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mind uploads


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M

mike

Paranormal Adept
i didnt know the raelians were into this stuff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_transfer



Followers of the Raëlian religion advocate mind uploading in the process of human cloning to achieve eternal life. Living inside of a computer is also seen by followers as an eminent possibility.
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i wonder, if we do develop the technology to "image" our brains and clone ourselves... i guess it would feel like having an operation, you wake up and its done. but would it be imortality... ?
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"The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain."

sounds reasonable, no point reinventing the wheel so to speak.

so if we could upload our minds to new hardware, what sort of "skills" do you think we should learn in our physical phase, that would be useful in a post body existance ?.

i guess programming and arts any thing "creative".
"animating" cgi avatars as actors ?

thats assuming you stay "inside" the machine, but i guess you could have bio bots built for you to "inhabit" for physical work.

my guess is a combo of both, the "core" personality "living" in the "machine" so to speak with a number of extensions of various forms, including manufactured organic ones.

im not sure id go with a simple swap to a cloned replacement, it might get killed in some out of the way place and not be able to upload my mind.

better to secure the core persona in an artificial server and use the bioforms as extensions only
 
i guess it would feel like having an operation, you wake up and its done.
Click to expand...

It need not feel like anything at all. It may have happened to you last night. Or perhaps you "born" last night and awoke this morning with a lifetime of memories already loaded.
 
Wallowing in the idea some more, what if the above process led to stagnation, got boring. might not a mind in this form create biological extensions with some base creativity and the ability to learn, and in turn learn from the "unscripted" nature of that extensions experience ?.
or what about animals, the reincarnation theorys mention "inhabiting" animals bodies. how often have we looked at a pampered pet and said thats the life........ i wonder what it would be like......

are the psychic pets simply the animated extensions of a "conciousness" that we recognise, and in turn recognises us.

perhaps conciousness is by its very nature a post biological state, that this is already our reality.
 
according to wiki

"Investigators have failed to agree on an anatomical mechanism for consciousness"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

perhaps the "mechanism" on which it truly resides is not anatomical in reality.

if we allow for the possibility that what we call conciousness could be transfered to a "machine" for wont of a better description. might that not answer lots of questions about the nature of reality.

if we are going to create this technology and we are trying too, then chances are its do-able, if its do -able then perhaps its already been done......

a mind in this "place" might very well create "read only" extensions in biological form to provide an "unscripted" source of experience and creativity.

im getting the funny feeling that if i explore this any further, im going to "cross a boundary" and im not sure if im supposed to or not.

the idea that i am an extension conected to a source, and not the source itself and yet in a strange twist i am also the source.....

and then we go and create the technology to upload ourselves in this reality and we have yet another "backup" of the data...
 
There's an argument over whether intelligence can be properly experienced by a machine (see Dennet & Penrose) or just imitated. Penrose's belief that consciouness somehow emerges from quantum effects (such as the multiverse) holds an intuitive appeal for me. But of course there's no proof of this.

But to your point about unscripted experience, under Penrose's model, it seems there would be value in having all of life's possible experiences actually physically lived out. The souls that emerge from such experience would be deeper, richer than any soul one might try to render artificially with an algorithm. (This may actually be Haisch's theory, come to think of it.)

A soul "vineyard" would naturally have caretakers and harvesters, a thought I'd rather not dwell on.
 
Thanks again,
its a fascinating concept and one i arrived at just taking the ball and running with it so to speak.
there seems to be a lot of research into brain computer interfaces and the like, so i allowed my self to wonder what it would be like to take that journey.
if in the nursing home a salesman suggested i have my brain scanned.
in a try before you buy offer they did the scan for free, and i was allowed to talk to myself.

the reality is a little strange at first, i mean here i am talking to myself, testing ,swapping memorys until finally im sure the being i "see" is me.
perhaps its easy then to let go, and watch him die..........

so, a new cloned body ? sure, and another when it wears out ? why not

10 thousand years later, i have 10,000 years of contigious memory, and my core persona with all that history of personal experience lives in a "mind server" using biological vehicles when needed, but heres the rub i think the same way as i always have.

