Marduk

“First you upload your brain to a computer. You then have a direct two-way communication with each making both just part of a greater system, one individual. eg: One consciousness running off of multiple machines

You are free to then kill off your biological brain with no ill effects or loss of a sense of self”

Uploading your actual brain is different than trying to upload what is going on inside your brain.
If you upload the brain itself, it will still age and die, if you upload the neural patterns you are only making a copy and you will still be stuck in the old body/brain. You can’t be in two places at once, either you are in your body/brain or the receiving machine. I’m saying you can’t separate you from your brain, at best all you will have is a copy, a new being with your memories, you will still die with your brain.



“I saw a movie once (if you could call it such), called XChange. The premise was basically that the way you travelled was to have your consiousness uploaded into someone to where you wanted to travel.”

There is an old sci-fi book by Robert Sheckley, 1967, called Mindswap with a similar premise.
Great book!


This is all a lot like someone trying to get a brain transplant, no can do. it would be a body transplant.

Vorkosigan

Won't work. Consciousness is composed of many different processes. And the brain needs a body to generate inputs. When it doesn't have a body, it invents one, like phantom limbs.

The Thirteenth Floor is an excellent movie about uploading one's consciousness to units in a simulated reality. It has some neat twists and a nice film noir atmosphere.

Vorkosigan

Marduk

"The Thirteenth Floor is an excellent movie about uploading one's consciousness to units in a simulated reality."

I liked that movie but I couldn't understand how they pulled him out of the simulation into the 'real' world, how could a simulated person exist outside the program?

scigirl

How would the fact that all our brains are slightly different affect this idea?

For instance, if you stimulated a certain part of my brain as defined by cartography (3 neurons anterior to the left temporal lobe for instance) you might get a certain list of things I had to memorize in anatomy. Whereas if you stimulated SteveD's 3rd neuron anterior to the lobe, you'd get a different list.

scigirl

Gurdur

I would like to upload my entire consciousness, but it would probably blow every circuit in the databank.

Elvithriel

Mind explaining?

Scigirl, to get a list of things your learned in anatomy you would have to look at the trillion or so neuron interconnections to be able to recall it with any accuracy. Memory is a very distributed system.

scigirl

Heh yes I'm aware of that. But you can elicit certain memories or feelings or actions by stimulating one particular neuron, then that neuron goes on to stimulate all the other ones. This is how we mapped out the homunculusus (homunculi) for some of the parts of the brain.

My point was more that each of our brains have a slightly different structure, that is related to the specific memories and experiences that we have each had, that would be difficult to replicate on a mass scale.

scigirl

Elvithriel

Indeed. The structure is one of the most important things. We still have some kind of standard though, most of us have working auditory and vision systems for example.

Still even though the brain takes up such a large space in the genome, its more of a general guide. Alot of the complex interconnections form when your a baby.

tribalbeeyatch

Your basic point is accurate, but this business about individual neurons eliciting particular memories is pretty shaky. Last time that I checked, the "grandmother neuron" hypothesis had fallen rather out of favor. Also, I think (but I'm not certain) that the mapping of the homunculus used field recordings and stimulation rather than recording from individual neurons.

tribalbeeyatch

Certainly! Much of brain development is activity-dependent. For example, visual areas of the brain lack functional organization in the absence of visual input.