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Substrate-independent minds

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should we find ourselves with what amounts to superhuman powers, but still burdened by our primal luggage.

We can replace the words superhuman powers with a number of alternatives to have a crack at predicting the answer

Should we find ourselves with what amounts to super powerful weapons, but still burdened by our primal luggage

I think the answer is going to be similair in both cases

I think the internet itself offers us our best glimpse into whats likely to happen, what happens when technology meets our primal luggage ?

Well some will use it for knowledge for charity for research, others will use it for child porn, illicit drugs trade, terrorist recruiting etc etc.

Our laws and social povs will evolve to deal with the new problems that come with the new technology. Evolution (in a non biological context) will play its role.

a case in point: Law. I remember being in court many years ago when digital cameras were just new to the market. The defence wanted to play some footage. The prosecution objected on the grounds it didnt fit the definition of "document" and thus could not be presented as an exhibit.

Letters and photographs were Documents, video footage was not.

The magistrate overuled this and said we need to adapt to the changing times.

The listening devices act, had to be replaced with the surveillance devices act.
For many years the LDA was fine since audio tape recordings were all people could make. Now with video and audio freely available in modern recording devices the old LDA had to be repealed and replaced with the SDA to keep up. Systems evolve with the change, even as we still lug our primal luggage around

50 years ago the prosecution could prove a man beat his wife in a primal rage with photos of the bruises and a doctors report. Today it can be proved with cell phone footage taken by one of their kids
 
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Should we guard against a world of super-haves and super-have-nots?

That too can go either way, one story i always like was "Anvil of the Heart" by Bruce T Holmes

In this book, genetech has allowed us to create Homo Novus, much improved humans, disease has been wiped from the DNA code, intellegence enhanced and negative emotions redacted. They are smarter, healther and they dont get angry.

They soon rise to political power, since they are the smarter version of us, and then decide that having an un tweaked baby is child abuse, passing laws to make the novus strain mandatory.
That it is the right of the child to be born unto its full potential...........

Holmes's future society has a frightening authenticity. The 'villains' are ourselves, really, our own technology having released our potential for evil in the form of humanity's classic failing, presumed superiority. The 'heroes' fall into the gray area as well. Real and solid people doing what they must, with some well-done and intriguing philosophy growing naturally out of their conflicts.
Robin Kincaid, co-author of part of John Cleve's Spaceways series


Quotes regarding Anvil of the Heart by Bruce T. Holmes

Im inclined to think such a dynamic will happen again, its darwinism at its core. the new humans will be designed to be more fit than the random results we were born with.
In much the same way parents insist their children get better education than they themselves did, so too will the desire to ensure your offspring have the advantages these changes will provide.

If your child enrolled at university simply cant compete with the children with neural implants allowing them instant access to the Datanets, faster cognition speeds due to nanotech unduced overclocking of the brain, enhanced data retention and data recall, you will likely want to arrange for your offspring to get the implants.
In the same way as a higher education promises a better lifestyle in their future.

As today there will always be the poor and the underpriviledged. But in Holmes world the new smarter humans decide to mandate no one gets left behind.

I think we may see the same patterns we do today, some people with tablets on a plane, others squatting in the dust trying to find something to eat.

Or.... and im being optimistic here since it hasnt been the historical trend. The new people being better, being smarter will transcend our current moral and social limitations and make sure everyone gets access. It would be the smart thing to do.

In Holmes world the small pocket of old type humans begin to resent the new people and conflict ensues. By not leaving anyone behind you circumvent that resentment

an amendment to the constitution would do it

Constitution.jpg
 
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Which brings us to the hive mind........

The biological substrate limits information exchange to the sensory restraints inherant in its form.

A post biological sophont has more options

42-29421947.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg


Scientists Prove That Telepathic Communication Is Within Reach | Innovation | Smithsonian

We currently have no great qualms about segregating and socialy redacting anti social elements within our midst, we call them prisons.

