Transferring conciousness to a machine.

I have been talking with my co-workers about this concept for well over a year now. Which is to take the human conciousness and put it into a machine.

The discussions I have had with my co-workers has lead me to a new perspective on it.

I know this is crazy talk and it will probably never happen but. SAVING ASIDE the fact that we can not measure conciousness, or even pinpoint where our conciousness exists inside of our bodies (Which some say it belongs inside of a dimension we can not comprehend.) Let us say that the transfering of a concious can happen. I am not saying we already have this technology, I am saying what if we already can? Put the entirety of our human conciousness into a machine and still be able to take our memories with it.

The questions that have come up recently are: What would we need? Hard drive? Cameras? Microphones? Speakers? Chipsets? Sixaxis motion detection? Gieger counters in case we come across radiation? Dictionaries? A WiFi chip? Motors, gears, wheels, cogs, pivotal joints? metal encasements? What would we need in order to be a machine? What could we build so that we can just continue to move foarward ever wandering the earth for ever?

Again I know this is crazy talk but just save your "You are absurd!" comments and critically think for a change.

What would conciousness really need in order to manuever a machine?

I know this question stems from the fact that our brains essentially maintains function of all the muscles found in our body, as well as react to anything we come into contact with physically as well as mentally. Everything in our bodies serves a function. And our brains operate them accordingly. So... If we no longer have a need for food/exercise/hygiene/clothes/cars/ etc.... What would we need to build in order to just keep functioning? And keep moving forward?

The other part of the argument came up about war. Would people revolt against the idea of for ever being a machine? Would we be able to exist side by side with humans after becoming a machine.

Another question arose which is, what if we are only creating a copy of ourselves and not transfering at all? Would a company kill off each and every one of us to leave it up to ambiguity when you 'come out' the other side? What if you were attempting to transfer your conciousness and suddenly died right after the machine woke up? Did it actually work? Or did you effectively kill yourself, but made a copy? How would you kow you are you inside of a machine? Would you cry because you only made a copy if you lived through the transfer forever trapped inside of flesh and bone? Take for example the episode "White Christmas" from the Netflix series: Black Mirror. Of which the transfer of your entire soul is put into a "cookie" and placed into a machine to do remedial tasks, yet you are who you are.

I mean machines can only do what we tell them to do, but if you look at your own body can you tell your liver to just stop working? Can you tell your heart to stop pumping? Can you tell your ears to mute themselves so you can sleep? No... So if machines require code to be inputted, then why can't a human concious be placed inside of a machine.

I mean if life is nothing more than a series of choices... then talking and telling a machine to do something should be easy right? Or would it be difficult?

On the other side we talked about the benefits of becoming a machine, or finally transferring our conciousness to a machine. And that would mean teleportation would become somewhat achievable. We would just have to be downloaded into a new machine across the planet, or essentially the galaxy. Would we be able to create a copy of ourselves in case we were to meet an end?

And for some of the harder thinkers out there, how much memory would we need to have capacity wise to keep everything in check. How would we compute everything? How fast would we be able to think?

Or the really out there question: What would it feel like to finally become a machine? Would we even feel at all? Or would it be constant pain?

All of these questions are out there. But you can ask yourself the same type of question about your flesh and bones right now. We feel pain, yet we can not feel our own pulses unless we sit still. We really can not feel our muscles move. We do not feel anything in our bodies when something is going wron until we pass the incubation period of a virus. So.... when we feel fine, why is it that our muscles, organs, brains.... even our bones. do they feel?

This is a really out there thread, and I might not be the only person to bring this up, but I did not see anyone talking about it here on ATS so.... Anyone want to talk about this in further detail?

What I think we would need to move around is actually quite small. Sort of like a series of metal poles with motors to control the functions of elbows, knees, hips, shoulders and such... Sort of creating a pivotal joint so I can walk like a human being, but being significantly smaller than a human. I would not try to make myself look human at all as instead I would try to make myself stand out saying "I am a machine dammit. accept me." instead of trying to create a fake human face and what not. I'd rather just have people see that I am a machine instead of pretending to be human at that point.

I await judgement and pray mercy takes me to paradise.

If not, I may just end up in an urn.


But worse comes to worst, I’d embrace hell before I ever accept confining myself to eternity on this Planet as a machine.

a reply to: GiulXainx

What would conciousness really need in order to manuever a machine?

