Oh death, where is thy sting?

[redstar2000]

Ashes to ashes, brain to disk

LONDON: Death could become a thing of the past by the mid-21st century as computer technology becomes sophisticated enough for the contents of a brain to be "downloaded" on to a supercomputer, according to a leading British futurologist.

However, he told The Observer newspaper, this technology might be expensive enough to remain the preserve of the rich for a decade or two more.

While the predictions might sound outlandish, they were merely the product of extrapolations drawn from the current rate at which computers are evolving, Pearson said in an interview with the newspaper. "If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem," he said.

"If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/commo...1%5E601,00.html (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15374571%5E601,00.html)


Lots to think about here...not least of which is "designing your own heaven" or perhaps "heavens".

After all, you don't want to spend your "afterlife" just floating around in the dark. Ideally, you'd live a perfectly simulated "flesh-and-blood" existence in a perfectly simulated "reality"...of your own designing.

(Over 5,000 templates & skins available at a slight additional charge.)

Or perhaps in collectively-simulated environments -- like multi-player role games now only much more realistic.

And, of course, there's choosing when to download yourself...and whether to bother with "ordinary life" once you have downloaded yourself (it would make things a lot simpler if downloading caused fatal damage to the wetware brain).

A redundant power supply would seem to be imperative...or perhaps a bunch of "mirror sites" that store the backups of "you".

It might be found that "disk people" require a regular period in "rest mode"...as well as some careful maintenance (disk defragmenter?).

Another possibility: two (or more) disk people could contribute various aspects of their personalities to create a new disk person -- procreation.

And perhaps this new disk person might want a period of time in "the real world"...and be downloaded into a freshly grown body (in a vat) and "born" as an exceedingly clumsy teenager.

One thing is a must...there must be a self-deleting command in case you eventually become completely sick of it all. After you've been around for a few thousand years, everything might be boring!

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[FriedFrog]

Thats really quite creepy.

Why would you want to live as an overgrown PC for the rest of your so-called 'life'?

You can see it having pretty disastrous consequences as well. There will be some big computer with a city of downloaded people, and the Christian Fundamentalists will freak out and go and blow it up, because it shows that God doesn't exist.

Poor people inside will just disappear..

And what about viruses? You'd be pretty screwed if your brain got a Trojan...

[monkeydust]

It still sounds very much science-fiction to me.

I'm pretty sure that you'd need a biological component to "feel" yourself; perhaps even to superficially react in a way that's comparable to who you are.

I can't see it being possible for one to extrapolate one's life experience and authentically replicate it in binary form. However I'd probably jump at the opportunity were it offered to me personally in later life.

[The Apathetic Atheist]

There are a lot of nutty things I see in the future, but this is not one of them. How exactly would the brain's contents be transferred to a computer? Even if there were space for it, the brain is much more complex than a hard drive.

[More Fire for the People]

That really fucks with my head, I mean what if this is a simulation?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 06:58 PM
That really fucks with my head, I mean what if this is a simulation?
Unlikely...as what we perceive as "real life" is so crappy.

An artificially designed afterlife would be both more interesting and more pleasurable...and without a large number of unpleasantries with which we are all too familiar (for example, one could consume an enormous banquet of exquisitely-prepared foods...but never have indigestion afterwards or have to take a shit).

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[More Fire for the People]

What if the desirgner was sadistic?

[redstar2000]

You are the "designer"...you'd set up a number of possible "heavens" according to your own standards of what would be "heavenly". As I indicated, you'd probably use templates of some kind and fill in the details according to your preferences.

Eventually, there'd probably be a large number of collectively designed "heavens"...because they'd probably turn out to be more interesting than the ones solely inhabited by yourself and such puppets that the software provided.

Some of those "heavens" could indeed be rather hellish...dangerous places where sensible disk people would not go. They might indeed feature viruses or worms that would try to take over your personality and make you a slave.

If you did venture into such sites, you'd want to equip yourself with a vigorous "virtual firewall".

Or "back yourself up" on a safe site with an automatic "restore" command in place.

It's true that there is something very "science fiction" about this idea...and it may prove "undoable" in the long run.

But the test of any scientific speculation is always does this idea violate any known scientific laws?.

And this particular idea, to the best of my (very limited) knowledge, does not.

It may "sound creepy"...but probably someone said the same thing about eyeglasses in the 13th century. :D

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[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This sounds interesting... It'll be a blow to the spiritualists if it turns out the human consciousness can be replicated by computers.

'Uploading' your mind into a compuetr is just one of the ways to become 'posthuman'

[MKS]

What about thought, could that be uploaded or would it just be information?

Without thought, empathy, and other emotions we wouldnt be human anymore.