But what if BSIMs (Biological substrate independant minds) could act in quorum to redact the specific neural patterns of a node to conform to the hive minds standards. To some this sounds outrageous, they would rather go to prison, harmful engrams intact thank you very much.

To others this psychosurgery seems much more humane. Why lock up the whole person over some bad thoughts.

Its a bit like trashing your computer because it gets a virus, better to use an Anti Virus software and redact the bad script
 
We have no idea 'how' consciousness, memory, selfhood, feeling can continue beyond the death of the biological body ...
Exactly. Therefore why make the assumption that it does?
... but we have significant veridical evidence obtained in psychical research and NDE research that this much does continue to exist out of the body, not as an "ethereal copy" or a "remnant" of a formerly embodied existent but as a feeling intelligence interacting with persons still embodied in their present existence and also describing the nature of the discarnate being's present existence.
I think your view of what constitutes "significant" is different than what I mean by "substantial". By substantial I mean verifiable, unambiguous, objective evidence, and I've not seen any NDE research that contains verifiable, unambiguous, objective evidence. However your use of the term "veridical" is probably fair enough because we've had this discussion before, and the evidence you allude to appears to at least to be honest and of higher quality than the stereotypical "psychic researcher".
Sooner or later science will have to come to terms with the evidence obtained through psychical and parapsychological research and carry that research forward.
When some NDE researcher can unambiguously demonstrate that their theories are true via experiments that can be verified by objective independent scientists, then that's when the scientists will "have to come to terms" with it. Until then, I remain unconvinced, and I would even go a step further and admit I fall into the camp of those who would say, "It can't happen, and therefore isn't happening." But that's not to say that I don't believe people are having genuine experiences that they are interpreting as confirmations of the the typical theories, conclusions and/or beliefs of NDE researchers ( e.g. continuity of consciousness in the form of a spirit or soul or whatever other name the believers want to give it ).
 
That too can go either way, one story i always like was "Anvil of the Heart" by Bruce T Holmes

In this book, genetech has allowed us to create Homo Novus, much improved humans, disease has been wiped from the DNA code, intellegence enhanced and negative emotions redacted. They are smarter, healther and they dont get angry.

They soon rise to political power, since they are the smarter version of us, and then decide that having an un tweaked baby is child abuse, passing laws to make the novus strain mandatory.
That it is the right of the child to be born unto its full potential...........

Holmes's future society has a frightening authenticity. The 'villains' are ourselves, really, our own technology having released our potential for evil in the form of humanity's classic failing, presumed superiority. The 'heroes' fall into the gray area as well. Real and solid people doing what they must, with some well-done and intriguing philosophy growing naturally out of their conflicts.
Robin Kincaid, co-author of part of John Cleve's Spaceways series


Quotes regarding Anvil of the Heart by Bruce T. Holmes

Im inclined to think such a dynamic will happen again, its darwinism at its core. the new humans will be designed to be more fit than the random results we were born with.
In much the same way parents insist their children get better education than they themselves did, so too will the desire to ensure your offspring have the advantages these changes will provide.

If your child enrolled at university simply cant compete with the children with neural implants allowing them instant access to the Datanets, faster cognition speeds due to nanotech unduced overclocking of the brain, enhanced data retention and data recall, you will likely want to arrange for your offspring to get the implants.
In the same way as a higher education promises a better lifestyle in their future.

As today there will always be the poor and the underpriviledged. But in Holmes world the new smarter humans decide to mandate no one gets left behind.

I think we may see the same patterns we do today, some people with tablets on a plane, others squatting in the dust trying to find something to eat.

Or.... and im being optimistic here since it hasnt been the historical trend. The new people being better, being smarter will transcend our current moral and social limitations and make sure everyone gets access. It would be the smart thing to do.

