62 replies to this topic

[manowater989]

I'd like to pose the same question here that I did over on the biology board: how close do any of you think we are to fully being able to scan, interface with, manipulate, and copy the complete, functioning brain of a human being? 20 years? 30? 50? more? Do you think it would require physical contact of electrodes with each single neuron, or could it perhaps be done "wirelessly"? What about the development of nanotechnology, if it did require physical contact, perhaps billions of nano-electrodes. Since my idea of a truly safe, stable, LONG-TERM immortality (real immortality, as in actually NEVER dying....ever) is to not only have my original body made physically immortal by means of perhaps gene-therapy, but to in fact live as something of a network- having many back-up copies of my 'mind' (not just memories, I'm more than just the sum of my memories, I'm also my personality and everything else) and, hopefully, to have them wired together with me in constant communication: that way, I expand to exist as sort of a hive and spread my existence across that whole network, even perhaps sending some to other planets in the future, or loading some of them into probes going out into deep space, faster than someone who might want me completely dead would ever be able to follow, and employing the most unbreakable security measures to ensure that a virus introduced to one part of me could never completely wipe me out- I could even picture, many millennia down the road, sending pieces of me through wormholes to potential other universes to survive even the possible collapse of this one. There could be many bodies, and even as a few of them inevitably die of disease or accident, there is still enough of me that I don't feel like I'm dead, even if it was my original that died. I know there is a possibility of having people like Agent Smith from the last Matrix movie like this (I also realize that everyone always references the Matrix movies when discussing these topics but oh well, it's convenient), but I'm more worried about, would this be possible? Does anyone know whether a person would be able to operate two or more separate bodies simultaneously, even with twice the processing power? Of course humans were never designed to function that way, but humans were never designed to do lots of things that they regularly do today. I just, once again, want people's opinions not on if but when.

[Infernity]

Good question.

Well, all this should really help achieving immortality because oft he ability to share thoughts and way of thinking and so develop a winning combination and perhaps even AI.

On the other hand, immortality should help us achieve all this since since we won't be timely limited...

I think controlling all that and having all these option on a normal basis won't take less than a century.

~Infernity

[manowater989]

Well, I don't know. That scares me a little, I'd like to see it tried to be done sooner (part of the reason I plan to get off my ass in another month or so, start college, and TRY myself). I very much like de Gray's idea of escape velocity: as long as the first technology keeps me alive long enough to take advantage of the next one after that, and the next one after that keeps me alive long enough for the next, and so on, then I'll be alright, and by alright, I mean alive. I doubt I'll live 'till 2100 (113 years of age) on a purely natural lifespan, I doubt it very greatly (I wouldn't expect to live past 70 naturally, and don't even want to risk getting older than 50 without serious life-extension being at least very close to market, I would be in real panic mode if I turned 50 and it still hadn't materialized). But if, within the next 10 or 15 years, technologies emerge that boost the natural lifespan another 10 or 15 years, as long as that keeps up at at least that minimum pace, then I may just survive long enough, just barely, to take advantage of my ideas. I still hate the risk of living in just one body, though, no matter how you look at it, that's too risky- even if I was physically in perfect health and immortal, I would get myself networked the very second it became available, I'm sure the risks of that procedure, even in untested form, would be negligible compared with the risk of driving your one, only body around in crashable cars, or even just relying your entire existence on the action of one heart that could stop functioning properly at any moment for any reason or virtually none at all. These things worry me every second I am alive, which, ironically, I happen to intellectually know makes my risk for heart disease even higher. It's the first thing savvy computer-users learn: always, always back up important files in as many places as possible. Not having redundant systems is just plain stupid, there's no other word for it, and when the cost of that stupidity is a human life, it's far, far worse.

[Infernity]

Your concerns are sadly all correct.
Did you think of signing to cryonics?

~Infernity

[manowater989]

I probably will, if and when I can afford it: being frozen is certainly preferable, to me anyway, to being buried to rot or certainly burned! Still, it's not my ideal solution: I would like to be frozen just before death, not after, and kept technically alive for as long as physically possible, even if all electrical activity in my brain does go out. Still, even if I was somehow revived from a cryonic death, I think I would feel that my "real" self had died the first time, and spend the rest of eternity, perhaps, feeling that I wasn't really anyone, or that I was the walking dead or just some artificial reconstruction of the real person I felt I had once been: not exactly enviable, but still better than oblivion, I guess. My most fervent goal, though, is to avoid oblivion completely. I have a strong, hopeful bent that I maybe can if I am lucky and persistent enough, but I'm looking for, I guess a little peer validation (I'm ashamed to say) to see if others agree with my guarded optimism, or are we all just salivating over a dream we'll never get to experience for ourselves?