Life.

a reply to: GiulXainx

OP, human consciousness is already in EVERY machine because we created them and we manipulate them to our own will. It is a machine that is writing to you right now with me (another human) manipulating it to communicate with you.

It is already here and has been since we invented the wheel. We are "THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE".

Yes, our consciousness is becoming ever better linked to the machine. Right now I have to laboriously write this and it takes minutes to write what I can think in seconds. I expect the time will come when I can think it and you will be able to perceive it within seconds without the wires and keyboards (touch screens already for many have replaced the keyboard).

Science can bypass a creature's will and self determination and control its movements externally. Does that not suggest that human will and consciousness could be bypassed with the machine controlling the brain and functions? That means one consciousness and will could hypothetically control a million others by bypassing their will and self determination and giving instructions digitally through the wires.

The next step is having an interface that can connect the human mind and neural network to the machine and to allow both to run smoothly in concord and synchronicity.

Well Frankenstein! I think Revelation's "Mark of the Beast" has something to do with this machine takeover. For some reason God will be unable to redeem those who take the Mark. That must mean that whatever the Mark does it must be destroying what is essentially the part of us that will be re-animated in a new universe/dimension (the New Heaven and the New Earth that replaces the one destroyed by fire). That Prophesy makes this very clear. They will be written out of the "Book of Life". That is the worst fear any human could have, surely!

This is where my mind is, at "the edge of reality", between the 666 "creature" (Frankenstein reference) and its creator man (Prometheus' tool) who wants to make something in his image and be its god, ultimate "Creator Envy", the Serpent's Sin. In many ways the Fallen One has compromised and bypassed the wills of many who do not know He exists. The most intelligent scientists and inventors get possessed by Him at a whim because they do not know to put up a guard to maintain their own will. They become a very useful and intelligent design tool for those shadows who operate on the edge of our reality, just slightly out of our dinmensional perception.



Yes, I just transferred my consciousness as a neural response: Through a keyboard, through many wires and servers, through five thousand miles of wires (if you were in NYC) or possibly beamed into space, bounced off a satelite dish and back down to earth and through servers, through wires into your device, through the screen into your eyes, translated into neurons to be registered and understood in the manner we can both understand as being communication and serving a purpose in our relating consciousnesses. At this point words and meanings break down even as code related to cognition. We do as programmed creatures do and our reality only makes sense as far as we can describe it in our ever blinkered, ever deficient perception of reality.

Obviously, this use of so many wires to achieve this over distance is going to become many times more efficient. I would now go as far to say that if we are given enough time developmentally wires will give way to biology again because a brain is so much powerful than metal boxes of circuits. The neurons sure are a marvel of the universe. Imagine what we could do if we could get our will being able to make neural patterns that can quantum leap???

May be God will reward the good with some amazing perceptive powers in the new Kingdom to come, that New Earth (Kingdom)Christ said He is preparing for us. Might God be allowing His Son to make the next Heaven and Earth as a reward for being so faithful and tolerating the torture of His Initiation as the Universe's Annointed? Yes, Christ might have been designing it in some kind of other dimension code all this time. I always said Christ is Quantum Christ for the Quantum Age.

Christ wil not need our ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, silly wires and artificial cellular designs copying human biological processes as machines. Those miracles He performed were the demonstration of The Creator changing the code at a moment's whim because His Son asked Him and His Son pleased Him to WILL it "to be" so. Christ was like Neo in the Matrix, able to demonstrate miraculous abilities of healing, walking on water, rasing from the dead and ultimately being raised from the dead. God has all the hacks and cheats because HE designed the whole Program.

This is very strange I know, but I have always known this.

When we inherited Original Sin from the Serpent we also inherited His "God Envy".

I think consciousness is non local and our physical bodies are avatars. I don't exclude it can be done. Transhumanists certainly take the idea serious. One of several worries I have about the concept is if consciousness is indeed nonlocal and you provide a compatible empty machine vessel as an avatar: how do you control who or what kind of consciousness takes it over. You might be in for a few bad surprises!

