Downloading your brain to a PC? It might be alot closer than you think!

Just caught this on popsci.com, it begs alot of social and moral questions, that go way beyond is it even possible.


www.popsci.com...


So do you even think it is possible to transplant consciousness?
If it is, did we just copy the person into the box? Or are they transfered and the body rendered driverless?
If the body is left without a mind controlling it, can anothers consciousness be implanted?
Would a person transfered into a comp then be more like a slave than a sentient being? would they have rights?
would someone be able to change their code to change their behavior pattern against their will?

I just find thinking about this to be rather fun and insightful, I never really put much stock into it so I never spent much time thinking about it until now.

What do you guys think?

So your thoughts become criminal.

Say, last week you were at Starbucks and there was this hot barista you were checking out. Uh-oh she's 16.

That thought gets backed up and now you're in possession of kiddy porn.

Yeah, this will be wonderful. Every angry thought is now a tangible threat on record. Every glance at an ass is now a sexual offense.

Now we'll have a record of every "conspiracy to" crime anyone has ever committed and a backed-up confession of sorts for anyone who has actually committed a crime.

Sir, we have here in your consciousness record that you shoplifted a bag of Big League Chew when you were 12.

Once it's backed up on a disc can you plead the fifth?

Ray Kurzweil seems certain this will happen and soon(ish). Within his lifetime (and he is quite up there in age). If your interested in this stuff, you might want to do a quick search for him.

I think a discussion needs to be had on what exactly consciousness is. It would be truely awesome to be able to download myself and live in virtual reality/net. There are some concerns of course (what happens if the major hubs shut down, etc)..so lots of redundancy needs to be put in.

Same rights? Well, surely there would need to be some rights given to digital individuals. Mostly making sure that the physical cannot interfere with the life of the digital and visa versa..so, it would be like a different nation unto itself as far as legalities are concerned.

I am about to read the article, however I have read tons on the subject already. This stuff fascinates me. All for transhumanism and the singularity.
Would definately help out on the overpopulation issue considering soo many would gladly upload and become an immortal consciousness verses live in a decaying meatbag for ? amounts of years until death finds them

Short of a mass nuclear war though (with EMPs shutting down all things for good), they are safe

I think it is a good idea, I always wished for that possibility, but then, where do you store your consciousness??? The last couple of weeks I've had to deal with so many companies, that stored huge amounts of data, and their RAID arrays failed, and in 90% of the cases, their RAID arrays were not set up correctly, so I couldn't recover their data as easy (or at all).....I would have hated to have my conscience stored on a system like that, because who knows what my consciousness would be like if I missed a couple of bytes in key-places.

If we have 100% confidence in the media where we store our minds, I think it would open huge possibilities for us as humans, but I shudder to think what would happen if the very place where we store our minds goes corrupt.

s+f for you op.
Now it doesnt seem like he is talking about living in a computer.
But more like having you're brain uploaded to a Robot that still lives in this world??.
I could be wrong as im a bit (Ok more then a bit) drunk atm .

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Once it's backed up on a disc can you plead the fifth?

You plead faulty software , and it picked up a dream or nightmare . or something you saw on tv , or something you were day dreaming of , lol They can't prove that event really happened if its just stored . LIke everything else . I hope


Strange i been thinking about this past few days , brain to PC and eternity .

Would go down like this .

Year: 2660

Your ready to uphload your brain to computer .


you connect sensors and everything is transferred., But you wanna turn it on now. So you do , she starts right up . and you have a convo with it , and its strange , you would still have the consciousness not the computer it would only be accesing stored information and presenting it . LIke a cyborg.

Once you die , the cyborg still lives , its only projecting a image of you based on memory blocks , and no matter how much that cyborg knows , it will never be use . Just a clever hacker

reply to post by reddwhite


Everything you do has a consequence, if you are bad or if you are good it matters.

That voice in your head may not be on your side.

His eventual plan is to upload consciousness onto a hologram. That's ambitious to say the least.

Consciousness controlling a robotic body might be easy to achieve but uploading it onto a hologram is another story.

On a side note, this is the next step in human evolution and resistance is futile (I know the Borg line has been done to death but I still like it). I just think it's inevitable for humans to become cyborgs. Things like this Avatar program and in areas of prosthetic's is where things will advance.

Just think about a robotic arm replacing an arm when someone loses an arm. This robotic arm can be online and make cell phone calls. Your arm will be like a Kindle and you can run your finger over a bar code for a book or some food and information about the product will appear on your arm. You can eventually cover the arm in skin tissue.

When these things become more efficient than human limbs will people want to replace their arms with a robotic arm?

reply to post by reddwhite


little know this but its already been done and implemented several times over... there is even a prevalent matrix which was created to disable the consequences of atomic warfare upon the hyperdimensional augmentation of the cosmos. All the rest are sub matrices/realities.

Another unexpected anomaly is that whenever an alternate virtuality simulation is created the individuals consciousness's are simultaneously superimposed over an actual alternate cosmos of the same events virtualised. Like how some dreams are alternate cosmos's (which can more or less be proven for oneslef esoterically - via lucid dreaming etc..), many dream in full blown colour and sensation and believe they are awake and not dreaming whilst they have entirely different cosmos-memory references uploaded to their slumbering superconscious which desynchronises with the everyday-memory set (in which they slumber).

Not even this technology can be abused indefinatly without there being a consequence which eventually creeps up on those who exploit it. The reason why they are talking about this now is partially because they now know that they have created something that has gotten out of hand and now consequence have them worried about the implications of alternate cosmos matrices which download real-matrix-abusing-criminals into alternate cosmos where they serve sentences.

Ian M Banks last book, 'Surface Detail' goes into this idea.

He hits on an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of technology allowing download of a mind to machine. If you can put a mind in a computer you can send it to a virtual hell.

No need to settle for killing people and hoping theres a hell. We can send people directly to a hell tailor made for them.

This would happen. We are bad enough to make it so.

reply to post by justwokeup


Alot of really interesting thoughtsso far. How about this one, which was one of my first concerns.

What if someone invented a virus that reversed the process and used it to transfer every consciousness to the recycle bin and upload its original hosts? Thus putting a megalomaniac physically in control of everyone who did the procedure.

The real Head Job will be when they can upload your consciousness to a clone of your body essentially making a replica of yourself.

Would it still be you ?

Would you have rights over your own clone ?

Would it be a seperate person in their own right ?

Would you be held responsible for your own clones actoins ?

This sort of thing throws up many, many ethical questions. Sounds like the whole thing could / would probably be quite bad.

Originally posted by pot8er
The real Head Job will be when they can upload your consciousness to a clone of your body essentially making a replica of yourself.

Would it still be you ?

Would you have rights over your own clone ?

Would it be a seperate person in their own right ?

Would you be held responsible for your own clones actoins ?

This sort of thing throws up many, many ethical questions. Sounds like the whole thing could / would probably be quite bad.

That would probably be made illegal.

On the positive side:

human minds would be able accumulate lots of experience. Imagine Einstein still with us, in a younger body for example.

You could remove peoples from their body and put them in storage in a VR. A humane society could us this for a great many therapeutic treatments.

Its the ultimate way to do deep space travel. (Spend the majority of the voyage in a VR in the ships computer and download into a body grown at the destination).

Actually just thought of a more down to earth application. Education. Could you play with perception of time in a VR. If you could you could accumulate a great deal of knowledge and experience in an accelerated virtual classroom. Do 3 years of college in a day.