Personally I think such a programme is ridiculous. Scientists should be trying to cure cancer and AIDS and other epidemics, rather than trying to be "god" and create eternal life.

[ErikuSz -sXe-]

What guarantees that a computer functions the same as a brain?
i.e. you may be able to save the information from a brain, but does this mean that it can function in a computer on its own, same as in your head, and could it be manipulated? Can it deal with new information etc.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

What guarantees that a computer functions the same as a brain?

If you know how a brain works, then you can replicate it's behaviour with an appropiately programmed computer.


i.e. you may be able to save the information from a brain, but does this mean that it can function in a computer on its own, same as in your head, and could it be manipulated? Can it deal with new information etc.

Depends on what your computing capabilities are and how much you know about the human brain. Right now the human brain is too complex to replicate on a computer.


Without thought, empathy, and other emotions we wouldnt be human anymore.

Who says we can't replicate those?


Personally I think such a programme is ridiculous. Scientists should be trying to cure cancer and AIDS and other epidemics, rather than trying to be "god" and create eternal life.

What a naive thing to say. There are already people working on AIDS and cancer. Why not work on the ultimate killer, death itself?

[che's long lost daughter]

what is a brain for when that body it i supposed to control is dead?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by che's long lost [email protected] 24 2005, 11:00 AM
what is a brain for when that body it i supposed to control is dead?
You could upload it into a computer and live a virtual existance of your choosing. Or you could have your consciousness transplanted into a robotic/clone body.

[RedAnarchist]

We can already replicate part of the brain. There are such things as expert systems and Artificial Neural Networks.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 11:18 AM
We can already replicate part of the brain. There are such things as expert systems and Artificial Neural Networks.
Aren't they currently no more sohpisticated than an insect?

[DaCuBaN]

Why would you want to live as an overgrown PC for the rest of your so-called 'life'?

Well... because the possibilities are endless. As we speak, there are cameras watching almost every part of the globe - as an (for the sake of argument at least) "electronic entity" with even current technology you could stretch an algorithm and see what the "mortals" were doing with their time. It also, of course, leads to the possibility of transferring yourself into an "android" shell - and as you're immune to disease, provided you can keep replacing the parts (as things stand most PCB's only have a running life of 25 years) as they start to go, you are technically immortal. You could embark upon reading every text ever written (in a fraction of the time - you could have a built-in text parser, not to mention calculator!).

In short, we're not just looking at a human "backup" or "afterlife" - we're looking at the boundaries of life being pushed beyond what we understand. It's the most exciting prospect ever penned since an American writer put forth the idea of a waterproof house.

"The housewife of 2000 can do all her cleaning with a hose, as the entire contents of her house are waterproof".

I'm not going to hold my breath ;)

[RedAnarchist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 11:46 AM
"The housewife of 2000 can do all her cleaning with a hose, as the entire contents of her house are waterproof".

When did he write that, 1950? :lol: Misogynistic arsehole.

Going back ont opic, yeah, ANN and expert systems are very basic at the moment - although it is a start towards full brain replication.

How can this all happen within 50 years from now if we dont even know everything about the brain? Brain research is progressing slowly -it could be 100 years yet before we know all there is to know about the human brain.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by MKS
Scientists should be trying to cure cancer and AIDS and other epidemics, rather than trying to be "god" and create eternal life.

I think you misunderstand; this guy is not proposing a research project into this goal at this time.

He is speculating on what will be possible if computer technology continues to develop at its present rate.

He is taking a known and existing trend and saying that if this trend continues, then disk people will be possible by 2050 and cheap by 2075 or 2080.

There are a number of ways that he could be wrong.

1. We will reach the physical limits of what computers can store and manipulate...and it won't be enough to do the job.

2. No one will volunteer to be first...it's too scary.

3. It will happen...but take longer and even much longer than he thinks to work out the intricate details. (Manned space travel would be a good example of this phenomenon...it's taking a good deal longer than early scientists expected.)


One of the interesting by-products of this development, by the way, would be the end of all energy shortages and other problems revolving around over-population. To keep a disk person alive would cost a tiny fraction of the resources required to keep a wetware person alive...within a short period of time, the vast majority of the world's population would be disk people.

The computers dedicated to storing disk people would have to be "hardened" and probably stored in deep caves in geologically stable regions -- cosmic radiation must not be allowed the chance to "scramble you".

The relationship between flesh people and disk people might be fraught with difficulties; for example, who would want to labor in the real world when by downloading themselves they could escape all that crap? Who would decide the download priorities and on the basis of what criteria? And who, if any, would get shut out altogether and be doomed to death?

I could see such a development resulting in a whole new dimension of class struggle. Would we be content to see our rulers become immortal while all the rest of us had to die?

Lots and lots of questions here.

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