Read some Gibson.
The new x files series touches on the subject I think one day it will happen.
Heck maybe we already are downloaded into these machines.
Would I do it? yup of course I want to be in a thirty foot tall space robot whizzing through space .

a reply to: GiulXainx

Yet many questions I need to ask you. How do you know for sure this isn't out yet? The tech?. Are you sure we don't know how to measure conciousness? At least in truth not in theory. Do you how much conciousness there is inside of us or even inside a human cell? We are electrical flesh and with lots of meta properties beyond the physical organization thereof. Why to a machine? What are about the heart and brain connection? It is pretty possible for a machine to have a soul or a transfer of a human conciousness.

a reply to: GiulXainx

There have long been people who have been recording snippets of their daily lives via a small HD body cam they wear on a daily basis. The concept is throughout the day the body cam takes a very brief video many times each day for brief seconds at a time. This is supposed to simulate "memories". This data is then downloaded each night onto the user's personal server.

In theory the user believes at some point in the future we will be able to transfer our dying brains into either a synth unit or a laboratory grown brain and all of the video snippets that simulated that person's memory is then downloaded into that brain and the user can recall and continue as they once were.

The problem I have with this is video snippets only capture a small fraction of any moment in time and only at the visual level. It does not capture the tactile situation of a given moment. It does not capture the auditory nuances of a given moment. It does not capture the visual depth and breadth of a given moment as the image is only 2D and is limited by the field of view of the camera. It does not capture the intuitive feeling you experienced of any given moment (i.e. the hair raised on the back of my neck or the chill of the wind in a snow storm). It does not capture taste nor smell so really none of the major senses nor the 6th sense is truly ever captured.

All of this is required for what we refer to as memories. So in my opinion if we were somehow able to download small snippets of time into another body then that body would simply have the equivalent of a bunch of meaningless and most likely confusing images stuck in their heads wondering how they hell they have them when they never EXPERIENCED any of them.

Transcendence is our destiny!

Let's just say it's something that is possible right now.

Lets say you're rigged up to this machine and you're ready to push all of your memory, your 'consciousness' into this machine. You ready your hand over the button for a moment then finally you give in to curiosity and press the button and all that is your previous thoughts, memories, all the information that makes up what you believe is you is transferred over to a memory bank and processing components. It thinks the way you would think, says the things you would say, acts the way you act and on and on...

Once the button is pressed and all this is done, you get up from your seat and move on about your day and continue on making memories just as the computer version of you does the same.

Here is my problem with this concept...

You've only transferred the memories of what you had done up to that point but you yourself are not. You continue on as a human being. You don't blink and instantly you are sucked into this electronic version of you. You are still two separate things, one human that will go on living for a time and another that will only hold the information from your life up to that point and from there makes it's own thoughts. You're still two separate 'things'. It's kind of like being a twin. You both have separate lives, separate thoughts and what have you.

From your perspective, nothing happened. You still have to experience death so what is you does not live on forever. Only the concept of what you were or only what you were able to put into it. You can not put yourself in it, only your thoughts and memories past. So for you, the idea is pointless because you yourself can not experience anything beyond your own death and you certainly can't enjoy the experience the electronic version of you has at any time.

It's like some movies and some games have given examples of.

A person backs up their information into a clone. When that person dies, the clone picks up where he/she left off and the clone only knows up to the point that the person last backed themselves up. That person still experiences death and the clone just goes on being "you" but not really YOU.

I think a lot of people get the impression that this is like closing your eyes one moment and waking up in a clone, android, computer, etc. It's not like that at all. I don't believe that is nor ever will be possible. Even though we can compare the mind/brain to a computer, it's not like sticking in a flash drive, copying all of the data on one hard drive and moving everything over to another computer. I simply can't believe we're all 1's and 0's. We're organic and no matter how much similarity, we don't operate the same way a computer does. It can only mimic to a degree.

Lets take a crazy leap and say that is even possible. If it were so, then you should in theory create duplicates of you as you can copy files onto a flash drive and paste them on multiple hard drives. If this is the case, then you would have to be able to experience your life from multiple clones at the same time. Mind blown?

Looking at this in any possible logical way that I can think of, it simply doesn't make sense because just thinking of this makes me believe more and more that what were are is something more than memories, thoughts and reason. Sure, it could all come from the brain but I think the brain holds more than we can and ever will understand, if that is the case. Maybe it's a seat for the soul. Maybe we just wear this skin over our soul and the body needs all the organs it has just to work but the soul itself is separate. The body simply clings to it for life and our soul clings to the body for manipulating and existing in a material realm. I kind of think of it (for a lack of a better comparison) like the body being a deep sea probe, exploring the deep while the person behind the screen (our soul) guides it.

