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Editor's Note: Carl Zimmer, author of this month's article, "100 Trillion Connections," has just brought out a much-acclaimed e-book, Brain Cuttings: 15 Journeys Through the Mind (Scott & Nix), that compiles a series of his writings on neuroscience. In this chapter, adapted from an article that was first published in Playboy, Zimmer takes the reader on a tour of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City. His ability to contrast the fantastical predictions of speakers at the conference with the sometimes more skeptical assessments from other scientists makes his account a fascinating read.
Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer—not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your brain and then wirelessly outsourcing your faculties. Someone reroutes your vision through cameras. Someone stores your memories on a net of microprocessors. Step by step your metamorphosis continues until at last the transfer is complete. As engineers get to work boosting the performance of your electronic mind so you can now think as a god, a nurse heaves your fleshy brain into a bag of medical waste. As you—for now let's just call it "you"—start a new chapter of existence exclusively within a machine, an existence that will last as long as there are server farms and hard-disk space and the solar power to run them, are "you" still actually you?
This question was being considered carefully and thoroughly by a 43-year-old man standing on a giant stage backed by high black curtains. He had the bedraggled hair and beard of a Reagan-era metalhead. He wore a black leather coat and an orange-and-red T-shirt covered in stretched-out figures from a Stone Age cave painting.
He was not, in fact, insane.
The man was David Chalmers, one of the world's leading philosophers of the mind. He has written some of the most influential papers on the nature of consciousness. He is director of the Centre for Consciousness at Australian National University and is also a visiting professor at New York University. In other words, he has his wits about him.
Chalmers was speaking midway through a conference in New York called Singularity Summit, where computer scientists, neuroscientists and other researchers were offering their visions of the future of intelligence. Some ideas were tentative, while others careened into what seemed like science fiction. At their most extreme the speakers foresaw a time when we would understand the human brain in its fine details, be able to build machines not just with artificial intelligence but with superintelligence and be able to merge our own minds with those machines.
"This raises all kinds of questions for a philosopher," Chalmers said. "Question one: Will an uploaded system be conscious? Uploading is going to suck if, once you upload yourself, you're a zombie."
Chalmers didn't see why an uploaded brain couldn't be conscious. "There's no difference in principle between neurons and silicon," he said. But that led him to question number two: "Will an uploaded system be me? It's not a whole lot better to be conscious as someone else entirely. Good for them, not so good for me."
To try to answer that question Chalmers asked what it takes to be "me." It doesn't take a particular set of atoms, since our neurons break down their molecules and rebuild them every day. Chalmers pondered the best way to guarantee the survival of your identity: "Gradual uploading is the way to go, neuron by neuron, staying conscious throughout."
But perhaps that won't be an option. Perhaps you will have died by the time you are uploaded. Chalmers didn't think this possibility was anything to be scared of. "Let's call it the Buddhist view," he said. Every day, we lose consciousness as we fall asleep and then regain it the next morning.
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Add CommentThen I thought 'what if scientists don't know as much as we think they do?' What if greed and self interest only lead to the devastation of our external environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who cares about their progeny's future will realize that the Earth's biosphere has already been rendered unstable by the demands of our current overpopulation. The future adaptation of the species can best be accomplished by its replacement and replenishment. Death serves a critical function for the survival of the species.
The question of uploading consciousness into an artificial "brain" (even if it's a quantum computer with limitless capacity) brings the old Star Trek telepart thought experiment ("beam me up, Scotty") into the 21st century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer to this thought experiment has been, and always will be, that nobody will ever know.
In the Star Trek teleporter, the resulting person is real in every respect to observers, and insists they are conscious, but nobody will ever know from the teleportee's perspective if they retained consciousness! If not, the original person on the telepad died and if consciousness continues somewhere else (as in Christian and Buddhist teachings) then fine, they moved on. If not, cool, they retained consciousness and the technology actually works as intended!
In the brain upload scenario, the same holds true as the teleport example. You will never know if a loved one that uploaded is conscious, or is simply a living representation of the original. They will never know, of course, because if they died, they lost consciousness during the transfer and can't live to tell the tale.
