We'll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 Google expert claims

Is uploading all the information in your brain the same as uploading who you are?

I wonder if the structure your brain and how your brain is wired may be just as important to "being you" as the information stored in your brain.

theyll have a little suprise when they go for mine..muwahahaha.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

What if they do this and find that your uploaded self is also "alive" only trapped, or what if they do this and for some freaky reason you are somehow connected to your virtual self through your brain waves... This could open a lot of pandora's boxes.

Should be interesting.

reply to post by Darkblade71


your closer to the truth than you think.

reply to post by Darkblade71


Yes...that could be fodder for some sort of weird Twilight Zone-like story -- a consciousness trapped in a computer with no way to interact with the outside. Sort of like being in a sealed room.


However, as I was trying to point out in my post above, will you really have a consciousness just because all of the information stored in your brain has been uploaded to a computer?

I don't think it is only the information that makes us "Us", but rather how that all of information is connected and cross-connected to itself. An crude analogy might be uploading all of the words of a book to a computer. I can upload the words,but unless I also upload the order of those words (how each word relates to other words -- i.e., in sentence syntax and paragraph structure), then the book would just be a meaningless amalgamation of words.

Also, the way by brain is put together (the way the chemicals in my brain reacts to make thoughts and memories) is also important in defining who I am. A bunch of memories in a computer -- even if I can add to them with some sort of sensory input device -- would not be the same without the structure of my brain and those chemical reactions that govern those thoughts/memories.

A computer with a bunch of my brain's information, but devoid of syntax, structure, and inter-connectivity may also be just a meaningless amalgamation of information -- and not really me at all.

Holy crap! This sounds really creepy. No way would I ever want to live forever, sounds really boring.

Though it sounds interesting and all that, it is floored.

Living human beings are largely governed by chemical reactions. Our passions and drives are linked to this. If we enter a computer as pure mind, we lose everything that made us unique, and become a collection of information that couldn't comprehend itself because feelings (i.e. chemical reactions... yes I know that is simplifying it) are the basis of identifying what matters to us.

For example, say that my partner and I uploaded ourselves into a virtual world, we'd unlikely share any kind of emotional bond. The "chemistry" we shared would have no meaning.

To me, existing inside a computer would be a cold soulless existence. It has no point to it.

reply to post by cody599


So what does he say exactly is the" human mind" that will be transfered to a computer?
Has he defined consciousness in this story?

Does he just want to transfer some memories, he cannot transfer emotions connected to these memories subjective feelings etc.
Curious thinking, he is trying to avoid (the death of the body)trying to gain immortality (of what HE thinks he is- a sequence of memories with all the feeling and intellect of a computer).
Does anyone want to "live" as an (insentient) computer?
Insanity.

I am not sure whether the human mind itself could be uploaded to a computer or just a 'snapshot' of a brain in transit between different mind-body states. There are active projects for mapping the human brain. The most famous is the one that Obama has authorised with a considerable budget for the complete mapping of the human brain.

Obama Brain Mapping

Another project is mapping the pathway taken by each neuron in the brain to the point where it can connect with many other neurons and has given rise to a new scientific field of study called connectomics.

Connectomics

In this forum, I would question the ultimate aims of these projects, independently of the aims of the scientists involved. Our neurons (or nerve cells) are of two main types. Sensory neurons are connected to special cells that detect changes in the environment, for example, light receptor cells are found in the eye and, as light hits them, create a pulse of charged particles ( a nervous impulse) that reaches the brain and allows the brain to react to the light stimulus using another set of neurons, motor neurons, attached to muscles and glands (e.g. the salivary glands).

The brain can be seen, very crudely, as a mass of neurons which can connect to each other in an immense spider web-type structure. Some neurons can connect with up to 5000 other neurons. In short, it is a hugely complicated structure. Imagine that scientists could map the origin of thoughts, proto-thoughts or of what we could term the human will, it would be an outstanding achievement.

However, herein lie the dangers. ATS members should be aware that this technology is a double-edged sword. Certainly, it would be valuable to diagnose underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders but these conditions are subjected to complicated genetic and environmental factors anyway. A far more realistic scenario is that, the true leaders of the world the eponymous "they" who run things in our world above the purview of mere Governments, will wish to exert control over large numbers of people. If it is possible to read thoughts and intentions and relay them back to a central supercomputer, measures can be taken to prevent rebellion to the owners of multinationals corporations and banks which actually rule our world. This technology has probably been available to the Military Industrial Complex for some time.