Hate to be all spiritual with this but that's just an afterthought as I'm typing out my thoughts on the idea of transferring a consciousness to a machine. We don't know that the brain IS the consciousness. All we know is that it stores information and controls our body's functions and our will (to some extent - you can't will yourself to fly). Our will, however, is still part of our spirit or soul... or whatever it might be.

It could probably be copied. Theyll sell it as consciousness transfer and bank off the biggest scam in history, but a clones still a clone.

The concept is fascinating of course even if its just fiction.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

I am not sure. That is why I do believe the technology is very close to becoming a reality. Where as we are actually closer than anyone realizes to being able to take ourselves out of flesh and bone and put it into a machine. Where as we would no longer have a need for food as our main source of energy, but instead take it in from solar panels.

We do not quite understand the human brain and how it functions in its entirety. Or do we? Maybe it is as simple as 1 and 0. Yes and No. Left and Right without up down or front to back....

As far as other consciousnesses taking over once implemented? As in what if the computer has a consciousness and they deem us a threat? if anything I think Anti virus software would deem us as a threat.

Or maybe a switch happens where as the computer takes over our bodies, but do not know how it functions... or even knows how to function it. Which delves into my response to Revolution9.... Who seems to be highly "spiritual."

Merging computers together with humans is not what I mean. I am talking about a transfer. or switch. Or quite possibly an "override." Where as we are integrated into the system. Since consciousness, at least to me, is nothing but a choice, then why would it be so hard to move the consciousness to a machine?

Of course you are saying that the technology we already have is already doing leaps and bounds what I am talking about, yet my vision of what I see being possible is being able to travel across PLANETS. Not just the earth and its confides. Instead I believe that space travel, TRUE space travel, would only be possible if we could become the machine and maneuver on planets or through space without needing everything we have come to call "normal means of living." Basically meaning our source of energy would come from a battery. And as long as we had batteries that are rechargeable, we would no longer need meat, veggies, water, or a pulse in order to move. The possibilities are endless this way. Instead of trying to find a planet to inhabbit in case our earth goes bust would no longer be the goal as instead we could just go anywhere and everywhere without needing to do a lot of things. That is why I am so interested in this concept. because it would allow us to explore the PLANETS... not the heavens. Heaven to me sounds very boring. Hell just as boring.

In fact I think the black holes that exist out in space is nothing more than the connection of 2 bubbles. Where as our bubble is pressed up against another bubble, and it somehow popped between the walls and is now being sucked into the other bubble.

I also do not believe in any God. Sorry if I offend you.

a reply to: testingtesting

Hahahaha. Gundam? Zoid? uh.... what other robot shows were there? Power rangers? hAHAHAHA! Naw I wouldn't want to be that tall. I think it would be much more ideal to be smaller than a human. Seeing how I would no longer need to lift, or fight anything I could essentially be left alone in the wild. And traveling would be lots of fun considering I would never need to own a car again. I just have to jump on top of another car, or better yet, climb in underneath the car in its ever widespread caveats it has on the underside!

a reply to: SheepMan

That is just it. What is consciousness in its entirety? Because my perception is so black and white as 1's and zeros. Yes's or No's. Choice. Consciousness is CHOICE.

You could eat that pizza, or decide you want to walk to the store. You can say screw it all and just wait for your hunger to pass, or you might have some friends on their way over. You could be playing a video game all day, or you might decide you want to start learning how to paint. CHOICE. At any moment you can decide to do something completely random. or you could just go AUTOPILOT the rest of your life.

Our bodies die. Computers do not really die, OR AT LEAST they have not died in our lifetime. Unless of course you fry your motherboard, the chips get eroded over time and become less responsive until they short out, ALL KINDS OF STUFF! But if you can transmit yourself into a machine as data, then that data can be transferred to another machine. Thus you would only need to worry about creating that new shell.

Sort of like how crabs can switch shells if their current shell isn't big enough. The move to the next one. But what crab created that shell? or what organism? Odd behavior for a creature on this planet.


a reply to: Outlier13

Not only that, but the arguments you have going on inside of your head. Unless of course you never ask yourself questions in your own mind and not out loud.