In Holmes world the small pocket of old type humans begin to resent the new people and conflict ensues. By not leaving anyone behind you circumvent that resentment

an amendment to the constitution would do it

Constitution.jpg

"An Amendent to the Constitution would do it" ? Even if words would do it in the US (and they wouldn't), what about the rest of the planet? I looked up the novel you refer to on amazon and the first reviewer I read seems to have read a different book but from the one you read. He/she wrote: "This book has a cool thought on what the future holds if mankind is stupid enough to alter itself. The character developement was incredible, the ending sad, triumphant, and a little funny. I recomend this book to everyone."
 
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Especially for @Soupie, a new paper by Tononi and Koch at http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7089

Consciousness: Here, There but Not Everywhere
Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch
(Submitted on 27 May 2014)

The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioral and neuronal correlates of experience. However, correlates are not enough if we are to understand even basic neurological fact; nor are they of much help in cases where we would like to know if consciousness is present: patients with a few remaining islands of functioning cortex, pre-term infants, non-mammalian species, and machines that are rapidly outperforming people at driving, recognizing faces and objects, and answering difficult questions. To address these issues, we need a theory of consciousness that specifies what experience is and what type of physical systems can have it. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) does so by starting from conscious experience via five phenomenological axioms of existence, composition, information, integration, and exclusion. From these it derives five postulates about the properties required of physical mechanisms to support consciousness. The theory provides a principled account of both the quantity and the quality of an individual experience, and a calculus to evaluate whether or not a particular system of mechanisms is conscious and of what. IIT explains a range of clinical and laboratory findings, makes testable predictions, and extrapolates to unusual conditions. The theory vindicates some panpsychist intuitions - consciousness is an intrinsic, fundamental property, is graded, is common among biological organisms, and even some very simple systems have some. However, unlike panpsychism, IIT implies that not everything is conscious, for example group of individuals or feed forward networks. In sharp contrast with widespread functionalist beliefs, IIT implies that digital computers, even if their behavior were to be functionally equivalent to ours, and even if they were to run faithful simulations of the human brain, would experience next to nothing.

Downloadable pdf at the link.
 
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Which brings us to the hive mind........

The biological substrate limits information exchange to the sensory restraints inherant in its form.

A post biological sophont has more options

42-29421947.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg


Scientists Prove That Telepathic Communication Is Within Reach | Innovation | Smithsonian

We currently have no great qualms about segregating and socialy redacting anti social elements within our midst, we call them prisons.

But what if BSIMs (Biological substrate independant minds) could act in quorum to redact the specific neural patterns of a node to conform to the hive minds standards. To some this sounds outrageous, they would rather go to prison, harmful engrams intact thank you very much.

To others this psychosurgery seems much more humane. Why lock up the whole person over some bad thoughts.

Its a bit like trashing your computer because it gets a virus, better to use an Anti Virus software and redact the bad script

"Im inclined to think such a dynamic will happen again, its darwinism at its core. the new humans will be designed to be more fit than the random results we were born with.

In much the same way parents insist their children get better education than they themselves did, so too will the desire to ensure your offspring have the advantages these changes will provide."

Unless the designers are omniscient shouldnt they leave a random element as a hedge against the unpredictable? The mutt is healthier than the pure bred because as far as the random in life goes - the mutt is the pure bred.

As to education, here in the US kids saddled with enormous debt and low paying jobs struggle relative to those who go to trade school to fill jobs we have a shortfall in: plumbers, electricians, mechanics. Who will Homo Novus call to fix the toilet or whatever dirty jobs the future will bring?

This makes me think Stephen Jay Gould's "The Spread of Excellence" provides arguments against the notion of progress and direction in evolution but also against these very ideas - progress and directed evolution ... just as our technology bites back now.

Either Gould is right and there's no teleology in nature and I think a stronger claim could be made from his arguments that no teleology can be ultimately put into nature ... Ie we can't direct our own evolution successfully because evolution is the most efficient over the long run (but it in no way favors intelligence or any other trait) ... Or Gould is wrong, Nagel is right and there is teleology in nature and then we are either the product of and sanctioned by that teleology or at odds with it - to re formulate the perennial debate.