[bgwowk]

I would like to be frozen just before death, not after, and kept technically alive for as long as physically possible, even if all electrical activity in my brain does go out.

Naturally if you are to be cryopreserved, it's best to do so with as little damage as possible. But comparing "just before death" to "just after death" is the same amount of damage. Why would you think there is a difference, and what do you think that difference is? The moment of legal death in itself has as much biological relevance as the moment of legal marriage. Whether or not you are "alive" through the process is purely a question of whether you are recoverable. If you are successfully revived, then you were never dead.

http://www.alcor.org.../hesdeadjim.htm

Still, even if I was somehow revived from a cryonic death, I think I would feel that my "real" self had died the first time, and spend the rest of eternity, perhaps, feeling that I wasn't really anyone, or that I was the walking dead or just some artificial reconstruction of the real person I felt I had once been.

Why would you think that? Do you feel the same way about sleep? General anesthesia? Coma? I think you've been watching too many bad movies.

---BrianW

[Matt]

Why would you think that? Do you feel the same way about sleep? General anesthesia? Coma? I think you've been watching too many bad movies.

I've thought about how it would feel and would you still be you when you woke up from being cryopreserved. I would imagine it being almost exactly the same as waking up from an operation. When you get put under Anesthesia time seems to vanish. In a blink of an eye you are awake in the recovery room.

[Infernity]

I did create a while ago a topic about that...
http://www.imminst.o...3&hl=defrost&s=

However, I get your view manowater...

Yours
~Infernity

[manowater989]

Well, whatever, either way, I would like it if the direction of this topic could get back towards its' original intent. Cryonics might be a possibility, but I am much more interested in the prospect of surviving continuously, in whatever form. I do think networking across multiple copies of one's self, all connected so that the original "individual" comes to think of him or herself instead as the entire network, is the best bet. And I'd still like to know what anyone thinks, I'll have to look but I don't think anyone actually mentioned (maybe one did, 100 years, but I'm looking for more like a poll, want lots of opinions) on how long before we are able to copy the "software" of a whole human mind? Is anyone working towards this, research-wise, right now?

Edited by manowater989, 22 June 2005 - 01:56 PM.

[JonesGuy]

Ah, you mean something like THIS TOPIC.

[bgwowk]

Actually you probably can't escape from cryonics. The most straightforward and philosophically clean schemes for copying/transferring the information content of a brain require shutting it down. Think about it.

Anyway, it's a bit hard to take uploaders who dis cryonics seriously. Embracing the information-theoretic paradigm in its ultimate form (believing that personal identity can survive across radically different platforms, multiple copies, dormant backups, etc.), but believing that inactivating a biological brain is unacceptable makes no sense.

In answer to the primary question of the thread, I believe the technology you seek >100 years away. There will certainly be computer analogs of biological brains before then. But faithfully copying and/or interfacing with natural brains at fundamental levels is a really, really hard problem.

---BrianW

[Infernity]

Ah, you mean something like THIS TOPIC.

Well Q., - -

but I'm looking for more like a poll

[tung] ...

Yours
~Infernity

[manowater989]

If you don't mind, perhaps you'll have to pardon my ignorance, but why? Why is interfacing two natural brains, or a natural brain and an electronic one, or even two electronic ones, "a really, really hard problem"? It doesn't seem to me like it should be, not if the technology to create a perfect replica of a human brain in digital or even biological form is available- why then should it be difficult to interface them? That seems like it would actually be the easy part. The hard part, I would guess, is building it. The degree of expertise with nano-engineering required to build a perfect molecular replica of anything, even something a few molecules wide, or a rock, no less something as complex as a human brain, possibly the most complex system we know of, seems to be far further in the future that simply being able to implant something in a brain that's already there that lets it interface with another. Building a perfect computer model of a brain, actually in this case, I'm thinking more like a 'mind', seems more doable since I've seen those projection graphs of ever-rising computing power, and a computer need only be able to hold a brain's data and the data about the position and connection of every neuron to "be" a suitable copy of that mind, it needn't actually be built to those specifications. But I remember reading awhile back an article somewhere, maybe online, written by someone who had an implant in his brain that allowed him to, through an internet connection, control a robot in another country with his mind. If that's already possible, and if I understand correctly that the above link (the IBM thing) is an attempt to have finished within 4 years a computer that literally IS a digital human brain (would that computer then have rights? would it be considered a person?) then I don't see much reason to doubt that before long, I (or anyone) could make lots of copies of themselves (in-digito for now, perhaps someday biologicals, like clones) link them all to eachother as well as my brain (through some sort of wireless implant), and then not have to worry about dying. Am I getting any of this wrong? Am I being too optimistic? Is there something I'm missing? That leads me to other questions about the safety of digital existence. Even Yahoo servers sometimes go down, but when a server going down could mean mass-genocide, they better have better defenses. Are there yet such things as computers with enough back-up power supplies that they could never go down, or crash? I read an article about unbreakable quantum encryption to prevent hacking, does anyone know how far along that is, whether there is any kind of suitable defense against computer virus epidemics that could decimate whole populations of digital people?

