Download Your Brain

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 23, 2005 @05:21AM from the gonna-need-a-bigger-drive dept.

Nicholas Roussos writes "Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson predicts that death will be avoidable in the year 2050 by downloading your brain to a computer. Unfortunately, he is also predicting that the process will be only available to the wealthy for years after its release. I guess we should all start saving our pennies now."

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BS by astro_ripper · 2005-05-23 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

As Penn and Teller have stated before:
He picked those numbers for his theory because he'll be dead by then.

The end.
Woo-hoo. Or not... by Ciaran_H · 2005-05-23 05:23 · Score: 5, Funny

Oh yay, so Bill Gates gets to be immortal as well as evil.

"What are we going to do this millenium, Bill?"
"Same as we do every millenium, Ballmer..."
He's wrong. by podperson · 2005-05-23 05:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

Making a copy of yourself doesn't avoid death for you, it just means ongoing life for a copy of you.

This is not a subtle point.

Anyone who cannot grasp this either hasn't thought deeply about a subject, or is an idiot. Anyone who uses the title "futurologist" is likely the latter.
1. Re:He's wrong. by Eric+Smith · 2005-05-23 07:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  How do you know when you wake up in the morning that you are really the same person that went to bed the previous night? You don't have continuity of consciousness through the entire night. Maybe the "you" of yesterday died, and you are just a copy; how would you know? ("I'd know the difference." "No you wouldn't, you'd be programmed not to.")
  If you went to the "uploading clinic", and they put you under a general anaestheic, uploaded you, and terminated the leftover hunk of meat, how would that be different than simply going to sleep and waking up (albeit in a new "body")?
  
  As you said,
  
  This is not a subtle point.
  Anyone who cannot grasp this either hasn't thought deeply about a subject, or is an idiot.
Not for me by e_AltF4 · 2005-05-23 05:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

NEVER do a backup without a working restore !
News? by TripMaster+Monkey · 2005-05-23 05:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought this was supposed to be 'News for Nerds', not 'Speculation for Halfwits'...

From TFA:

He thinks that today's younger generation will benefit from the advances in technology to the point that death will be effectively eliminated. He explains his logic with a simple example. "The new PlayStation is 1 per cent as powerful as a human brain," he said. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain."

OK...so where does that put the Xbox?
Seriously, this 'explanation' of his 'logic' leaves much to be desired...but there's more.
Also from TFA:

It [Pearson's AI] would definitely have emotions - that's one of the primary reasons for doing it. If I'm on an airplane I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am so it does everything to stay in the air until it's supposed to be on the ground.

Hmm...but what if the AI is a thrillseeker? Suicidal? Psychotic? What if it suddenly develops acrophobia? If we're going to have a true AI with emotions, these are issues that need to be addressed, don't you think?
Here's another few nuggets from TFA:

"You need a completely global debate. Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one. Whether we should be allowed to modify bacteria to assemble electronic circuitry and make themselves smart is already being researched."

Well, that 'completely global debate' should be ready by the release of PlayStation 5...

'We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it's possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium. You could have a conversation with your strawberry yogurt before you eat it.'

'Smart yoghurt'? Sure I guess it's possible to think of that...about as possible as it is to think of magical elves, unicorn-riding gnomes, and smart futurologists.

One thing conspicuously missing from this article is speculation over the possible legal status of either a true AI or a downloaded brain. Apparently, that paragraph got bumped in favor of 'smart yoghurt'.

In short, this is the dumbest thing I've heard all day (and I work in IT support). I'm sure that if Dr. Pearson didn't already have such a sweet position as 'head of the Futurology unit at BT', he could make good money writing speculative fiction...or reading palms.

--
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Re:It's a copy by kpwoodr · 2005-05-23 05:28 · Score: 5, Funny

You'd be suprised. When I died a few years ago I had this done, and it's been great fun. It was either this or getting frozen. I'm just waiting for someone to screw up and download me, and I'm home free. That's where the money will be. Allowing the rich people to take over a younger person's body.

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This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
self centered by spectrokid · 2005-05-23 05:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

After I have gone, young people will come with new ideas, new dreams, new problems. They will require the (intellectual) space fat ass rich guys will claim for their eternal life. I do not believe I have achieved enough in this world for my mind to persist past my body. All good things come to an end, and this includes me!

--
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Re:It's a copy by mrdaveb · 2005-05-23 05:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

Conciousness is so poorly understood that I don't think you can even say that for sure. Am 'I' the matter or the data in my brain? If I go into a teleporter, do 'I' come out the other end?

