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A Mind Made From Memristors
Csiko writes "Researchers at Boston University's department of cognitive and neural systems are working on an artificial brain implemented with memristors. 'A memristor is a two-terminal device whose resistance changes depending on the amount, direction, and duration of voltage that's applied to it. But here's the really interesting thing about a memristor: Whatever its past state, or resistance, it freezes that state until another voltage is applied to change it. Maintaining that state requires no power.' Also theoretically described, solid state versions of memristors have not been implemented until recently. Now researchers in Boston claim that memristors are the new key technology to implement highly integrated, powerful artificial brains on cheap and widely available hardware within five years."
This opens up a whole huge assload of debate again.
Let us assume they map out the brain, create an FPGA of memristor devices like this that can mimic the brain's exact structure.
First round it doesn't work.
Because robots can't have a soul. You need a spirit to have that kind of consciousness. You'll hear this argument immediately; I'm not going to argue directly against the spirituality thing, but the question to me is more complex than that, of course. Still, that'll be the first argument.
Then someone will make it work.
Now the interesting shit happens.
A lot of people have told me they're never going to die because, by the time they're old, technology will exist to copy their minds into machines. Think about that. Immortality through perpetuated consciousness.
Stop for a moment.
Realize you are alive, aware, and conscious.
Now, why do you experience consciousness?
You want to say, well, all that "soul" bullshit is weird and freaky. Scientifically unsound. I experience consciousness due to a series of electrochemical reactions in my brain. End of story.
Now suppose I move your brain's data into another organic brain, electronic brain, or anything else of the source. Would you continue to "live"? Would YOU continue to live?
To make the point more clear, what if I made an identical copy and booted both at the same time. Do you suddenly develop a psychic link with your other self, experiencing both existences at once, living in two different places? ... ridiculous.
So you're bound to your brain. You cannot live forever unless your particular, specific, physical brain stays in tact. If I copy your brain to another cloned brain, yank yours out, and replace it with the clone, everyone else will interact with you as if you were you, no difference; but YOU would vanish into the blackness, you'd stop living, you'd die.
Why are you conscious?
Hmm that would be convenient for suicide cases. So much easier. Copy my brain into a biological clone brain, swap, and destroy mine. I get to die and nobody else has to worry about it because I don't die. The ultimate escape: you make your life someone else's problem!
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Yes, and this would work why? (in practice, would it?) My point is we don't understand consciousness (and have no way to verify things like this actually work) and that the question is very complex. Even if you don't accept the concept of a "soul," you have a very difficult problem in front of you. If you DO accept the concept of a "soul," you have something confusing and complex in front of you.
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At least some are, just at a slow rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis#Adult_neurogenesis
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dxar9m
Also in mice at least, fetal cells can get into the mother's brain and grow neurons etc there: http://brainethics.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/on-a-mothers-mind/
Maybe that's why some couples start looking like each other over time :).
See the twins that can understand and/or hear each others thoughts
http://gizmodo.com/5682758/the-fascinating-story-of-the-twins-who-share-brains-thoughts-and-senses
Now, I have some sympathy for the pragmatic argument that getting good tools into enough hands is the best way to raise the odds of cracking hard problems. Some people will point out (for example) that a modern 3d game like Crysis might have been emulated (at a fraction of real-time speed) 20 years ago, but nobody figured out how, or bothered to do so, (and no, Castle Wolfenstein doesn't count) because hardware limitations made it too cumbersome and only a few parties had the resources to even try.
Even so, claiming it "can't be done" is going too far. People are building conventional computers that simulate neurons on the order of a cat brain, but programming them is the problem.