Which leads to the ultimate holy grail of physics, parallel universes. If we exist in infinite parallel universes, which universe are we conscious in? Is it the one where we choose to be conscious? Are we conscious in ALL universes simultaneously, perhaps experiencing each universe one after the other in a linear brain manner (as Hawkings speculated in A Brief History of Time)? If we are only in the universe we choose to exist consciously, how did we "know" the other universes sucked? And how do we know if others with whom we interact in this universe are actually conscious or simply "dopplegangers" in sci-fi parlance, going through the motions but not really aware?
So you see, the issue raised here is rather cosmetic and germane to the larger issue of consciousness.
Exponential scientific advance? Hogwash. Brain uploading? Nonsense. Super-intelligent machines? B.S. The only really interesting applications here are cognitive enhancement and disease treatment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of this Singularity stuff is based upon the fact that computer scientists don't understand how the brain works. They think it's just a piece of hardware, and that all we have to do is replicate it, write out our code and voila!. The simple fact is that no conceivable technology could be used to mediate any kind of large-scale information transfer from the brain to machines. Injecting current and expressing channels are both simple processes--but both lack the nuance required to understand human cognition on a global scale.
I've always been intrigued by the people who believe we can reverse engineer a brain to produce a super intelligent, human-like machine brain. What I'd like to know is, if you want to produce a super-human intelligence, why model it after our brains? It's bound to be just as imperfect as our own, maybe even more so. Perhaps we produce a robot with a human-inspired brain... but it turns out to be intellectually delayed. And why not? There isn't any reason that a mechanical version of our brains should be any better than the biological ones we've already got.
In all honesty, with all the conflicts, poverty and sadness in our world, where is the merit in dreaming about immortality? Personally, I think someone needs to tell Ray Kurzweil to stop with this charade and give these poor saps their money back.
Can we restore the brain ? like heart and liver etc ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.globalhospitalsindia.com/
Interesting, both the article and the responses to it. I see a common thread in both and that's our lack of understanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe consciousness-shifters are light-years ahead of themselves. They're like classical Greek philosophers discussing health in terms of the four humors--their motives are honorable, but their lack of knowledge makes their conclusions unlikely to be accurate.
We should all keep studying and present facts, not flights of fancy. Before you talk about consciousness-transferal between humans and computers--other than in a science fiction context--maybe you should figure out some more elemental issues . . . such as, how to prevent headaches.
Keep dreaming, but don't confuse dreams with reality.
Fears about overpopulation are silly. Almost every demographer is now predicting the world population will peak in a few decades and then start falling steadily, due to dramatically falling birthrates. See the UN's population report. If anything, having too few people will be our problem; you can't have programs like social security and universal health care if each generation paying into them is getting progressively smaller than the last. Regardless, humans will find ways to adapt to a changing world, we always do. The population doomsdayers like Malthus and Erlich have been proven wrong 100% of the time throughout history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile his ideas are interesting, I don't take Kurzweil's predictions too seriously. Yes technology is accelerating, and that'll bring some big changes, but not all problems are affected by computing power. And Kurzweil's supplement recommendations have little scientific backing. Regardless, if it does happen, there isn't much we can do about the singularity, so IMO we should focus on more important things. For instance, biotechnology strategies like "SENS" (Google it) may well be able to rejuvenate much of the frail aged human body to a more functional and youthful state within this century, if they're enacted. Also, IMO the concept of the "Methuselarity" is more interesting than that of the "Singularity," because it's more realistic, and we may well be able do something about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article - it's nice to see someone taking a balanced view reviewing this stuff - I think its one of the most interesting areas of our times and under reported.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe infecting mice with sight stuff was pretty cool - I hadn't heard that before.
You cannot download the soul. All you would have would be memories of things learned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is very unfortunate that even someone like Carl Zimmer got entrapped in the Singularity craze.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes there is exponential growth of the scientific knowledge but this is not part of any "solution" but rather the very problem which will make the Singularity choke on its own data explosion.