--
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
Re:The obvious question... by m50d · 2005-05-23 05:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

What makes you the same person who went to sleep last night? Your conscious experience wasn't continuous, all that really makes you who you are is the things in your brain, the memories and personality and so on. If it's a perfect replica of your brain, the experience will be the same. If you were killed in your sleep last night and a replica made and put in your place, how would you even know?

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I am trolling
Yeah, whatever. by jd · 2005-05-23 05:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

You may be able to download the electrical state - but that is FAR from certain, as the brain is very noisy, electrically - but how would you download the chemical state? Seratonin levels aren't exactly going to be trivial to scan, remotely.

And once you have the chemical composition and the electrical composition, you ALSO need to know the wiring - the wiring between the neurons is unique to an individual, and isn't going to be easy to determine.

Ok, so now you have all of the core information. Is it still useful? Well, no. You now need to know the physical layout of the brain - all the folds, the exact proximity of A to B, that sort of thing.

Ok, is THIS enough? Still no. You still lack information on sensory input. You need to know what the range is on different nerves, because the brain is going to adjust to what the nerves deliver. If you don't know what the nerves deliver, then you don't know what sort of data the brain is expecting.

NOW, is that enough? No. You need to know what the data is that is being fed into the brain. For example, those with tetrochromatic vision will be getting data in a whlly different format from those with trichromatic vision, and both will be different from those with bichromatic vision.

Once you have all of this information, you MAY be able to reconstruct a person's brain well enough to be able to function identically. The keyword is MAY. As technology improves, our knowledge of the brain is improving. It is still seriously incomplete, but it is improving. There is so far no proof that we will ever know enough to actually duplicate the brain, although there is also no proof that we won't. All we have proof of, right now, is that we can't, right now.

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It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:It's a copy by SpectreBlofeld · 2005-05-23 05:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

Every cell in your body dies and is replaced over a scale of seven years or so. You're not the original you, having been replaced multiple times with a 'copy'. Care to redefine your idea of conciousness?
Re:Soulless by bill_mcgonigle · 2005-05-23 05:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

Uh, your memory engrams may be downloadable, but your consciousness and soul will die right along with your body.

Doesn't that imply your soul is organic? I thought the point of a soul is a mechanism for an afterlife?

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Say you have very good prosthetic and nanotechnology available. As you age your natural body starts to fail. You have organs, limbs, bones, even blood replaced over time. As your skin fails a nice polymer replaces it (with excellent nerve replacements of course so you don't notice a difference).

Do you still have a soul at that point?

OK, now your body is failing even more. Over another couple decades you've replaced everything in your body except for your brain with mechanical systems.

Do you still have a soul at that point?

Now, your nerves start to degenerate and your brain isn't signaling well. You get some nano-bots in there to replace the dendrites and get the neurons signalling right again.

Do you still have a soul at that point?

Finally the neurons are starting to go and you get some more nanotech in there that can replace failing ones on the fly as they go with more stable structures. Over the next 20 years all of your neurons are slowly replaced by nanotech, but it's very gradual so you don't ever notice it.

Do you still have a soul at that point?

The trick in this experiment is picking the point at which you don't have a soul, if ever, and identifying the change that caused the soul. Of course, if you can identify the change that lost the soul, it follows you've identified the temple of the soul.

Discussion encouraged.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
bittorrent yourself... by TheSHAD0W · 2005-05-23 06:39 · Score: 5, Funny

And label yourself "stephen_hawking.torrent".
Re:It's a copy by h4rm0ny · 2005-05-23 06:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

A sad scientist was once heard to say,
To upload my brain, I have found a way,
But my memory contains
Things not public domain
And I'd violate DMCA.

Hello alcohol, goodbye Karma. 8) Seriously, I just got this image of the RIAA breaking into the lab 'cause the cloned brain remembered the Happy Birthday lyrics.

--

Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Re:Soulless by GreenMarine · 2005-05-23 08:18 · Score: 5, Funny

It would be funny if they discovered the appendix in fact housed the soul. "And all this time we thought it was relatively useless!"

--
Brandon Reinhart
Re:It's a copy by LesPaul75 · 2005-05-23 08:49 · Score: 5, Funny

Trust me -- this is a road you don't want to go down. Your wife will die in childbirth, your children will be hidden from you, and the guy who used to be your best friend in the world will hack your limbs off. And then, just to rub salt in the wound, he'll tell your son that you're "more machine than man now, twisted and evil." What a prick.