The videos would be too short. I mean I believe to have a fairly good memory. I can remember a lot of things. Even really early memories. Most of which are boring but memorable ones are usually tied to sensations felt in the brain. Tense, nervous, fear, happiness, laughter, confusion, but never accomplishment for me. How is a camera supposed to collect the right data?

a reply to: StallionDuck

In the scenario I mentioned in the OP... This is the scenario I thought of:

You get all hooked up. You hit that button, but then how do you know you are you? How do you know you didn't just make a copy. What if you were still seeing things only in the chair you were sitting in to begin with and found out you only made a copy of yourself but never "transferred" completely over to the machine? I for one believe that I would become so depressed that I would just kill myself.

Or I would finally have the worlds greatest sex partner. (As if no one would ever think of doing this. I think everyone, given the chance, would love to have sex with themselves if such a similar opportunity presented itself in this manner.)

In the same scenario, what if your body dies... and the copy that comes out of the other side on the machine, when it notices you are dead... did it actually transfer you out of flesh and bone and into the computer? Or are you still nothing more than a copy?

The way I see this consciousness deal, on a diagram, it would be better understood when you look at tree roots. They go deep down inside of the soil and split, and change direction all over the place in search of nutrients. Some roots grow longer than others. other roots find a payload of nutrients and then it sends more force or energy into that root to keep moving in that direction while all of the other roots stop.... Like for example:

I had a weeping willow tree in the back yard of a house I rented a while back. This tree was obviously around 30 years old.. Maybe more. it is now a stump in that backyard because it had died. Quite literally. Why did it die? Well... One day I came homes and noticed that some ice had formed in the cracks of the cement near the front doorstep... It seemed to be coming OUT of the cement. And the crack was raised upward. Little did we know at the time we noticed this strange phenomenon that we had a burst pipe underneath the house. We did not find out until that summer. Our landlord was asking us if we bought a pool, or started growing weed in the house because the water bill was extorting him... It claimed we were using several hundreds of cubic feet of water every day. It was around that time that I did in fact notice a sound of a water pipe constantly sending out water in the kitchen. So after the call from the landlord came in we said ourselves "a water bill of $500?"

Well I finally put my ear to the floor in the kitchen and it sounded like SPLASHING WATER down there.

Found out the pipe had burst over the winter season. The landlord came in and said "This pipe has been pierced by the root of a tree."
When he pulled out the pipe? The root was quite literally growing inside of the pipe, wrestling its way further and further down. It went at least a foot. Maybe two. Quite an incredible feat I must say. Two months later? That weeping willow collapsed. And it took out the fence! It had died. Lack of water.... We did not even notice it was dying because spring was just beginning to warm up.

But focus on that root like our conscious making a decision. It goes full forward with that decision does it not? it bet everything that the tree had found a constant source of water... and then we ENDED IT.

That is what I believe our conscious is. Making a choice.

Which is why I think our memories are so small and insignificant that the only reason why we remember them is because it is a root that has completed its course and is perfectly nested in an area without needing any more.

We can even picture it in our minds even though no photograph exists of it. At least I can remember a lot of my memories in vivid detail. And can reconstruct the setting to at least a really good 80%, possibly even 90% of what those memories have without needing an image.

Saving that aside, how much of our brain is needed for utilizing everything we have in our bodies? How much is needed for conversation? How much is needed for moving muscles? How much is needed for understanding and recognizing what we see and hear? Is the sense of smell really needed? How do we understand balance versus the technology we now have access to? All of these things our brains use. yet when we move to a machine how much of it would just be garbage code?

Where as we could still access it in our cyber minds, but it wouldn't do anything.

How would we change as an individual as far as our accent, our attitude, or even our resolve? Would we be more creative or destructive? Or would we finally just "not care" and watch the world go by?

a reply to: GiulXainx

Like everything else, this would be misused by someone someplace. Think about it, terrorists get hold of this, crazy people. You could probably buy someone's consciousness on the black market a few years down the road and end up in a teddy bear or photo frame. Ok long shot but with the way tech is flying every 3-6 mths the new is old and you've gotta upgrade your devices again.