[bgwowk]

If you don't mind, perhaps you'll have to pardon my ignorance, but why? Why is interfacing two natural brains, or a natural brain and an electronic one, or even two electronic ones, "a really, really hard problem"? It doesn't seem to me like it should be, not if the technology to create a perfect replica of a human brain in digital or even biological form is available- why then should it be difficult to interface them?

You're right. If you have the technology to physically replicate down to atoms a human brain, then you are well on the way to understanding brains well enough to deeply interface with them and run simulations in other media. But that kind of replication technology is also >100 years away.

Don't fall for the hype. IBM is not going to replicate even the operation of a generic human brain in only four years. I think computers that can even pass the Turing Test are still 20 years away.

---BrianW

P.S. Computers don't get hacked for lack of quantum encryption. They get hacked because of poor software design, buggy code, back doors, and careless security practices. I don't think the average hacker even knows what prime factorization is.

P.P.S. Last week a coworker of mine turned on his new home wireless network, and was immediately able to access LANs and Internet gateways of FIVE!!! of his neighbors because they had not enabled any wireless network security. The same week 40 million credit card users had their card info stolen because a processing company was too stupid to encrypt their data.

[manowater989]

Once again, I hate this pessimism. Do you think that once they have super-computers that can pass the Turing Test, it won't be long before they're available regularly, so that average people who wanted to escape from physical death could network themselves onto them? I look at it just one way, as a time issue. However long it takes, it's too long. Millions die every year who could be saved, at least in some form, by the existence of computers powerful enough to hold them. I realize most computer scientists don't think of it in those terms, but they need to, and get their asses in gear.

[bgwowk]

Do you think that once they have super-computers that can pass the Turing Test, it won't be long before they're available regularly, so that average people who wanted to escape from physical death could network themselves onto them?

Huh?!? Where did you get the idea that uploading personal identity was purely a computing problem? The problem isn't primarily computing (although present computer technology is still nowhere near adequate), it's a biological tools problem. You can't do tricks like uploading without mature nanotechnology that has completely mastered the cellular and molecular details of human physiology. That's still a century away.

Restrict your calories, exercise, learn about supplementation, promote interventive gerontology, and sign up for cryonics as a safety net. Then you might live long enough to see some of this stuff.

---BrianW

[Infernity]

Heh Brian I can see you sticked to my forecasting of a century [thumb] hehe.

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

[manowater989]

Alright, well, thanks for everyone's input, yes, thank you for "sticking" to your depressingly gloomy predictions. I have my own forecast, in case anyone's interested: I don't expect it will take that long. Maybe by the current projections, yes, but I think things will continue to speed up, not just increase at the predicted rate. In any case, you're overshooting the level of technology I think would be required. The more I think about it, I don't believe that a complete development of that biological toolset you mentioned would be necessary for what I have in mind: a simpler, more passive form than all-at-once uploading. All you need is a "blank" computer as smart as you and a single, simple link somewhere in your brain to slowly start merging. You don't need nano-electrodes attached to every brain cell, a complete map, the ability to build things up from molecular models, or anything near that advanced. You might need to think about everything you've ever thought about at least once more for a total merger, but I think that could potentially be accomplished by software designed to do a thorough sweep of a brain. These things aren't that far off, people, I know that from some of the articles I've read. I know you don't want to get your hopes up or look stupid by predicting that things that are a long way off are just around the corner- who knows, maybe that's what I'm doing. But I still think it's coming sooner than a century. Maybe more like half a century. Think about it, 50-odd years ago computers were basically the Uni-Vac. Are you seriously going to try to tell me that with how far they've come in that amount of time, they won't come at least as far as I'm talking about in that amount of time over again? And as for the problems on the biological end, well, every article I read about artificial eyes restoring sight to the blind by patching visual signals through to the brain, monkeys controlling dots on screens with their mind through links, or what was that article on one of the linked topics about a semi-living "artist" composed of a computer and rat cells or something like that, make me worry less and less about that. Maybe direct, complete, instantaneous uploading freely back and forth between biological and electronic platforms is a century or more away, but the kind of basic stuff needed to simply continue some form of your mind past the death of your body: I'm pretty sure that's within half a century or less.

