Avoiding Death by Uploading Your Brain

[The Straight Story]

Avoiding Death by Uploading Your Brain
Monday, April 12, 2010

Ken Hayworth, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, has come up with an unusual potential form of immortality by preserving the human brain in a computer. Most theories of extending life, such as using experimental supplements or super-sensitive health monitoring, work with a person’s existing body. Hayworth suggests that it might be possible to copy your brain, complete with all its thoughts, memories and learned abilities, for use in a form other than the body you have used all your life.

Theoretically, human thoughts can be copied and loaded onto a hard drive, Hayworth insists, which is why he’s seeking funding for a Brain Preservation Technology Prize which would solicit solutions for his hypothesis. The process would likely entail freezing or preserving the brain shortly before death, then slicing it into nanometer thin wafers, scanning it and uploading it onto a computer.

http://www.allgov.com/Unusual_News/ViewNews/Avoiding_Death_by_Uploading_Your_Brain_100412

[anarch]

1. I imagine the freezing of one's brain would indeed be very shortly before death

very, very shortly.

[Orsino]

2. Confusing the freeze-dried brain with the living mind.

And copy your brain for use in another form? Whose use?

[Xithras]

11. I would see it as the ultimate history book.

Imagine a student learning about 9/11 200 years from now, when it's relegated to a paragraph in a digital history book. Now imagine that same student being able to "jack in" and see the event from the perspective of someone who was there, hearing the crash of the metal, the smell of the smoke, and feeling the grit of the dirt in your hair. It turns the study of history into an entirely new experience.

[Orsino]

14. Horrifying.

This sounds like the enslavement of an intelligent artificial mind...unless it's just the dream of being able to read memories from a dead brain (or copy thereof).

[Xithras]

18. It wouldn't be a "living" mind.

Just a snapshot of your memories and experiences. It would be more of an "echo" than a "copy".

The activation of those memories and thoughts into an artificial mind is the logical next step though. People have postulated for decades that doing so may eventually be the key to real immortality.

[Ex Lurker]

49. right. your consciousness will still cease to exist after you die

this upload will go on without you, unless there's more to this than I think.

[DeschutesRiver]

47. Intriguing thought, hadn't considered that aspect.

The things I read about now are either edging toward, rivaling or exceeding the stuff I used to imagine as I read every piece of sci-fi I could get my hands on as a kid.

Quite extraordinary stuff.

[guitar man]

3. wow

Most of my thoughts would be illegal to view in 37 states :evilgrin:

[madokie]

6. Oklahoma for dang sure

:hi:
Beautiful weather we're having, huh

[guitar man]

38. yeah it's awesome

I'll be on my motorcycle most all the time now :hi:

[Soylent Brice]

4. read also:

The Age of Intelligent_Machines

The Age of Spiritual Machines

The Singularity Is Near

[ixion]

7. "The Age of Spiritual Machines" is a great read

Kurzweil is way ahead of his time, IMO.

[Soylent Brice]

16. just finished Singularity is Near

absolutely phenomenal.

if you click on my profile you'll see my comment about Accelerando. it's a fiction novel based on these books. AMAZING novel. was a series of short stories, finally compiled to one novel.

highly recommend to anyone who is a fan of Kurzweil.

also, google "Transcendant Man". it's a movie about Kurzweil.

[mzteris]

5. "come up with"???? really?

I've been reading about "uploading your brain" since before that guy was probably BORN!


Science Fiction - it's only fiction until the kids who read it grow up to be scientists!

[Xithras]

9. Yep. Vre'katra

This was explored in Trek lore decades ago. Store your brain in a device so that people can later view your life, the events you've seen, and the emotions you experienced.

Now if someone could just figure out transporters and warp drive...

[GreenPartyVoter]

30. Yep

[KittyWampus]

8. there are various forms of yoga that have already worked this out- BUT

I'm not going to argue about it :)

[Tailormyst]

10. I gather he has been watching Caprica.

[eShirl]

13. the idea's been floating around for much longer than that

[Tailormyst]

17. my humor always falls flat online.

[Warren DeMontague]

28. That show makes me feel like a cranky old man.

It has potential, but I just get the sense that some demographics person at "SyFy" said--- "we didn't get the teen market with BSG, and that's where the action is! So, we'll pack this show to the gills with teenagers, never mind how ridiculous it makes the plot seem".

[Tailormyst]

48. OMG I feel the same way !!!!!!!!!

[eShirl]

12. that plus perfecting an andriod body to put it in, et voila!

DH wants to volunteer to be the first, btw.

[mzteris]

15. uploading - the REAL reason people want to perfect

cloning. . . (and genetic engineering . . . )

[okie]

19. This doesn't make much sense to me

How would this even work? Your thoughts are not 'things' that are stored inside your brain. Even if we can measure something that happens as a result of being a thinking being - like electrical pulses in the brain - it does not follow that we can measure and store what it means to think, or feel an emotion, or understand something. It's like thinking that by measuring electrical pulses or the blood flow in your groin you can get some idea of what it feels like to be in love. You can't measure these things like scientists do, you can only feel them.

[EOTE]

21. My dad and I have similar discussions all the time.

My dad (Time For Change on this site) and I have discussions about what constitutes a thought frequently. My dad firmly believes that thoughts and emotions exist outside of the physical body. He believes the fact that we can't quantify thoughts means that they must reside outside of the physical world and be a part of one's soul. I certainly think that's a possibility, but I also think it's possible that our thoughts are simply our mind's reaction to chemical and other reactions in the brain. His theory is that if you don't believe in predeterminism/predestination, that you would in turn have to believe in a soul. Because if all of our thoughts and emotions are based in the physical world and everything in the physical world is based upon strict and inerrant rules, all of our actions would have to be predetermined as well. It's certainly interesting to ponder.