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

This fits into the war aspect of what me and my co-workers were coming to. We think flesh would clash against machine. So this would be a given. Everyone knows that if something comes out such as this then everyone will be up in arms about it. The far ends of the earth would have people protesting it. Possibly even attempting to ban it. On the other side there is a greater unknown behind it. War would change. Because then it would become %100 cyber. However if you can cut off connections to your machine body then you are fine. But I think that in the future, if we all went into machines, we really wouldn't have anyone who would want to do any harm against another machine. Seeing how we could simply save a back up copy of ourselves on our own server. We might even be able to save copies of ourselves on a flash drive. All we have to do is plug it in plug it in.

But that is the thing... Would we ever need money again?

We have a bunch of companies that produce chips. They are still operated by children in other countries and in the states they are done by hand. However if you can put a consciousness into a machine then make it capable of producing new parts. Even computers have computers creating them now. Would we ever have to purchase anything again?

What would you gain if you took control of someone's "exoskeleton?" Just another bot. What would be the point if you can just send out your data on a wifi signal and just "respawn" at a safe point? Would you ever be able of truly committing a crime as a machine if you really have nothing to risk except time? Even though your life is extended as a machine?

a reply to: GiulXainx

It's interesting for sure. Honestly I would say creating an artificial conscience that is a duplicate of an actual one would probably be more accepted by the public. It's just a copy after all, not the real thing. It's a fine line even then and the problem of having aware intelligent machines that want 'human like rights' because they'd be duplicates of us.

Anyway I think that would be the first step towards placing someones actual conscience into a machine. You'd also need willing subjects, and would it be reversible, along with could it be planted into an organic android body.

originally posted by: GiulXainx
I have been talking with my co-workers about this concept for well over a year now. Which is to take the human conciousness and put it into a machine.

The discussions I have had with my co-workers has lead me to a new perspective on it.

I know this is crazy talk and it will probably never happen but. SAVING ASIDE the fact that we can not measure conciousness, or even pinpoint where our conciousness exists inside of our bodies (Which some say it belongs inside of a dimension we can not comprehend.) Let us say that the transfering of a concious can happen. I am not saying we already have this technology, I am saying what if we already can? Put the entirety of our human conciousness into a machine and still be able to take our memories with it.

The questions that have come up recently are: What would we need? Hard drive? Cameras? Microphones? Speakers? Chipsets? Sixaxis motion detection? Gieger counters in case we come across radiation? Dictionaries? A WiFi chip? Motors, gears, wheels, cogs, pivotal joints? metal encasements? What would we need in order to be a machine? What could we build so that we can just continue to move foarward ever wandering the earth for ever?

Again I know this is crazy talk but just save your "You are absurd!" comments and critically think for a change.

What would conciousness really need in order to manuever a machine?

I know this question stems from the fact that our brains essentially maintains function of all the muscles found in our body, as well as react to anything we come into contact with physically as well as mentally. Everything in our bodies serves a function. And our brains operate them accordingly. So... If we no longer have a need for food/exercise/hygiene/clothes/cars/ etc.... What would we need to build in order to just keep functioning? And keep moving forward?

The other part of the argument came up about war. Would people revolt against the idea of for ever being a machine? Would we be able to exist side by side with humans after becoming a machine.

Another question arose which is, what if we are only creating a copy of ourselves and not transfering at all? Would a company kill off each and every one of us to leave it up to ambiguity when you 'come out' the other side? What if you were attempting to transfer your conciousness and suddenly died right after the machine woke up? Did it actually work? Or did you effectively kill yourself, but made a copy? How would you kow you are you inside of a machine? Would you cry because you only made a copy if you lived through the transfer forever trapped inside of flesh and bone? Take for example the episode "White Christmas" from the Netflix series: Black Mirror. Of which the transfer of your entire soul is put into a "cookie" and placed into a machine to do remedial tasks, yet you are who you are.

I mean machines can only do what we tell them to do, but if you look at your own body can you tell your liver to just stop working? Can you tell your heart to stop pumping? Can you tell your ears to mute themselves so you can sleep? No... So if machines require code to be inputted, then why can't a human concious be placed inside of a machine.

I mean if life is nothing more than a series of choices... then talking and telling a machine to do something should be easy right? Or would it be difficult?

On the other side we talked about the benefits of becoming a machine, or finally transferring our conciousness to a machine. And that would mean teleportation would become somewhat achievable. We would just have to be downloaded into a new machine across the planet, or essentially the galaxy. Would we be able to create a copy of ourselves in case we were to meet an end?