[Infernity]

Uploading, I believe will apply as a scanning.
I think that the uploading itself won't take such a long time as a century, but I think converting it to a understandable data, or more likely- downloading- will take a very long time to figure out.

You brain is way more complicated than you can imagine! Way over it!!!

Scanning will be the easy part, uploading. Analysing what you have uploaded, or let someone download it is MUCH more difficult!

Yours
~Infernity

[bgwowk]

You might need to think about everything you've ever thought about at least once more for a total merger, but I think that could potentially be accomplished by software designed to do a thorough sweep of a brain.

Software sweeps data not matter. Scanning brains is a hard problem (take it from someone who earned a PhD scanning brains). So if Infernity is right that understanding what you've scanned is a harder problem still, then uploading is a very long way off indeed.

Think about it, 50-odd years ago computers were basically the Uni-Vac. Are you seriously going to try to tell me that with how far they've come in that amount of time, they won't come at least as far as I'm talking about in that amount of time over again?

Yes. Progress in computer science helps biology and medicine, but that's not the same as saying computer science IS biology and medicine. There is no Moore's Law in medicine for reasons already discussed in another thread.

---BrianW

[jaydfox]

There is no Moore's Law in medicine for reasons already discussed in another thread.

Brian,

The main reason, in that other thread, if I recall, was oversight orgs and ethics guidelines like those of the FDA.

Assuming somehow that America woke up to the fact that the FDA is committing statistical murder on a huge scale by making sure we're "safe", and we completely overhauled the system, would that 100+ year timeline be affected much?

[bgwowk]

Assuming somehow that America woke up to the fact that the FDA is committing statistical murder on a huge scale by making sure we're "safe", and we completely overhauled the system, would that 100+ year timeline be affected much?

In my opinion, if medicine became as free-wheeling (and bug-ridden) as the high technology industry, there would certainly be ENS within 50 years. Uploading would happen sooner to. But the problem of uploading is so intimately tangled with biology that I think you'll have de-facto biological immortality before uploading in any scenario. People will augment and upload for competitive advantage and because it's "a trip", not to escape dying biological brains.

---BrianW

[manowater989]

No, I don't think that's true, anyway. That will be one reason, but even with biological immortality, like de Grey said, you'd still only live so long if you trusted your entire existence to just one body. This is just what I think, of course, and perhaps you know more about it than I, but think about it. I really can't imagine bio-immortality predating data transference. Maybe I don't know about it well enough, but it seems like the underlying technology to link brains and computers is essentially here- you don't need all those things you talked about, whereas biological immortality seems a lot further down the road, to me anyway.

[jaydfox]

Manowater, I think the point your missing is that there is a big step from simply being able to interface with a few million or even a few billion brain cells, and actually understanding enough about how it works to make a faithful simulation (and at this point, we can only be reasonably be sure that we're simulating a brain; Brian and I differ somewhat on this point, but I think that simulating a brain in pure software won't actually allow us to transfer that which we consider our consciousness into the computer. Objectively, it'd be the transferred person, assuming we can accurately simulate the brain, but subjectively, that's an entirely different issue. Anyway, that's a whole other monster of a debate in its own right).

[Matt]

I believe that this would be the best way for uploading. http://www.imminst.o...f=106&t=6478&s=

I think that once the whole thing has completed you will be able to move yourself, your consciousness freely to whatever you wish. Except back to a biological brain.

The transition i a slow process and at some point, you will not be using your biological brain anymore.