Same issue with the hive mind ... diversity ... some "undesirable" traits like psychopathy carry beneficial aspects ... another example is Bipolar disorder ... Close relatives who dont have BP may be very creative ... Kay Redfield Jamison argues there is a genetic link. But you gotta have the BP in the mix to get the benefits. The desire to "clean up" the gene pool seems to me to have other than rational roots.

Short of omniscience how does the hive mind know what traits will be beneficial? Is it a good strategy to leave some individuals outside the hive mind? Dangerous maybe for the collective over the short run but maybe advantageous to the survival of intelligence over the long run.

Two possible possibilities:

1. Get hold of the environment itself in it's entirety ... remake the Universe in our own image so that contingency is under control ... Unless a Homo Godel yet to come tells "us" it's not possible.

2. Build into a variety of organisms the potential to rapidly develop intelligence under a variety of circumstances in which Homo Novus might go extinct, particularly the ones where it is itself the cause of extinction.

But what is it Transhumanism is out to preserve of the human? Human level + intelligence? Human like self awareness? That seems like it could be a casualty of the hive mind although the ego and the brute, the Id even, might have survival value. Would the movement be ok with zombie AI that otherwise appears human although nobody is home? A universe without subjective experience? Or one where consciousness evolves and goes extinct successively as conditions warrant?


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Unless the designers are omniscient shouldnt they leave a random element as a hedge against the unpredictable? The mutt is healthier than the pure bred because as far as the random in life goes - the mutt is the pure bred.
In the movie Ghost in the Shell, a special-operations AI moves onto the world wide web, and Major Motoko Kusanagi, a military cyborg -- augmented human brain, android body -- is tasked with containing it. Spoiler: At the end of the movie, the AI requests to merge -- in the fashion of DNA recombination -- with the Major for just the reason @smcder mentions above.

However, one could also make the argument the transhumans would be so flexible -- cognitively and physically -- that they would be able to adapt immediately to any environmental conditions. Indeed, I've made the argument that what sets humans apart from other animals is our staggeringly advanced ability to adapt -- if not physically, behaviorally. Having said that, we do adapt physically, but we use technology to do so, the baby sling noted above being just one example.

Theoretically, transhumans might be so cognitively and physically flexible and adaptable, that it would far, far outstrip the cognitive/physical flexibility nature had previously offered via replication and natural selection, epigenetics, and neural networks. @Pharoah touches on this -- if I understand correctly -- in his model of consciousness known as Hierarchical Construct Theory.
 
In the movie Ghost in the Shell, a special-operations AI moves onto the world wide web, and Major Motoko Kusanagi, a military cyborg -- augmented human brain, android body -- is tasked with containing it. Spoiler: At the end of the movie, the AI requests to merge -- in the fashion of DNA recombination -- with the Major for just the reason @smcder mentions above.

However, one could also make the argument the transhumans would be so flexible -- cognitively and physically -- that they would be able to adapt immediately to any environmental conditions. Indeed, I've made the argument that what sets humans apart from other animals is our staggeringly advanced ability to adapt -- if not physically, behaviorally. Having said that, we do adapt physically, but we use technology to do so, the baby sling noted above being just one example.

Theoretically, transhumans might be so cognitively and physically flexible and adaptable, that it would far, far outstrip the cognitive/physical flexibility nature had previously offered via replication and natural selection, epigenetics, and neural networks. @Pharoah touches on this -- if I understand correctly -- in his model of consciousness known as Hierarchical Construct Theory.

Too many comic boo- I mean graphic novels ... ;-)

"However, one could also make the argument the transhumans would be so flexible -- cognitively and physically -- that they would be able to adapt immediately to any environmental conditions."

So the common cold killed the martians and boredom will kill the transhumans. It would be the first thing they'd have to adapt to.

