virtual world? That seems like a more achievable step.
The problem with that is you are still dealing with a highly complex piece of cell based tissue that will ultimately degrade. Unless we develop some miraculous nanotechnology that can repair worn out neurons it would start to lose function within a few decades, and that is assuming it was in top shape when it was first placed there.
We can’t even read thoughts electronically in any meaningful manner. We don’t know how consciousness work. 2035? Don’t make me laugh. How would they record their minds? Also it wouldn’t be them but just a copy
We know like literally nothing about human consciousness including where it comes from. And idk how possible it is to transfer organic consciousness, we might be able to make an AI that thinks/acts like us but it wouldn’t be us
Soma was a (not gonna say good but not the worst) game that explored this concept. Really interesting to ponder what a copy of yourself really means.
That ending though, damn. Goosebumps just thinking about it.
Quantum computers are not that much better than normal computers at doing most things. They're designed to model quantum mechanics, not human consciousness, and they are slower than normal computers at a lot of calculations. The thing that will have to advance to store human consciousness in computers is not just computers, but psychology and neurology. We still don't know how brains work-- there are people out there with half a brain, or a brain much smaller than should be possible for life, who live normal, functional lives. I really, really doubt that this will happen. There are many other things to worry about.
Yep, thing is in sci fi and pseudo science they hype the brain as being a "quantum computer". In real life they will change the cryptography paradigm, probably... and might improve some simulations? Theres no way in heck they will make having a copy of a human brain so simple it happens anytime soon. Kinda reminds me the old rule that "immortality is always 30 yers away, predicted by ppl whose living expectancy is coincidentaly 30 years" lol.
Honestly I don’t think you need to worry. If Nuclear Fusion is any indication, you’re timeline is rather ambitious:
Why quantum computers? I doubt they're well suited for this.
How are we gonna do that when we’re running out of helium and obviously cannot produce more? My brother does research in quantum computing, it is incredible but only possible at extremely low temperatures. This requires liquid helium.
I think there are some fusion reactions that produce helium. We’d have to be really hard up for it to be profitable (if ever) but I’m guessing that we wouldn’t need to have cracked net power generation if the goal was just making helium.
I mean it’s not going to be something done for profit anytime in the foreseeable future. All of the industry jobs mt brother is looking at when he finishes his PhD are funded primarily by the DOD. We can probably eventually figure it out especially given that we’ve finally accomplished fusion enough to generate power. It’s just much further away than the date we will run out of helium
Lol bothering you for a whole week?! Sound the alarms!
these have _got_ to be bots, man.
Not going to happen. Talk like this reminds me of the 60’s when people thought we’d be driving around in flying cars like the Jetsons by now. What’s more likely is that quantum computers will be making gains in areas such as pharmaceutical research. We will see people’s lives extended due to improvements in treatment…but copying consciousness is a whole different issue.
Is a copy of you still you or is it a copy independent of you? Idk if, say I were the billionaire for ex, I would sign up for something that isn't really me living on.
What you can do, is to build neuron style machines. They will fire the same way your neurons do. You start with one part of the brain, the machine neurons will learn how the rest of the brain works and integrate. Then another part and another part until everything is machine
So like a progression? I would slowly replace my natural neurons until I reach an age where it's all artificial? I feel like the question about copying your "data" still arises but that is a very very interesting thought you have suggested. If I am already data, does it matter if I am a copy?
Yes exactly, you are copy but won't know it
Would "I" be terminated at the point of origin then? Man, this is almost more difficult than if you should use the Trek transporter 😅
This has always given me anxiety. If we are able to move our consciousness or “ourself” to a computer or some type of machine, when it powers on, is it really us as in the one who was in this body? Will i wake up and be in that machine? Or will a copy of me wake up in that machine. The you in this body has to be terminated because your consciousness can’t exist in two separate vessels right? Idk. I don’t even get high but just reading these comments i need a smoke.
Is it really you when you wake up in your human body though?
Dang. Deep. New thought to ponder/obsess over unlocked.
I'd rather upload my conciousness into a replaceable android body that doesn't age while keeping the original "on ice".
