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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.'"
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)
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...