We are utterly unable to manage the growing complexity and INTERRELATIONS of all scientific facts and given that this complexity doesn't grow linearly but at least quadratically if not much worse the more we know the less we can cope and truly understand.
We will lose control not the "evil AI" but to an overwhelming mass of untamed "information".
The Atlanteans, the Red race, that built the pyramids had found, that the pyramid is also a rejuvenation chamber.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen a ruler was at 80 years or more, he was put in the Kings Chamber, would be attended to by servants for a few days or weeks and come out of that "coffin" which was used as a Bed, looking like a twenty year old man.
He would have all the knowledge of his past life.
Most ot the Atlantean rulers ruled for close to 1000 years before they got fed up.
That concentrated force that waa in the Kings Chamber has for the greater part been lost, after greedy and lazy people in Egypt took the outside stone mass away.
Can that force be inmitated?
I believe it can and is probably used by our Guardians, who fly around in Fying Saucers. Some are stating that they are over 1000 years old
Since I discovered and patented the technology, I only need time and money to try it out.
If Nasa Engineers had been honest I would already be working on it. They were not interested to use the technology for the Shuttles and were responsible for killing Nasa.
Pat Cadigan's short story "Pretty Boy Crossover" was the first sf story I read on going digital. That was 1986 and the theme was considered pretty advanced then, not to say far fetched. It's absolutely amazing to be reading serious articles on the topic in scientific magazines less than a quarter century later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ BRIGG: the soul, like memories and learning, is made up of chemistry and electricity. As such it doesn't exist as a separate unit of consciousness and may as well be considered nonexistent, being its own creation. The Buddha already had an inkling ...
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: whether my brain uploaded into a machine is still be me:
Chalmers assumes his question is an empirical one about the physical world. But a question is empirical only if you can imagine physical evidence that would answer it.
Back in the 1930s astronomers wondered if there were mountains on the far side of the moon. That was empirical because they could imagine sending a rocket to look, even though they lacked the technology at the time. But what physical evidence could possibly show if I’m still me after my brain structure is transferred to a machine?
What happened physically is not in doubt.
The question is how to talk about what happened.
This is the ancient philosophical problem of identity. Heraclitus argued you cannot step into the same river twice, for the substance (water) is constantly renewed by the current. Theseus had a boat so old all the parts had been replaced. Was it still the same boat? And if our bodily substances fully renews every seven years as biologists tell us, are you still you after seven years?
Logician Willard Quine finds the answer to such riddles in how we talk of things. “The continuing identity of a person over the years (as we speak of him in language) is predicated not on his retention of substance, but continuity over time of things such a memories and personality including gradual changes in such things.
“How far back to place a person’s beginning – whether at birth or conception or somewhere between – is up for grabs, because the utility of the word “person” has not hinged much on that detail until recent times.
“A point that has seemed strangely in need of being driven home is that it is simply a question of the human use of the word “person”, whether the actual use or some use that is being proposed.
“It is not a question of discerning a hitherto undiscovered meaning of the word person.
“Words, as Humpty Dumpty appreciated, are no more than what we make of them.“
-- Quine, Quiddities, 1987
There is nothing special about the brain that we cannot emulate its components in many diverse ways (look up hp memristors and the darpa project to develop ai minds).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists (like engineers have long done) are now modelling experiments on computers and big computer networks. With the exponential growth of computing power (like Kurzweil says), any feild (science), once you can proceed by modelling that feild in computer models, then the capacity of what you can do is now tied to the exponential growth of computers and that feild will feed on this growth. Biology (dna sequencing, Craig Venters CAD designed bacterial cell, adn future custom cell designs (and tools like biobricks) will enable this exponential growth in these feilds. The development of software programmable nanobots will enable the maping of all a brains structures and make copying a mind a possibillity. Nanobots and biological modelling will enable the reverse engineering of all body cells and disease states and enable the genertion of nanobot software that can fix, modify, enhance our cells (hence fix aging and reverse exsisistng aging in allready old people. We must divert a lot of funding from the worlds existing militaries and possibly tax all exisitng and future weapon systems and tax amounts of soldiers present if we are to speed up getting to these goals. We cannot afford to build these big war machines as they will destroy us (Gwynn Dyer, War). The other reason is that advanced nanotech is going to be usefull for manufacturing/recycling any item (made from a CAD file)....but will also enable terrifyingly destructive war technology too and this must be avoided, the human race must grow up and not be rulled by these "warrior myth" (usually male) infant adults. As Aubre de Gray (of the Mrize and SENS foudations) have said, it will take about 2 billion ana 10 years to reverse aging in a mouse model, then humans thereafter....probablly faster if you make it a manhatten type of big project. The worlds armies spend over 10 billion per day on just existing (not including wars being waged or R&D programs). As Kurzweil says, we think in terms of linear time and not exponential time as what the computer rvolution is giving us, some of the critics of the DNA sequencing program did not realize the exponential developing of computer tech, DNA chip tech and sequencing tech were growing exponentially to now soon be able to sequence your DNA in a few minuits for a few dollars by using nanotech DNA pores and nanoelectrodes.