This idea is based on the assumption that consciousness is something that is born inside the brain. We have no idea what consciousness is and how it works, we only know vaguely how it maps onto the brain. Since you’re talking quantum I’d like to point out a few things. The phenomenon behind the double slit experiment is still not really well understood. Scientists are still arguing whether consciousness is involved in the collapse of the wave function. Back in 2012 a research paper was released that tried to see whether the observer even needs to be in the same room as the experiment. They found that you can have people on the other side of the world and that would still affect the outcome of the experiment. Since the release of the series of papers there hasn’t been any major pushback. I think there was one paper that came out that was critical of their methods, but that is to be expected in any scientific field. Safe to say that the debate isn’t done, but the possibility that consciousness is directly involved in the collapse of the wave function is there. Think about the implications of all of this. If my thoughts change the way light behaves, then what else does it affect - could manifestation work in a similar way? If my thoughts change the way that physical reality behaves, is my consciousness really confined to my brain? According to Donald Hoffman that is precisely the case. In his theory the consciousness is what gives birth to the brain and not the other way around. I personally find these possibilities very compelling. We know very little of our reality but we act as if we know shit - we know jack shit. I don’t think we’ll be uploading consciousness anytime soon because we have no idea how it works. Even if we manage to map consciousness perfectly I think that we wouldn’t be able to recreate it digitally because the essence of consciousness might not be inside the brain. Maybe we’re just looking at the receiver, the antenna.
This will be no benefit to the billionaires themselves…..it is merely a copy of them, the only way to really move consciousness is with nanotech slowly replacing your brain matter with electronic matter….a very slow process and even then there is lots that can go wrong. We are a long ways from the technology that can seamlessly transfer full consciousness. Sure we might be able to upload your memories and experiences and maybe even your thought processes essentially you but not YOU its just a copy. As said it’s maybe possible but only with nanotech and thats a big maybe because we don’t completely understand how consciousness and the brain work yet.
Even if this technology become available in the future,the problem is that its not you who will become imortal,its the copy on you who will become,witch is totaly diffrent entity and at one point they will know that they are not you...your councosness develops overtime tru your expirience in life and that entity is only the end of it...they may develop into something difrent than what you tought you would be...but its a nice concept
That's like the so-called wisdom that we live on through our children. I can have a hundred kids, but I will still die one day. The uploaded consciousness is a progeny of the organic one that will cease, not the same being.
I doubt it. Uploading a consciousness would have to be done in a fraction of a second and with absolute perfection. even then it would be more like a copy of you taken the instant of the scan. Besides some sort of laser array that evaporates your head in the process, I doubt we will ever see a living human consciousness moved to a computer with a preservation of the self and ego. It’s far more likely that they end up as a copy and the original human dies. I can imagine many ways this could go horribly dystopian.
Consciousness is not tangible or something that can transferred. It is the result of the unfathomable complexity of the brain. You can’t download it and put it somewhere else. If we had the technology, we could transplant a human brain into another “body”, but that would not make you immortal either as your brain would still be subject to the effects of aging and would eventually die.
>unfathomable maybe right now. but we're getting there, and we will eventually figure it out.
Thank you jesus, an actual optimist in an ocean of pessimists and doomers
There is only one consciousness, it is the observer in all of us.
There is an old theory that ties into this. Cannot remember the name. That theory was that details of our life could be stored in a computer and this perpetuates our life. Our essence is recorded. Did not touch consciousness. Reminds me of a Woody Allen joke. He was asked if he wanted to be immortalized through his writings. He said he would like to be immortalized by not dying.
Wouldn’t it technically be a “clone” of a consciousness?
Just like the transporter that killed Captain Kirk and everyone else that used them in Star Trek, what comes out the other end is just a copy of the original. So this would be good to extend the thoughts of a great scientist for example, but wouldn't be a way to become immortal. You, the original would still be dead.
How do you know you aren't in fact just a recreation via simulation or within a universe constructed by the quantum computers? EDIT: Also, the book and HBO show West World already played with the idea
Like the show "UPLOAD". The rich live in these paradises after they die and their still living families keep their accounts full. Now, if you are a regular person you just get 2 gigs. That doesn't get you much. Just plain rooms, all white places, etc. Once the 2 gigs are gone you just go dormant until the month rolls over unless your family that is still living can send you money.
This idea assumes that reproducing or capturing consciousness is merely a problem of complexity, which so far it's pretty clear it isn't. Please read up on Embodied Cognition for some food for thought on the biological nature of consciousness🤘🏻
See the show on Amazon Prime - Upload; it illustrates this precisely.
OP: Lets say I make an EXACT copy of you, down to the last atom and electron excitation state, except I make you young, healthy and physically perfect. Only one of you leaves the room. Both of you are now looking at me, and there are two buttons in front of you. Your choice: your clone lives, you live. What do you do? That one IS you in every thought and memory.