And for some of the harder thinkers out there, how much memory would we need to have capacity wise to keep everything in check. How would we compute everything? How fast would we be able to think?

Or the really out there question: What would it feel like to finally become a machine? Would we even feel at all? Or would it be constant pain?

All of these questions are out there. But you can ask yourself the same type of question about your flesh and bones right now. We feel pain, yet we can not feel our own pulses unless we sit still. We really can not feel our muscles move. We do not feel anything in our bodies when something is going wron until we pass the incubation period of a virus. So.... when we feel fine, why is it that our muscles, organs, brains.... even our bones. do they feel?

This is a really out there thread, and I might not be the only person to bring this up, but I did not see anyone talking about it here on ATS so.... Anyone want to talk about this in further detail?

What I think we would need to move around is actually quite small. Sort of like a series of metal poles with motors to control the functions of elbows, knees, hips, shoulders and such... Sort of creating a pivotal joint so I can walk like a human being, but being significantly smaller than a human. I would not try to make myself look human at all as instead I would try to make myself stand out saying "I am a machine dammit. accept me." instead of trying to create a fake human face and what not. I'd rather just have people see that I am a machine instead of pretending to be human at that point.

Personally I see it happening as a slow replacement of 'parts' rather than a transfer that will happen. Eventually people will be made up of more artificial replacement parts than what they were born with. Are they still human? What if they have a human brain but the rest of their bodies are entirely artificial?

I can see some serious psychological problems this could cause in idividuals who actually have their consciousness or brain transferred to a machine. You would have to get absolutely ALL of the memories, consciousness, soul, etc.. into the new body. We don't even know what all constitutes consciousness! If we missed ANY piece of that puzzle, the transfered individual could suffer from hundreds of psychological problems.

This is just another example of playing with something we have a very limited understanding of. Just like AI and genetic manipulation. It sounds very interesting in concept and could have crazy awesome application. BUT the transfer would have to be absolutely flawless. To do that, we would need to know for a fact what constitutes consciousness and a soul.

Just imagine, your soul is transfered to a machine, but they missed your love of flowers. Now , potentially, this could not matter. The transfered individual would just carry on not liking flowers. BUT if flowers were a large part of this persons identity they would have a gaping hole where that passion used to be. Like I said, it's all just in theory but I do think psychological problems would be of paramount importance for this process. Especially if it is done incorrectly.

And I can say with almost certainty that this will be tried and it will be done incorrectly and we will witness the consequences.

Furthermore, the machine would have to be similar to a human in many ways. Some things just wouldn't transfer, such as a love for flowers. If your new body can't see, smell, or feel the flowers like your old body could, what would be the point? That love would become pointless! I don't think most of us would be happy walking around as robots unless they were sufficiently similar to how humans are now. a reply to: Boomy327

a reply to: dug88

I think someone saw repo men, or Ghost in the shell... or has an extreme liking of DEUS EX.

Or maybe he is waiting for Altered Carbon to finally be released on netflix like I am.

There is even an episode on Futurama that has Hermes getting so many robotic replacements that he effectively replaces his brain with a machine. But zoidberg saves every piece and puts him back together again.

While having replacements put into our bodies is a step in the right direction.... I do not think it is the same as moving your concience to a machine. The replacement parts are build to receive input and then perform an action.... But if you no longer have a need or want of a replacement heart, lung, liver, arm, foot... toenail if it comes to that.... You wouldn't need any of that if you could continue moving about the world inside of a machine completely devoid of any flesh or bone.

I still think it is highly possible.

a reply to: Boomy327

That is something that I have come across myself. Which is, when we finally do transfer over, would we feel? How would it feel? When we think would it be different? When we talk would we have to relearn how to do so?

And above all would we go through a personality change? Possibly induced by depression, or lack of understanding? Maybe we thought a bunch of amazing things going in but once we got there it wasn't exactly like spreading butter on bread.

These are questions that arise from thinking through all of the posibilities of this idea. And it is what I have been talking about with my co-workers for over a year now.

Would we miss being able to touch and feel or smell so bad that we would go crazy trying to create a new technology that could do just that? And at the same time would it be the same as a human nose or be as strong as a dog's nose?

There is so much behind this idea that raises so many questions. I am glad you thought of something else where psychological trauma could be present in this given situation.