Brain Downloads

I'm wondering how you become a "Leading thinker on the future", sounds like a nice job....

I don't get it. How does this make you immortal? The copy will live and act just like you would, but you (the original) are still going to die some day.

how exactly do you get all the neurons and glias into a computer friendly binary format?
seems like more of a challenge than building a computer than can store all the information about them

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Original post by Sir Sapo I'm wondering how you become a "Leading thinker on the future", sounds like a nice job....

It's likely a matter of talking to the right people...Well, preaching to the right people, and doing it while wearing either a really shiny suit or a lab coat.

What garbage.

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Pearson said that computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing.

... Okay? So, what, when about to crash, would the plane try to flip its rudders desperately and say "Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap..."?

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But Pearson admitted that the consequences of advancing technologies needed to be considered carefully. "You need a complete global debate," he said. "Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one."

Because you never know. Someone could come along and download the brains of terrorists into powerful machines, mavericks and robot masters if you will. The world would surely fall under darkness in that year, 200X. We would need a hero, a Rock... a mega man.


What?

the claim that we'll be able to make a conscious computer by 2020 is a load of rubbish, in my opinion at least. We're not even close to being able to understand the fundamental processes that form our own consciousness. It may be true that hardware would be able to support such a creation in 2020, however we won't even be close to having the software required.

The whole article seems very poorly thought out, and if this guy is one of the "leading thinkers on the future" god (if such a being exists in any form) help us.

furthermore, why would I want to continue to exist as a file on a computer? I for one am quite content to leave this world upon my death, and let my achievements be my legacy. Not some annoyed incarnation of myself who is thoroughly pissed off with the original me for putting my mind in a box for no apparent reason. Besides, I also think there's a duality between mind and body, given that our body undoubtedly has a huge effect upon our mind through chemical processes, as well as just simple old nerve stimuli.

Is CNN a mainstream news outlet in the US? I certainly hope not. Copying a report from somebody else and reporting on the report is just low.

And they're spouting a load of rubbish. The ps3 isn't 35x as powerful as the ps2. It's also nowhere near 1% of the power of the human brain, even if it was possible to compare natural phenomena such as conscious thought, with a machine that merely follows one or more linear series of instructions. This "Thinker on the future" guy is a joke. Airplanes scared of crashing?

This guy is just trying to make a name for himself. He's guessed that these things will happen, and wants to be able to say "I told oyu so".
He should stick to replacing our copper phone lines with fibre optics (rural areas still can't get broadband) and stop trying to immortalise himself. We should all write to complain, except the article is 2.5 years old.

re-crap. I mean, re-post. This is obviously an undercovered advertisement for the playstation.

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Pearson said the launch last week of Sony's PlayStation 3, a machine 35 times more powerful than the model it replaced, was a sign of things to come. "The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain,"

yeah, and 90% of my ass's crap.

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Original post by Benjamin Heath ... We would need a hero, a Rock... a mega man.

An ubermensch...

@firemonk3y - I agree. Cyber-rubbish. Consciousness as we know and experience it requires a body not merely a brain.

@shotgunnutter - Yes, CNN is a mainstream news outlet in the USA. The quality of it's product has dropped considerably in the last 10 years but that's another subject.

The op article is two years old (May 23, 2005). CNN published another article about Pearson's ramblings two months later: (Enter the 'care' economy: Robots will not beat the human touch). Pearson works for British Telecom as the head of their futurology unit, so he gets paid to produce fanciful speculations. Here's his personal homepage: Ian Pearson, Futurologist.

Welcome back Lessbread.

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Original post by LessBread Quote: Original post by Benjamin Heath ... We would need a hero, a Rock... a mega man. An ubermensch... @firemonk3y - I agree. Cyber-rubbish. Consciousness as we know and experience it requires a body not merely a brain. @shotgunnutter - Yes, CNN is a mainstream news outlet in the USA. The quality of it's product has dropped considerably in the last 10 years but that's another subject. The op article is two years old (May 23, 2005). CNN published another article about Pearson's ramblings two months later: (Enter the 'care' economy: Robots will not beat the human touch). Pearson works for British Telecom as the head of their futurology unit, so he gets paid to produce fanciful speculations. Here's his personal homepage: Ian Pearson, Futurologist.

He seems to want to replace nostrodamus.

p.s. So the aliens dropped you back off where they picked you up? Welcome back.

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Original post by ManaStoneWelcome back Lessbread.

Ok, but why download your brain? Uploading pr0n directly to the brain would be much more fun! [smile]

This sort of makes me think of an odd concept, say you could create a 100% perfect copy of yourself (or for convenience, someone else creates the copy). Based on this premise then, while you are fully unconcious, 2 perfect copies are made, memories and all, and you the original is destroyed. Would either of the two copies who, for the sake of arguement, are truly perfect copies be you?

I think no, but then it makes me wonder why? Why would me as I know myself die with the original body?

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Original post by BleedingBlue I think no, but then it makes me wonder why? Why would me as I know myself die with the original body?

because, based on you premise, you're just a copyable machine and a bunch of data.

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Original post by BleedingBlue This sort of makes me think of an odd concept, say you could create a 100% perfect copy of yourself (or for convenience, someone else creates the copy). Based on this premise then, while you are fully unconcious, 2 perfect copies are made, memories and all, and you the original is destroyed. Would either of the two copies who, for the sake of arguement, are truly perfect copies be you? I think no, but then it makes me wonder why? Why would me as I know myself die with the original body?

I always told myself that if I was in the Star Trek universe that I would never use the teleporters. It's impossible to tell if the person hopping on the teleporter is killed while a perfect copy is put together on the other side because it would retain all memories leading to the transportation... so in a sense who knows if every time someone is beamed up he is killed and a clone takes his place.

So in the end it all comes down to what is, and where is, the soul (in a non-religious context)

Welcome back Lessbread! Or is it a downloaded copy of your brain posting?

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Original post by sanch3x I always told myself that if I was in the Star Trek universe that I would never use the teleporters. It's impossible to tell if the person hopping on the teleporter is killed while a perfect copy is put together on the other side because it would retain all memories leading to the transportation... so in a sense who knows if every time someone is beamed up he is killed and a clone takes his place.

That's what I'd do to. I'm not sure how the Star Trek teleporters work, but I don't see how they don't vaporise their passengers. Couldn't you use them for cloning by not deleting the original - in which case wouldn't it be better to just beam down copies of your redshirts instead of sending them to their deaths?

Personally I wouldn't consider this download to be part of myself unless I could transfer my consciousness to the machine. You'd need to first make the computer part of your own mind first, using it as an extension of your brain. I don't know what would happen if you disconnect though - I don't know enough about brain chemistry to know if the bit you consider as you would be in your head or in the computer, or perhaps both?

But I don't think we'll be seeing technology like this any time soon. Computers might be getting faster every year, but we still don't have much understanding of how our own brains work. We'd need to know a lot more about our brain chemistry before we can duplicate it in silicon.

I am so GPLing my brain if this happens. :P

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Original post by ManaStone Welcome back Lessbread.

Thank you. I'm not completely back yet however...