What overpopulation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat evidence can you cite that "souls" exist?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohn Von Neumann actually came up with this concept - uploading one's personality into a machine - upon realizing that he was terminally ill from leukemia. Loring Mandel wrote a little-known television / stage play called "Project: Immortality" based on this event. Sure, the hardware and software of today are more powerful than they were in 1957 when Von Neumann died, but even so, I think this is a just as much a delusion today as it was then.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom ancient time philosophers, scientists, mystics and so called chemists trying their best for immorality.No one get success.Urge for Immorality is natural tendency of mankind no one want to die everyone want to live forever.Paradox of human nature is he did not understand other side if man became immortal there is no meaning remain in his life. Death give meaning to man`s life if purpose of life ,finish no meaning to evolution,no meaning to progress no meaning to humanity.Without meaning in life or without purpose how can man survive on this earth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've commented on this before:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sadlyno.com/archives/6102.html
"The usually-unspoken problem with the “download my brain” idea is that YOU STILL DIE. So you make a copy of yourself? Big deal! The copy laughs at you as your organs fail, then goes off and makes love to your spouse: this is progress?"
Much easier than actually copying who-you-are would be to convince an AI that it WAS already you. I mean, who is going to check that the copy was complete and comprehensive? How long will you and your copy interrogate each other to determine whether your memories match, and when there is a disagreement, who will be authoritative? You, a mere analog meat-computer, or the digitally perfect incarnation of yourself?
Instead of the laborious process of copying and somehow verifying the copy of your memories, just copy your identity and convince the AI that it has ALREADY copied your memories, possibly using a pre-designed set of template memories. Shades of Bladerunner here...
Excellent article...I normally don't last through this many next page links...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting comments too...
I think the implants(read mind/machine) will happen much sooner than true machine Intelligence...although I continue to work on it as many others do....
Self identity, "me", is an evolving state. We continuously, albeit gradually, lose old identities as we acquire new ones. Transferring consciousness from a natural biological body to an artificial electromechanical one would mean a change of identity, but so would not doing so. The desirable, though not essential, quality of continuity would be best served by an "android" body that simulates a natural one as nearly as possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSelf identity, "me", is an evolving state. We continuously, albeit gradually, lose old identities as we acquire new ones. Transferring consciousness from a natural biological body to an artificial electromechanical one would mean a change of identity, but so would not doing so. The desirable, though not essential, quality of continuity would be best served by an "android" body that simulates a natural one as nearly as possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis was a very interesting article, but I agree with many of my fellow respondents that we need to keep our heads and our perspective with regard to this topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI for one would not use the word "immortality" as often as Mr. Kurzweil and his fellow visionaries do. For over two billion people on this Earth, myself included, there is only One immortal in the Universe, and the way Kurzweil and friends talk about the coming Singularity sounds perilously like the old, old game of trying to usurp His prerogatives -- something that has always resulted in disaster for would-be demiurges from Lucifer to Victor Frankenstein. The fact that real-life science and technology falls so short of the dream, and probably will for the foreseeable future, makes it all the more important to bring all this Singularity talk somewhat closer down to earth.