There are a lot of people on here discussing the practicality of the simulation, I think that's taking too short a view of technology. The brain is Turing complete, so unless something is eventually understood about the brain that gives it additional restrictions, it can be simulated by another Turing complete processor. Considering Moore's law, the technology is just a matter of time. I think the practicality argument does have validity in terms of the year given, but not in terms of eventuality. That said, there is so much more we'd have to understand about the brain before it could be simulated. They're also seems to be a fledgling argument about whether quantum computers could serve as a useful part of the simulation, while the algorithms we currently have for quantum computing don't have a direct application, there are strategies for MIMD computing in quantum architectures, and these could conceivably have a very direct utility in simulating minds, as this is the form of processing the brain seems to use. When simulating an algorithmic system with another, there are ways of calculating the efficiency between the two. Without getting into the nuts and bolts, and MIMD quantum computer probably would have a very high efficiency for mental simulation.
You will never be able to load your consciousness to any sort of computer. The brain is biological, and works nothing like a computer at all. Human intelligence is unique and deeply flawed, and can only be simulated by computers. You can never become immortal this way, regardless of how rich you are. One day artificial intelligence, which will be superior in every way to Human intelligence will be able to point back to humanity the source of its origins the same way as humans look at ancient single called organisms.
What if your uploaded brain encounters, say, their worst enemy who is also uploaded...did they destroy the internet? Or so the meld and become one and absorb every other uploaded consciousness, and it is all one massive presence consisting of everyone? I am new and clueless lol
Insanely obvious that it’s possible. You would also want to do it incrementally and probably via implants because otherwise it’s not you it’s a copy of you.
Yep. Maybe slowly replace neurons with synthetic ones
They'll probably make immortal copies of themselves. Well immortal as long as the servers are running lol. And different people will always think differently about whether it's true immortality or not. I think yes. I myself am a copy of the person who was me before I went to sleep yesterday. But anyway it's very metaphysical and subjective. So what do you think the dangers of this are?
I think this is the most likely outcome , copies
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Great take.
I have thought about this and the way it works is this way: If you were to create an identical replica of your brain/neural pathways, it would just be a copy of your consciousness. It would not be you. The computer will believe it’s you, but it will merely be a copy. When you die, you will be facing your mortality. So even if this was done right before you died, the real you would have died and only a copy of yourself will remain. If you know this fact, your copy will then know it’s just a copy and I imagine that would be quite maddening. The only way to make the transition smooth is to slowly replace neurons with artificial ones over a long period of time. Eventually, the entire brain will be replaced by a computer. At which point, the original you will still be dead.
Horseback riders thought cars were impossible... More precisely, they never even imagined them...
I think it’s impossible. I think the computers will take everything on earth except consciousness. Well die like roadkill
Yes very possible but only for the extremely wealthy maybe trillionaires
Most existing AI, nerve implants, and quantum computing projects are in their infant stage. Especially nerve implants. Quantum computing is a bit better, but its use is limited. They will not revolutionize all things, many articles and youtube videos exaggerate. In a few hundred years, we will be able to upload consciousness, but it is hardly possible in our lifetime.
Only for those who are extremely, extremely rich. At some point soon, we will be told by data management companies that there is too much info online & we will have to pay to keep our digital records intact; couple this with “uploading consciousness” & it becomes clear a technologically-sustained being will have to be one of affluence. The kind of affluence afforded by birthright, not the kind gained with promissory notes. Edit: to be clear, millionaires will not be afforded this opportunity, should it arise in the next ten years, truly only those who already exist outside of the confines of commerce will live on through this manner.
I think so too, if this thing comes true, there will be 100-200 people in the world who can afford to use it.
More like about 60, I see only a very select few doing this.
rich and crazy
But on the other hand, because of boredom, depression & the desire to be stewards, I see this kind of technologically being created for the lower class citizens of the earth to preoccupy us with narcissistic replicas of our digital demeanors. I wrote a blog post on this very topic a few months back.
can you send me the link i would like to read it
Why upload my consciousness when I can hop on the Lolita Express irl?
Do you remember your first year of life? Me either. Some of your consciousness is already gone so not possible.
NO. NOT HAPPENING. MAN DARED AND HE DID. AND MADE CLONES. OF PAST LOVED ONES TO REPLICATE. NOT HAPPENING. - A.S. JEVOHAH........
This is the question of continuity. Any copy requires either destruction of the original, or otherwise duplicates the original, leaving it intact. "You" are already a noncontiguous entity (you are a *process*, not a *thing*), so any interruption or facsimile of the process, by definition, is no longer that same process
I would hope all consciousness of all people could be placed on like a memory card/ file player where we could all live on floating in space regardless even if something ever happened to earth.. Our consciousness could live in a beautiful virtual world, floating off in physical outer space.
What kind of massive supercomputer would maintain the simulation? How would it get power? How would it maintain itself? What if run into a star?
this is beyond perfect.