[Cleobulus]

20. Relatively common trope in many science fiction stories...

The question is, would the copy be as good as the original. Even assuming you can emulate the human brain well enough to simulate human thought and emotion, the question is whether the person's consciousness is also not only properly emulated. Of course, if the person in question is copied successfully, but still alive, the copy isn't them anymore, it would be a different individual, with diverging experiences since the moment of being created through the act of copying. Even if the act of copying happened at the moment of death, the copy may, by all appearances be just like the individual who was copied, but the original would still be dead.

[Ratty]

22. Yeah, but you're still DEAD

This SF theme has always bugged me. Just because there is now somebody out there with your same memories and perhaps even DNA doesn't make you any less dead. It's not like everything goes dark and then you wake up again alive. It might feel that way to the new copy, but to you you're just dead. Small comfort in that if you ask me.

[Cleobulus]

23. Not to mention the ethical implications...

In the act of copying, assuming it is successful, you would have created a new consciousness, more or less, based on you own, but being an individual in itself. It would have all your memories, but wouldn't be you, and this new individual will most likely be fully aware of that fact. It may regard itself as your successor, similar to a child, though more like you than any biological child would be.

Or it may regard itself as a ghost, forced to carry your baggage, and yet being only a shadow of what you were. It would seem unethical to create such a being for selfish purposes such as attaining "immortality" when it robs said being from being a unique individual of its own, with its own life and life goals.

[Ratty]

25. The right to make your own memories

Sometimes people fantasize about "going back" and doing it all over again, if I only knew then what I know now, etc. When those thoughts occur to me, when I think: what if a genie granted me the wish to go back and do it over again, enjoy my youth, avoid mistakes, invest in Microsoft, whatever. I can't help but think of the poor younger me whose consciousness would be wiped out. Like an evil spirit possessing an innocent youngster. Damn, I think way too much to enjoy innocent fantasies.

[Cleobulus]

34. We are but a sum of our memories, both the regrets and triumphs...

we sometimes learn from them, especially with the regrets, or we don't. Both are a part of life, and a reason why we become our own unique individuals. The act of copying such, in any form, would seem to cheapen the individual who is copied, and the copy itself as well.

[Trillo]

24. What good is a brain without a heart? n/t

[yawnmaster]

26. and what good is a heart without a brain...

and if you have a heart and a brain but no courage, then what do you have?

oh yeah, a cowardly lion.

[jdp349]

44. This one wouldn't require oxygen delivery system to function

[Hubert Flottz]

27. I try to download every morning.

Looks like I took a Glenn Beck.

[Warren DeMontague]

29. Fiber Optics.

Or, maybe just fiber.

[Hubert Flottz]

35. Sometimes my floppy gets splashed.

[RedCloud]

31. With Bill Gates on our side! They can reprogram us to be slaves.

[Warren DeMontague]

36. No, but they can reprogram us to crash, freeze up, and not work with last year's software. nt

[tridim]

39. Except it's really Jobs and Apple that are going the iBorg way.

They've already solidified their cult, now it's just a matter of developing the hardware and software which the cult will glady buy at any price.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. We don't understand enough about how the brain works, IMHO, to get even close.

Maybe someday, but right now I think all you'd end up with is freeze dried nanometer brain chips.

[Johonny]

40. I agree

[Xithras]

41. Technically we don't have to.

If you could make an absolutely perfect digital copy of the brain down to the molecular level, you would capture any information it might hold. We don't currently understand the brain well enough to READ those memories, but there is no reason that would stop us from copying it. It would be like me handing you a page of text written in Russian, followed by a pencil and a request for you to make a copy of it. You might not be able to read Russian, but you could still copy the shapes and letter structures identically. When later handed to a Russian speaker, he could translate it for you.

When the technology is eventually developed to permit brain structures to be translated into actual data, the copies of existing brains will already be there to work with.

[Warren DeMontague]

45. I'm not saying they shouldn't try

I'm just saying, we don't really understand how things like thoughts, memories and information are stored in the brain. I still find the research fascinating.

[superduperfarleft]

33. "How you doing, Dixie?"

"I’m dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one."

"How’s it feel?"

"It doesn’t."

"Bother you?"

"What bothers me is, nothin’ does."

"How’s that?"

"Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he’s tossin’ all night. Elroy. I said, what’s eatin’ you? Goddam thumb’s itchin’, he says. "So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it’s the other goddam thumb." When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case’s spine. "Do me a favor, boy."

"What’s that, Dix?"

"This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this goddam thing."

[TheKentuckian]

37. Till proven otherwise, I'm a more than the sum of your parts type fella

but it is cool to think of not losing a person's knowledge and the contents of their thoughts, if not the flavor.

[old mark]

42. I think they freeze dried Newt's brain a few years back....didn't seem to

hurt him none....


mark

[TheMightyFavog]

43. Just don't upload it into a cyber-tank... Lest it go on a rampage....

Yes, only the anime fans here will get his one...

[hunter]

46. There's nothing to "download."

There's no "there" there. It's not at all like a computer, it's just a big mess of complex interactive systems.

Anything you might get from some sort of brain scan would be a model and you probably couldn't get a good model no matter how detailed and instantaneous your brain scan was. A much more accurate model of a human might be obtained by implanting sensors in an infant that recorded everything this person experienced and their responses to those experiences up until the moment of their death. Then you might digest all this data to create a being that acted like the deceased person, but it would still be a model.

In any case, there's no real continuity even within ourselves. The person you were yesterday is unrecoverable and rapidly fading into the past leaving little more than memories that may or may not reflect any sort of objective reality.