By way of helping with this reality check, I suggest that instead of "IMmortality" we talk about "Emortality". This is a very neat word coined by SF author Brian Stableford that simply means "extended mortality," which is really what Kurzweil and company are talking about.
Suppose, for instance, that I can download my consciousness or a reasonable facsimile thereof into a Star Trek-level hypercomputer. Now, my digital self will definitely be more durable than my biological self in many ways... but it cannot last forever, which is what the word "IMmortality" implies. If some fool of a hacker were to inject a virus into my software, or an EMP bomb disabled my hardware, or some Klingon with a grudge reduced software, hardware and everything else within a hundred miles to radioactive slag... get the picture? So while my mortality would be extended, I'd still be as vulnerable to accident or malice as anything else -- just maybe a little less so.
To sum up: We can extend our mortality. Indeed, we already have. There are old folks still hale and hearty today who could not have lived as long in previous eras, lads and lasses whose lives embrace everything from the Wright brothers' first flight to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But we cannot extend our mortality indefinitely no matter how good our science gets. We are not the lords of Creation, but only its stewards -- and would do well to remember that no matter how long we or our descendants live.
OH well... didn't wade through all the musings of Kurzwell's flights of techno-hype, but the techno-trend is inexorable and in a significant way, has not only profoundly altered the behavior and psyche of humans, but the evolution of HOMO Sapiens Sapiens.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no turning back... and who really wants that? We have on some levels already deeply merged with the myriad "machines" that shape our world and experiences. Machines or every variety are actually part of us, since we engineered, build, use and refine them... and are constantly seeking to design new ones.
WITHOUT doubt, our consciousness in wholly instantiated by our marvelously evolved brains... and thus, human "AI" will be a given, at some future nexus of research and technology. THE ONLY QUESTION is not will it redefine "life as we know it", it will (especially if you cling to the past), but will the transition be exceedingly painful and marked by the usual human tendencies for superiority and lust for power?
IMO, evolution will clearly favor the intelligensia as this planet declines and life must be sought St. Elsewhere and not being able to find Greenland on a world atlas (uh, that be yer average American) will NOT get you a ticket to Europa!
Well, the concept of uploading the mind into a computer seems to be ignoring the fact that the main reason the mind came into existence was to support the body into a physical world, with bodily basic requirements such as eating, staying alive, and of course, reproduction. Let's say you upload a given mind into a computer, and the once physical human being suddenly(or gradually) wakes up into this disconnected state from the physical world, missing most or all of the inputs and feedback signals it once dealt with in its past instance. Would it be shocked to the point of breakdown? Also, the mind deprived from a reason to keep going except from a purely intellectual realm of objectives, would it be well equipped to avoid insanity?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe brain improvements are almost there, we already use the eyes and fingers as a proxy to iPhones and other devices that allow us to wikipedia an unfamiliar word or concept almost in real time to augment the brain. Brain improvements or implants would just bypass the eye and hand, but the information exchange would be similar. And the brain has been demonstrated to be plastic enough to tame and leverage a new interface in both directions already. And eventually computers will imitate a human mind to the point where it would be impossible to distinguish between an interaction with a human being and an interaction with a computer. But moving a human mind into a computer probably does not make sense, and could turn out to be closer to the proverbial hell than to the promise of physical immortality, which is what we're after, right?
That would be fun if you could do that but I believe you can't because the body has to die to release the soul.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the soul is released the body rots away and there is no more. The material world is under a process of continual decay, rebuilding and changing form but the one constant in human beings and possibly other animals is the soul. The soul is the survivor of death. The soul is a substance within every area of the body, I believe and you cannot define or label it the way you can with things in the material world because it is essentially immaterial.
I guess you could say it theoretically does not 'exist' but the soul is an energy or essence beyond substance without definition.
