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Why Our Brains Will Never Live In the Matrix
destinyland writes "Professor Athena Andreadis answers the question, 'Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix,' contrasting "mind uploading" predictions with 'the major stumbling block to personal immortality' — namely, that our biological software is inseparable from our hardware. There's practical problems. ('After electrochemical activity ceases in the brain, neuronal integrity deteriorates in a matter of seconds.') But she also argues that what we call 'the mind' is also an artifact of a specific brain, and copying it 'is an excellent way to leave a detailed memorial or a clone-like descendant, but not to become immortal.'"
"I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me.
Microscopic spiders had woven a fine gold web through my brain, so that the jewel's teacher could listen to the whisper of my thoughts. The jewel itself eavesdropped on my senses, and read the chemical messages carried in my bloodstream; it saw, heard, smelt, tasted and felt the world exactly as I did, while the teacher monitored its thoughts and compared them with my own. Whenever the jewel's thoughts were wrong, the teacher—faster than thought—rebuilt the jewel slightly, altering it this way and that, seeking out the changes that would make its thoughts correct.
Why? So that when I could no longer be me, the jewel would do it for me."
Greg Egan, "Learning to be Me" (1990)
Reading Doctorow's 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom' to my daughter as a bedtime story when he published it, I recall that somewhere around the middle of the book she started asking me how it was that restoring from a backup to a new body, no matter how fresh the backup, would result in a continuity of awareness for the individual involved. Not my girl's words exactly, but that was her meaning. I had been struggling with this question since almost the beginning of the book, and to some extent had been for years earlier whenever the question of immor
There's always the problem of continuity of consciousness. Even if you make an identical copy of your brain, another consciousness emerges. TFA states:
> This is an excellent way to leave a detailed memorial or a clone-like descendant, but not to become immortal.
I don't buy that at all. Couldn't you say that the new emergent consciousness would be identical? That wouldn't be a copy, but a fork.
But what is so special about consciousness in the first place? One could say that the emergent thing, the consciousness, is always the same, regardless of its constituents. conscious-ness is a property of the conscious entity that is shared with all conscious entities. It's not the thing that makes us different.
I'd say that I am not my consciousness. And are we really sure that consciousness is ever continual? If I freeze and then manage to restore you, would you be another person?
Actually McCoy stated once that he'd been dead for all the years since he first entered a transporter. An interesting concept.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Nobody tell Ray Kurzweil!
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I think you're underestimating the complexity of the human brain. Neurons come in hundreds of different types, and make synapses with up to 100,000 different neurons. That's so may decades ahead of the nanotech we have today that talking about it is more fiction than science.
The brain doesn't make all the synaptic connections perfectly the first time around, either, and they need to be adjusted when learning - that's why we have stuff like long term potentiation and depression. Oh, and neurotransmitters (more properly neuropeptides) can alter existing functional (metabolic) properties of neurons. So for this type of thing to work, you've got to have nanotechnology that works on a level that is on par with our "crappy human cells". If they're more efficient, they won't be 100% compatible with the existing connections, and therefore nothing will work. So right, we can't use computer-based cells; everything will have to be done in wet-ware. And again, the brain has serious problems integrating new neurons into existing systems unless they evolved specifically to be able to incorporate new neurons, like the olfactory system and hippocampus.
I'm not saying that such a system is impossible, just that it's at least a hundred years off. If you want immortality, you're better off betting on advances in labeling techniques that will allow the mystical "brain-scan and upload" just like Ray Kurtzweil. Yeah, you have the same continuity of consciousness problem that everyone is discussing here, but that's more a philosophical discussion than a scientific one. My real concern is that early transfer techniques will be piss-poor and not copy all synaptic connections, leading to early transfers not being themselves, and people dismissing the whole technology as evil and worthless.
One final point:
We do not know very much at all about BCIs (if we did, cochlear implants would be better than regular hearing), and they are not related - not by a long shot - to what you're talking about.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
The way this will probably play out is when they can start to augment some failing neurons, say in the case of Alzheimer's. You send in a few nano-neurons which find the ones that are dying, and replace them. Say it's 2%, and it's a major therapeutic win for the elderly. Grandma is just back to normal.