Anyway, that's not making an argument ... it's making a proclamation. Immortal, invulnerable ... getting pretty close to reinventing the gods here.

We need some inkling of how an immediate universal adaptation principle IUAP would work ... but I think that's a confused notion - because adaptation isn't one thing, one quality or characteristic. Adaptation might require a step backward, for example. Adaptation might involve giving up the ability to adapt to any change in the environment instantly ... every god and superhero gives up his power at some point. One thing the hive mind should get done before this IUAP is enabled, is any tweaking of unwanted behaviors ... because once transhumans can adapt to any thing immediately, there would be no reprogramming rogue elements because they'd adapt to any breach in their integrity and I'd hate to see what IUAP vs IUAP would look like. It would be like two Volvos colliding ...

"Indeed, I've made the argument that what sets humans apart from other animals is our staggeringly advanced ability to adapt -- if not physically, behaviorally. Having said that, we do adapt physically, but we use technology to do so, the baby sling noted above being just one example."

Staggeringly advanced ability ... maybe, may be ... but compared to what other medium sized anthropoid with a similar evolutionary history? We have an n of 1. @mike - what's the average lifespan of a species? You quoted it recently. If I'm right, we've not been around very long by that metric ... so the jury isn't in on our adaptability. We don't know whether to be staggered or not. Ants have been around in the same environment for much longer, have a very broad range of adaptations, they farm mushrooms and use anti-fungal agents, herd aphids, engage in slavery, have sophisticated communication and live in clean, crime free underground climate controlled cities. And by bio-mass there is as much of them as us.

Theoretically, transhumans might be so cognitively and physically flexible and adaptable, that it would far, far outstrip the cognitive/physical flexibility nature had previously offered via replication and natural selection, epigenetics, and neural networks.

You could argue that such adaptations are "just" another natural strategy ... as far as we know, humans are 100% USDA organic and all natural and if we use that wholesome intelligence to create transhumans, then they are natural too - Mother Nature still gets credit. If it's a scratch ... then Mother Nature will just go back to tweaking Her beloved ants.

"The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God."

Moby Dick Chpt 93 The Castaway
 
Since foresight is limited (what is it after three billiard balls and a few seconds you start reaching impossible levels of required computational power?) ... then instant adaptability to any environmental change could require instantaneous access to infinite resources ... ? Or is there an adaptation to an absence of resources or to the necessity of violating a basic physical law.
 
"An Amendent to the Constitution would do it" ? Even if words would do it in the US (and they wouldn't), what about the rest of the planet? I looked up the novel you refer to on amazon and the first reviewer I read seems to have read a different book but from the one you read. He/she wrote: "This book has a cool thought on what the future holds if mankind is stupid enough to alter itself. The character developement was incredible, the ending sad, triumphant, and a little funny. I recomend this book to everyone.

The author wrote the book rooting for the underdog ie homo saps, so yes his perspective was the new people were a bad idea.
So where the author and most people saw the ending as a victory (the neanderthals wiped out homo sapiens so to speak) i saw it as a tragedy.

Im odd like that, its the same with Dr Whos Cybermen, they are as characters presented as bad/wrong. I see them as an improvement/upgrade
 
But what is it Transhumanism is out to preserve of the human? Human level + intelligence? Human like self awareness? That seems like it could be a casualty of the hive mind although the ego and the brute, the Id even, might have survival value. Would the movement be ok with zombie AI that otherwise appears human although nobody is home? A universe without subjective experience? Or one where consciousness evolves and goes extinct successively as conditions warrant?

To me its an expression of a trait we see in all biological organisms. Survival

Why does one get a pacemaker when the heart fails, why does one hook themselves to a dialysis machine when kidneys fail, Why the heart lung transplant.

Why not upgrade the hardware to preserve the experience sets that are who we are
 
"Why not upgrade the hardware to preserve the experience sets that are who we are."