Hello.Until last century French language was very popular in Turkey .Last Ottoman royal family members( many of them could speak French) lived in French Riveria.By the way , after 1.World War many Armenian Ottoman citizens prefer to live France.Because they lived sadness ,tragedic violence during this war.They wanted to establish national state but they loosed versus new Turkish goverment.Many people died ;so diaspora have bad emotins to Turkey .Maybe these are big reason France goverment's reaction for Turkey's membership to European Union.Mr.Sarkozy probably by diaspora presure and some old historical negatively reasons sad "we don't want direcktly membership"and "we need more time".Of course Turkey president showed negative reaction him.Turkey want to be real part of Europe.Atatürk adviced to be good connection with West.Turks origin is centralAsia but target is to be modern civilization.About 80 million people,some economic and social obtackles but Turkey working seriously to solve these.Acording to Bible first human couple lived east Turkey so all nations,etnic groups origin this area on the other hand Noah lived about same places too.But later many things changed during history and human formed by God ;different cultures,etnic characters...Last century USSR and USA controled big parts of the world.During Cold War Europian Union was another social-economic power own many euro is now strong.Many former USSR countries now member of EU.Turkey's some part on Europian continent so they want to be Part of this biggest organization.Sometimes history,religion negative obstackle.But USA's president is black and his name Hussain.Something(traditions,clasic ideas) can change .Last Jasimine social action one of them probably.I'm a Jehovah Witness and belive human brotherhood;and hope Human rights will be beter.All nations will be more sensetive common life onthis planet.Radical solve will be By our creator soon future ;He destroyed all bads and badnesses(acording Own standarts)and later world be paradise(for more information you can look our web site:www.watchtower.org)Until this amazing future we hope human connections and life conditions will be beter despite some difficult obstackles.With my deep regards...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello.Until last century French language was very popular in Turkey .Last Ottoman royal family members( many of them could speak French) lived in French Riveria.By the way , after 1.World War many Armenian Ottoman citizens prefer to live France.Because they lived sadness ,tragedic violence during this war.They wanted to establish national state but they loosed versus new Turkish goverment.Many people died ;so diaspora have bad emotins to Turkey .Maybe these are big reason France goverment's reaction for Turkey's membership to European Union.Mr.Sarkozy probably by diaspora presure and some old historical negatively reasons sad "we don't want direcktly membership"and "we need more time".Of course Turkey president showed negative reaction him.Turkey want to be real part of Europe.Atatürk adviced to be good connection with West.Turks origin is centralAsia but target is to be modern civilization.About 80 million people,some economic and social obtackles but Turkey working seriously to solve these.Acording to Bible first human couple lived east Turkey so all nations,etnic groups origin this area on the other hand Noah lived about same places too.But later many things changed during history and human formed by God ;different cultures,etnic characters...Last century USSR and USA controled big parts of the world.During Cold War Europian Union was another social-economic power own many euro is now strong.Many former USSR countries now member of EU.Turkey's some part on Europian continent so they want to be Part of this biggest organization.Sometimes history,religion negative obstackle.But USA's president is black and his name Hussain.Something(traditions,clasic ideas) can change .Last Jasimine social action one of them probably.I'm a Jehovah Witness and belive human brotherhood;and hope Human rights will be beter.All nations will be more sensetive common life onthis planet.Radical solve will be By our creator soon future ;He destroyed all bads and badnesses(acording Own standarts)and later world be paradise(for more information you can look our web site:www.watchtower.org)Until this amazing future we hope human connections and life conditions will be beter despite some difficult obstackles.With my deep regards...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello 30.comment is my mistake,because I would send another magazine.I am sorry but 29.comment is right for this artickle.Thank you....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello .(I want to apolize about before this 28.-31. comments about this artickle.Because I sent about another magazine artickle even printed twice.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way now I can write my comment : Our brains are amazing that sciencetists haven't analysed many details yet.For example ;this article giving some informations about brains that they have 100 trillion connections.On the other hand a normal people can use only %5 part during life.This is mark for us.Because Creator created first couple(our common ancestors-parents )for to live forever.When we died we haven't used other %95 part .On the othr hand Mr Christian Bernard made heart transplantation many years ago. But we can say posible for brain.We are using computers and internet about especialy last twenty years.But despite high technology we can not compare with natural brain.Quite,little,more high capacity and doesn't need big energy source.So we appricate Godly creation and never forget life how much precious gift us from Maker.So we must take useful,wisdomly,truth,safety knowledgment and stock on our brains.Because these records will move our daily