(forgive the aside but it demonstrates what i want to say here.
i have kept dogs for almost as long as ive lived, and ive trained them, taught them tricks, things i wanted them to do that would gratify me. and there have been some great dogs and great tricks over the years, but one day we adopted a one eyed chihuahua from the pound, because her ugly mug scared the children and she wasnt looking like finding a home anytime soon, anyway...... she came with her own trick, which she taught us.

unscripted........)


i imagine my "mind" living in a "mind server" would seek "unscripted" input.

and input from other sources other bioforms , imagine once transfered to this technological environment being able to interface with animals as well being able to "experience" input from that source.

it does leave the question of "other minds" does every uploaded mind retain its sovereignty or do they form a Unified conciousness


if its possible, then its an interesting thing to ponder , if the seat of my conciousness and the seat of my pants dont share the same chair, then what i percieve as "me" may be an extension of and not the source of me

and i worry about exploring the idea too far, no one wants to disappear in a puff of logic, perhaps were not supoosed to be "self" aware, the PC on the front desk isnt supposed to be able to hold and sort the companys massive databases which live on the mainframe, if it tried it would crash.
instead its got a terminal emulator which gives it enough functionality for it to do its task.

imagine that you stumble of the nature of reality and bango the machine crys "TILT" and ends the game
 
Maybe God is a schizophrenic computer that thinks it's everything else.
Click to expand...

Heh, nice one. The fact of the matter is that the universe is capable, through evolution & intelligent life, of understanding itself. This is astonishing.
 
mike said:
i didnt know the raelians were into this stuff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_transfer



Followers of the Raëlian religion advocate mind uploading in the process of human cloning to achieve eternal life. Living inside of a computer is also seen by followers as an eminent possibility.
<SUP></SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
<SUP></SUP>
i wonder, if we do develop the technology to "image" our brains and clone ourselves... i guess it would feel like having an operation, you wake up and its done. but would it be imortality... ?
<SUP></SUP>
Click to expand...
One thing the Raëlians are big on is bad science fiction (maybe Vorilhon was inspired by Hubbard) - given that there is no technology for mind uploading it's interesting to ponder how they propose to go about this.
Assuming the sampling/scanning technology could be developed (a big if), one obvious problem is that the uploaded mind would presumably be a copy, not a transfer...in which case, while (given a functioning host environment) it might think it was you, you'd still be dead (this problem also arises with teleportation).
What I personally think is worse however is their idea of using this non-existent technique to achieve immortality via cloning - which necessarily involves overwriting the consciousness of the clone.
For anyone who hasn't thought that concept through, you would effectively be creating a twin brother or sister and then murdering them.

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.
 
some are predicting as early as 2050......

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/brain.download/

and i concur with the author re the money aspect.

right now when you die by law all your wordly goods are lost.

if we do develop the Tech to this stage the "you cant take it with you" rule is gone, any corporation that develops this service will be able to get its hands on an awful lot of real estate in return for hosting services.

and then you would need some sort of skill set thats useful in a post biological environment, to maintain the income needed to continue the service.

if we get complete and utter mastery over genetics and the like we should be able to do anything including create clones with "blank" brains

i can see two models being very popular 500 years from now.
the "grey" with its upgrades and optional extras like broad spectrum vision etc, and for those who are nostalgic the "nordic" model
 
mike said:
i can see two models being very popular 500 years from now.
the "grey" with its upgrades and optional extras like broad spectrum vision etc, and for those who are nostalgic the "nordic" model
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The Nordic model also has sex organs. Hmmm....let's weigh the options...broad spectrum vision or naughty bits? Does it come in Bonobo?
 
skunkape said:
Does it come in Bonobo?
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sort of, if we develop the ability to completely reverse engineer understand and record the data thats currently stored in our "gray matter" then we should be able to upload data from any bioform using the same mechanism.

some skillful programming and you could "experiance" any perspective you like. these could be sold to the hosted minds

but again cost is an issue, someone with a physical body has to do the "leg" work , so the hosted minds need to be able to create something of value in return.


while not quite the same idea, Robert Silverberg plays with a similar situation being how does society react to such a massive shift in reality

http://www.owmyhead.com/silverberg/oldsite/Shorts/silvshort_b.htm#Born

http://www.owmyhead.com/silverberg/oldsite/Novels/silvnov_r.htm
 
Bixyboo said:
Oooooo.

Or maybe:

God is pretending to be US, talking to himself.
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I think that's what I was getting at. I just threw in the computer bit to make it sound science-fictionish. I do get the impression at times that what is percieved , by everything that perceives, is a unified consciousness playing games with itself. I can see where it would get lonely being God. You'd have to do something to pass the time.
 
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