Reading Brain Intentions

Terahertz Technologies

Raytheon Military Industrial Complex Member

Ultimately, if we can read human intentions and have them mapped, we could prevent rebellion by
"squashing" the brains of opponents and extend it to large populations using HAARP techniques. The brain mapped is the brain hacked. We owe it to our children and successors to warn them of the nefarious uses to which this technology can be employed. If we fail to do so and bury our heads in the sand, we will fail our descendants again...

Brain Hacking

this is what happens, the military does their expirements, figures out all this stuff, deploys it secretly, then when they think were mature enough or its time to manipulate society, they release information to someone who bids or is chosen. Unless of course we make it their first.

reply to post by dashen


I think it'd be awesome to join the collective lol

Seriously though...maybe I'm wrong and if so please correct me. If we program this computer to hold our mind, how do we really know it's working and not the computer itself being that person? like I program this robot to hold the mind of me. So the computer, working logically, decides to download any/all information on me it can find, building a personality of me. So we go to upload my brain, my body dies and the computer thinks it is me now so it acts like me. How will they be able to tell it's actually me in there and not the computer acting as me?

reply to post by cody599


Uploading???


Think they've been downloading for a very long time, INTO our minds. Sorry, thread author and Mr. Kurzweil, but I kind of liked who I was before singularity, which was reached a very long time ago.

You know, when smaller minds than God play God, and have no forgiveness, we are in DEEP TROUBLE. But good luck with that, I'll just keep drinking through the download of my 27 kinds of hell that's been my provision for so very long.....

2045....

Does anyone seriously think WWIII isn't going to happen b4 then?

Don't get your hopes up.

An uploaded and operating brain would need artificial sensory input, other people to communicate with and something to do to remain sane.

This could be achieved using a simulated reality. Simulating a human brain would require a physical simulation, which could also be used to simulate an environment.

Then how long would it be before the brains in the simulated reality are uploading their brains to their simulated computers and so on?

Who in this chain of simulation would be able to tell that their reality isn't real? Including us....

Originally posted by EasyPleaseMe
An uploaded and operating brain would need artificial sensory input, other people to communicate with and something to do to remain sane.

This could be achieved using a simulated reality. Simulating a human brain would require a physical simulation, which could also be used to simulate an environment.

Then how long would it be before the brains in the simulated reality are uploading their brains to their simulated computers and so on?

Who in this chain of simulation would be able to tell that their reality isn't real?

THE REAL MATRIX that's why when 1 sees OP about uploading in so many years who is to say its not happening.

OUTTA BOX this data being shared now IN this op is a program embed to assist later. Developed technologies that mimic reality... good points

NAMASTE*******

He must have been reading ghost in the shell

Masamune shirow also proposed this idea in the 80's with appleseed and ghost in the shell

what defines us as humans our soul/ consciousness

Excellent! I should still be around in 30–40 years (barring calamity) and thus can... LIVE FOREVERRRRRRRR!!

Originally posted by sapien82

....what defines us as humans our soul/ consciousness

Even if you take the spiritual aspect out of this (i.e., even if we don't talk about "souls"), I still don't think that simply uploading the information stored in my brain to a computer would be the same as uploading "Me".

Our memories are not just a bunch of stand-alone pieces of data -- they are all interconnected and interwoven with each other through the brain's synaptic pathways and chemical reactions. For example, if I smell apple pie, it may provoke a memory of some autumn evening with my family 20 years ago. If this proposed computer brain had the information stored about apple pie (and it had some way of smelling) all it would do is say "Yep, that's apple pie you smell", without provoking that memory from 20 years ago.

To make me "me", all of my memories and thoughts would need to have the interconnections that they have in my brain right now (interconnections to each other,and interconnection to my senses). I don't see the ability to map all of those interconnections happening in 30 years.

The truth of the matter is the fact that consciousness is one of the biggest and most misunderstood secrets of existence. Transferring thoughts is not the same as transferring consciousness, and since we understand very little, if anything, on what consciousness really entails, it is for sure going to be a very daunting, if almost impossible and risky task to transfer it from one body to another form of "host". Only time will reveal better answers.

Originally posted by omass
reply to post by Wolfenz

 

I'm not such a hardcore conpiracy theorist. Are there government coverups? Definetely? Have they invented this 30 years ago? I highly doubt it.

what makes you so sure ??