[manowater989]

By looking through that thread of the link you put up, I am beginning to see that a lot of people don't even get what you're talking about, Matt, and I'm beginning to think the same thing applies here. What you suggest is, in principle, kind of the same thing I proposed at the very beginning of this thread, only I don't think that it would be necessary to physically replace the parts of the brain with electronic analogs, instead, simply creating a complete electronic copy and interfacing it to the biological one. The person would begin to use both of these "brains", in much the same way as even within a single biological brain, the two hemispheres are really like separate brains, and even if one whole half is removed, the person is still basically themself. Well, similarly, even if the biological aspect died, as long as it was given a few years for that person to spread to both, they would still basically be themself even though they were now just a computer. And I get what some of you are saying, but I think you overestimate what level of understanding of something is necessary to simply make it functional. I DON'T think there is a big step from interfacing brain cells and having a suitably powerful computer to function as a second brain to actually being able to transfer, or, more accurately, let's say "spread", consciousness in the way I described. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure that there's any step there, I think that's all that is needed. I guess I could be wrong, maybe you do need to be able to understand completely the behavior and functioning of every minute aspect and area, but it just doesn't seem to me to be necessary for what I'm advocating.

[Matt]

person would begin to use both of these "brains", in much the same way as even within a single biological brain, the two hemispheres are really like separate brains, and even if one whole half is removed, the person is still basically themself. Well, similarly, even if the biological aspect died, as long as it was given a few years for that person to spread to both, they would still basically be themself even though they were now just a computer

Thats spot on, exactly what I was trying to say in the thread I created in may!

I do see implications in using methods described by some other people.

The identity of one can be seemlessly expanded into the non - biological section of the brain. As we grow up, we build an identity. I do not even think its important to scan every single part of the brain. You are building your identity constantly in the *new* artificial extension of your mind. All memories do not have to be saved or remembered. They will simply fade and disappear but you never lose your identity or yourself by this and that is the most important part. If you forget that bob hit you over the leg with a bat a few years ago... are you still you ? Of course you are !

The memories that are strong will stay as they will be recreated as you remember them in your expanding identity. Memories that you dont carry over may just disappear. But you wont miss them!

You will keep strong memories and you will continually create new ones. "the spreading of consciousness" as manwater said.

This transition is the best possible way in my opinion and safest and you can be sure that you make it into the non-biological brain. This I believe will be the easiest method also.

Scanning the whole brain then trasporting it other to something else is just not necessary at all.

[bgwowk]

I agree with Matt that the gradual augmentation/replacment scenario is the most likely scenario for the first "uploaders." In fact, I believe that was the scenario first predicted by Hans Moravec 20 years ago. But I stand by my guns in predicting that today's biological diseases will be as common as scarlet fever in an era when brain replacement reaches totality.

Note to jaydfox:

Although I have fun playing devil's advocate against people who don't think uploading could preserve personhood, I'm actually an uploading agnostic. There are real and deep philosophical questions about the relationship between hardware and consciousness that arise in uploading that don't come up in more conservative biological duplication scenarios. Uploading is a different kettle of fish from mere biological duplication.

---BrianW

[manowater989]

Well, yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to say. I think there is a general consensus among everyone who thinks about it more than a little and doesn't want to die that when it comes to uploading, or spreading, as I'm trying to change the perception (or goal) of it to, "slow is the way to go". For whatever reason, people just seem to innately understand in much the same way as we get that fire can hurt us, that a copy of us made all at once wouldn't BE us, whereas something that we slowly turn into over time more or less would. What I am trying to address, also, though, is the timeframe. The ability to do this doesn't seem to me more than 50 or 60 years at the very most, in the future. I think it could be possible within 20, or even less. Who could have imagined the internet in 1985? A very few computer scientists on the vanguard, when it was just barely a connection of some university databases. This is all closer than most of you seem to think, I'd literally be willing to bet money on it, not to mention my life.

[bgwowk]

manowater989 wrote:

I think it could be possible within 20, or even less.

Not a chance. But I guess I've already said that enough times.

Who could have imagined the internet in 1985?

The people who already invented the Internet (TCP/IP) in 1970s. By the mid 80s the Internet was widely used in academia, and online services like CompuServe were beginning to create Internet onramps for the masses.

Perhaps you really mean who could have imagined the World Wide Web, which was the "killer app" that made the Internet really take off. Without even getting off my chair I can see two books right now on my book shelf that predicted the Web in all its hyperlinked glory. One is "The Good Years: Your Life in the Twenty-First Century" by Caroline Bird (1983), and especially "Engines of Creation" by K. Eric Drexler (1986) that nailed the Web and its consequences virtually exactly. I'm sure a serious computer buff could name many others.

This is all closer than most of you seem to think, I'd literally be willing to bet money on it, not to mention my life.

Don't do it. You'll lose. Eat veggies and exercise.

---BrianW