Which is? Do the experience sets include subjective experiences and the ability to experience them? Or just data and meta data? Individuality? Are the Cybermen conscious? Who is Mike Seven of Nine?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
"Why not upgrade the hardware to preserve the experience sets that are who we are."

Which is? Do the experience sets include subjective experiences and the ability to experience them? Or just data and meta data? Individuality? Are the Cybermen conscious? Who is Mike Seven of Nine?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Since i consider myself to be a wholy self contained biological machine, I dont consider there would be any difference whatsoever if electrical impulses that currently power my conciousness do so on a biological or non biological substrate.

I'll go a step further and say a purpose designed non biological substrate will do a better job than my biological one. It will last longer, have better failsafes ie backups and RAID style parity bit checkers. The sensory inputs will no longer be constrained by my current biological limitations.

I cant see boredom as a factor since i will be able to chose between real world real time sensory inputs, Virtual world immersions, both self designed and those designed by others (think books and TV but with full and seamless sensory immersion) and an ability to load and run the direct experience sets of others in the hive mind.

Imagine for example that what you percieve as reality is in fact my experience set borrowed from the hives experience set collective running as direct experience in your own nodes conciousness space.

As a twist add time travel to this scenario. Let the hive mind go back and start uploading the full experience sets of all the people currently dead.

Perhaps today you might sample as a full immersion a day in the life of George Washington. or a week or a month or even the full dataset.

Walk the streets of ancient rome, smelling the smells, feeling what that person felt
 
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Are the Cybermen conscious?

I believe the answer to that would be yes, that was after all the whole point of the exercise.To preserve their conciousness when the biological body broke down

The Cybermen are a fictional race of cyborgs who are among the most persistent enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television programme, Doctor Who. All but the third, eighth, war, and ninth incarnations of the Doctor faced them. Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas that began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with every emotion deleted from their minds.


Where the problem seems to arise with these characters is some of the supporting software that is also loaded is flawed, the problem isnt the self preservation, its in the implementation. Something i would hope we would get right should we do the same
 
Since i consider myself to be a wholy self contained biological machine, I dont consider there would be any difference whatsoever if electrical impulses that currently power my conciousness do so on a biological or non biological substrate.

I'll go a step further and say a purpose designed non biological substrate will do a better job than my biological one. It will last longer, have better failsafes ie backups and RAID style parity bit checkers. The sensory inputs will no longer be constrained by my current biological limitations.

I cant see boredom as a factor since i will be able to chose between real world real time sensory inputs, Virtual world immersions, both self designed and those designed by others (think books and TV but with full and seamless sensory immersion) and an ability to load and run the direct experience sets of others in the hive mind.

Imagine for example that what you percieve as reality is in fact my experience set borrowed from the hives experience set collective running as direct experience in your own nodes conciousness space.

As a twist add time travel to this scenario. Let the hive mind go back and start uploading the full experience sets of all the people currently dead.

Perhaps today you might sample as a full immersion a day in the life of George Washington. or a week or a month or even the full dataset.

Walk the streets of ancient rome, smelling the smells, feeling what that person felt

"An estimate of the total number of humans who have ever lived was prepared by Carl Haub of the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau in 1995, and was subsequently updated in 2002 and 2011; the 2011 figure was approximately 107 billion "

107 billion x 50 = 5.35x10^12 years.

10^10^56: "Estimated time for random quantum fluctuations to generate a new Big Bang."

... then what ... ? ;-)

Ever heard of a Boltzman Brain?


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Interesting paper on WBE





Conclusions
It appears feasible within the foreseeable future to store the full connectivity or even
multistate compartment models of all neurons in the brain within the working memory of a
large computing system.