The trick comes when gene therapy, DNA repair, telemere extension, etc. start to make the body last longer. Maybe that 2% slowly needs to ratchet up to 5%. Then 10%. A few decades later, Grandma is 95% nano-tech in the brain, and nobody has noticed any different. Does Grandma still have human rights? I think everybody says yes.
Then, Grandma gets a backup and restore to a separate entity. What is that thing that thinks it's grandma? Does it have rights? It thinks it does.
There are several problems with this article:
There are some people who are eager to get into a machine body, but focusing on that misses the vast majority of folks who will just want regular repairs. And since they're past 65, they'll want Medicare to pay for it until they're at least 540.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
This is a wonderful paradox to consider when discussing these sorts of topics and I think it applies very well to your repair questions.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Cool article, thanks. The average human body turns over every 7 years except for the neurons, so perhaps we've already answered the question insofar as we grant continuing rights and obligations to the '4D' entity.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Since the brain makes little distinction between hardware, instructions, and data, perhaps the crux of the problem is that it wasn't designed with any way to do a read-out from the big squishy mess. If an "upload" of any sort ever becomes possible, I think it will require a brain engineered from before birth, to contain specialized features that will enable a dump.
Perhaps it'll be in the form of some little chemical tags that will accumulate in cell bodies, produced in varying mixes whose profiles reveal what the cell did when it was still alive and who it was connected to -- stable enough to be scanned out of diced sheets post-mortem. Or maybe they'll pulse out their secrets encoded in bio-luminescent flashes. Or maybe they'll be a mesh of nerve fibers splayed across the brain of this new human, bio-engineered to output something a computer can understand, with characteristics to help mitigate problems like requiring precise electrode placement, or incompatibility with artificial materials.
In any case, there would be immortality, but not for us...
If the brain is irrevocably connected to the body, then simulate the body alongside the brain on your supercomputer.
Sleep. Your stream of conscious experience stops when you go to sleep, and resumes when you wake up. Sure, there's some brain activity during sleep -- but during the deepest phases, there's nothing like "consciousness". In fact, given the consolidation processes and whatnot that happen during sleep, you could make a very convincing argument that the person who wakes up in your body tomorrow morning will not be the "you" that falls asleep tonight.
Sweet dreams!
My real concern is that early transfer techniques will be piss-poor and not copy all synaptic connections, leading to early transfers not being themselves, and people dismissing the whole technology as evil and worthless.
Some will. But think about people who suffer traumatic brain injury. They're "not themselves" afterward, they often suffer horribly, and they might face impairments for the rest of their lives -- but the majority of them are still grateful to be alive. Most people -- not all, but most -- would choose continued life with some impairment over certain death.
Some people will be "early adopters" for this kind of pseudo-immortality, and some people will never accept it. But I imagine the largest class will want to wait as long as they can, risking the chance of death, to let the techniques advance as far as possible. I think that's the class in which I'd find myself.
that you would go 'crazy' without the neruological stimulus from your 5 main senses. People who loose one or two of their senses in accidents have had their personalities greatly altered. The biggest impact is sight, second is touch. In essense, starving your brain that is hardwired for sensory input could drive it mad within days and weeks. Not to mention, how would your intuition, sense of reason and rational work in an artifical environment? How could you day-dream?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
So, here's a thought experiment, say you made an artificial equivalent of a neuron that behaves the same way externally. Now, you swap out the neurons with the artificial ones, while you're still conscious. You wouldn't know if one neuron was replaced, but at some point all your neurons will be artificial, you've just transferred your mind to a different platform. In reality, we'll likely develop machines which can behave like the brain and interface with the brain. Once we start getting augmentations, they will become part of us. Just like the brain changes as the child matures into an adult. Eventually, majority of the brain could be composed of the artificial components, and losing the old hemispheres will be no different than shedding a toe nail.