34 replies to this topic

[niner]

You still can't recreate knowledge that is gone. If the brain is gone, there will be no way to read the neuronal states. It's just gone.

[Futurist1000]

You still can't recreate knowledge that is gone. If the brain is gone, there will be no way to read the neuronal states. It's just gone.

Yes, but the brain is based on DNA. There are a finite amount of probable DNA sequences. We could assume that in the future we could either get samples of DNA, either from graves or relatives. This would narrow things down and we would have a place to start from. With that we could potentially model DNA with interactions with the environment. When a simulated brain derived from a DNA sequence matches actual historical events, then bingo we have our match. Obviously this is probably an oversimplification, but I hope it shows that there could be several ways in which this could be carried out.

Edited by hrc579, 28 September 2007 - 03:06 AM.

[Futurist1000]

Some people believe that we may already be living in a simulation.

Simulation Argument

[niner]

Yes, but the brain is based on DNA. There are a finite amount of probable DNA sequences. We could assume that in the future we could either get samples of DNA, either from graves or relatives. This would narrow things down and we would have a place to start from. With that we could potentially model DNA with interactions with the environment. When a simulated brain derived from a DNA sequence matches actual historical events, then bingo we have our match. Obviously this is probably an oversimplification, but I hope it shows that there could be several ways in which this could be carried out.

The DNA might get you a brain if we master Jurassic Park-like cloning abilities, but it would be a blank brain. The scheme that you are describing to populate the neurons is sort of like the thousand monkeys with typewriters eventually producing Shakespeare idea. It will take too long, even with the fastest computer we could ever build, and you wouldn't be able to distinguish the "right" mind from among the octillions of minds that were relatively close to being right.

[Futurist1000]

The DNA might get you a brain if we master Jurassic Park-like cloning abilities, but it would be a blank brain. The scheme that you are describing to populate the neurons is sort of like the thousand monkeys with typewriters eventually producing Shakespeare idea. It will take too long, even with the fastest computer we could ever build, and you wouldn't be able to distinguish the "right" mind from among the octillions of minds that were relatively close to being right.

Well these problems may be insurmountable. However, there could be other ways of doing it. It's really difficult to say. I was just giving a few ideas. We certainly won't have the capabilities to pull this off anytime soon, if at all. I don't know how much you can simplify a computer model while still getting a high accuracy.

There may be an infinite amount of possible minds, but we could certainly narrow down those possiblities. While an infinite amount of mind configurations might be possible, the amount of probable ones are much less. Just as there are an infinite amount of possible DNA combinations, there are only a finite amount of probable genes. The amount of probable neuron configurations is finite as well, so it would also be subject to this "narrowing down" process. I know this is a little evasive, but I really do think we could narrow it down quite a bit. It may take huge software and hardware leaps before we are anywhere near being able to do this. Maybe using quantum computing it might be possible? I guess I don't really know if you could apply quantum computing to a problem like this.