Achieving the performance needed for real‐time emulation appears to be a more serious
computational problem. However, the uncertainties in this estimate are also larger since it
depends on the currently unknown number of required states, the computational complexity
of updating them (which may be amenable to drastic improvements if algorithmic shortcuts
can be found), the presumed limitation of computer hardware improvements to a Moore’s
law growth rate, and the interplay between improving processors and improving
parallelism16. A rough conclusion would nevertheless be that if electrophysiological models
are enough, full human brain emulations should be possible before mid‐century. Animal
models of simple mammals would be possible one to two decades before this

Discussion

As this review shows, WBE on the neuronal/synaptic level requires relatively modest
increases in microscopy resolution, a less trivial development of automation for scanning and
image processing, a research push at the problem of inferring functional properties of
neurons and synapses, and relatively business‐as‐usual development of computational
neuroscience models and computer hardware. This assumes that this is the appropriate level
of description of the brain, and that we find ways of accurately simulating the subsystems
that occur on this level. Conversely, pursuing this research agenda will also help detect
whether there are low‐level effects that have significant influence on higher level systems,
requiring an increase in simulation and scanning resolution.

There do not appear to exist any obstacles to attempting to emulate an invertebrate organism
today. We are still largely ignorant of the networks that make up the brains of even modestly
complex organisms. Obtaining detailed anatomical information of a small brain appears
entirely feasible and useful to neuroscience, and would be a critical first step towards WBE.
Such a project would serve as both a proof of concept and a test bed for further development

Gradual replacement

Scanning might also occur in the form of gradual replacement, as piece after piece of the brain
is replaced by an artificial neural system interfacing with the brain and maintaining the same
functional interactions as the lost pieces. Eventually only the artificial system remains, and
the information stored can be moved if desired (Morevec, 1988). While gradual replacement
might assuage fears of loss of consciousness and identity26 it appears technically very
complex as the scanning system not only has to scan a living, changing organism but also
interface seamlessly with it (at least on the submicron scale) while working. The technology
needed to achieve it could definitely be used for scanning by disassembly.

Gradual replacement is therefore not likely as a first form of brain emulation scanning (though in practice it may eventually become the preferred method if non‐destructive scanning is not
possible).

It is sometimes suggested that extending the brain through interfaces with external software
might achieve a form of transfer where more and more of the entire person is stored outside
the brain, possibly reaching the point where the brain is no longer essential for the composite
person. However, this would not be brain emulation per se but rather a transition to a posthuman state

http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf
 
Timeline of the far future - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

References Boltzman Brain ... not sure I'd heard of it before:

"A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of chaos."

"The Boltzmann brains concept is often stated as a physical paradox. (It has also been called the "Boltzmann babies paradox".[1]) The paradox states that if one considers the probability of our current situation as self-aware entities embedded in an organized environment, versus the probability of stand-alone self-aware entities existing in a featureless thermodynamic "soup", then the latter should be vastly more probable than the former."


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Mind uploading is beyond the capabilities of our present-day technology, but not by as much as many people think. Portions of a mouse brain have been simulated at very high resolution inside computers.

Alternatives to destructive uploading include non-destructive uploading, where neurons are scanned using blood-borne nanomachines rather than destructive slicing, or cyborgization, where parts of the brain are progressively replaced with cybernetic components until the entire thing becomes a computer.
For now, mind uploading remains in science fiction, but it's only a matter of time until the technology becomes available, and people start attempting the procedure outlined above
What is Mind Uploading?
 
To me its an expression of a trait we see in all biological organisms. Survival

Why does one get a pacemaker when the heart fails, why does one hook themselves to a dialysis machine when kidneys fail, Why the heart lung transplant.

Why not upgrade the hardware to preserve the experience sets that are who we are

The 'Singularity' would be the suicide of our species, Mike, not its 'survival'. Did you see the abstract I posted above of the most recent paper by Tononi and Koch? I highlighted the last part in which they reject what Tononi's Integrated Information Theory had formerly argued -- i.e., that a sufficiently computationally integrated machine substrate would be as consciousness as a biological one. He's learned, probably from some of the same sources we've been reading and citing in the C&P thread, that AI would "experience next to nothing." And experience is the ground out of which humans and other animals develop consciousness -- embodied consciousness -- and mind.
 
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