activities.By internet we can arive many different information sources easy .But some even many sources are harmful,dangerous unfortunately .We must select goods and bads.For example Scientific American is serious and true source but we can say all puplications are same.Quality ,capacity ,purposes,directions is forming publications characters.Freedoms can give sometimes damages to human moralities and natural values so must control by serious legal authorities for peoples's goodnesses.Especialy youths-children must keep versus like these dark sources.They brain more pure and can form by them easy.Bible giving us wonderful hope about future that all things will contrl by direcktly Almighty Creatot soon. All damages to echology,human health,justice,and social lifes will end by Him.All bads and badnesses will destroy.Earth planet will be again paradise.Only goods will live forever and some deads will add them by ressuraction.That amazing time human can use their brain full capacity(%100)during millions years by true and wisdomly knowledgmets.Until this wonderful time we can learn Godly wisdom and His purposes,standarts and if we live acording to lovely orders wie can more happy this bad situations and have true hope for future(You can take more information from JW's web site :www.watchtower.org )Again other four wrong comments ;exuce me!I want to thank to Science American for this oportunities.With my deep regards.John Bardakch..
Has anybody read Heinlein's book,Job a comedy of justice.What,files destroyed?Seemed to be the worst act possible,you have to read the book.Beam me up Scotty was never said on the tv show.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas anybody read Heinlein's book,Job a comedy of justice.What,files destroyed?Seemed to be the worst act possible,you have to read the book.Beam me up Scotty was never said on the tv show.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am curious about the comment regarding the lack of women at the Singularity Summit. I plan on attending this year (2011) but I am used to dealing with only men in most of my fields of interest, sadly. However, I do think that women might bring a more realistic, humanistic, and less idealized vision to the whole concept. Personally, I do not want to live forever, because I am insatiably curious about what happens when you die. However, I would definitely prefer an iPhone that was embedded in my physical body, an earpiece embedded in my ear, and video embedded in my eyes (at will I could choose to see the "real" world, or a movie, or the internet - perhaps using "sunglasses", or contacts?). I would like to see internet-type information embedded over the real world as I look through my contacts, whatever information I have chosen to see, words/graphs/etc. imposed upon the real world. I do not see the future being "ruled" by machines, because who would want that? I see machines being integrated into our real lives, I see people choosing what type of information they care about, and seeing that in real time. I believe AI relies on the collection of human knowledge (the internet) but I can't imagine it making ethical or moral decisions (greed, lust, anger, jealousy, compassion, love, etc.) without prior programming to subscribe to such ideas. Also, keep in mind the fact that every single brain is DIFFERENT. Have you ever met two people who were exactly alike? How would it be possible to re-create someone's brain without inevitably altering it (because the new "brain" would have its own experiences and life and memories, separate from the time it was created from the original brain - so it would never [except in its moment of creation] be exactly like its "parent" brain)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI doubt that this kind of "computer immortality" will even be possible, and I don't think I would want to "live on" in a computer even if I could. It's fascinating that this quest for immortality seems like quiet the religious impulse from a group of people that probably aren't very religious otherwise. Is this modern quest any less foolish than the biblical story of people trying to build a tower to heaven(i.e. the Tower of Babel)? I'm skeptical of AI as well-in the sense of having computer actually be sentient and think as humans do. Brain enhancement and some of the other things in here seem more realistic. It was an occurence in college for some people to take other people's ADHD meds and use it as a study aid. The ethical issues invovled with mental enhancement seem like the same issues involving steroids and physical "enhancement". Couldn't the author find any people who had ehtical qualms with the idea of mental enhancers for the healthy? It's not like there's no distinction between giving drugs to help sick peopel and giving them to already healthy people. Surely, we don't just give out steroids to everybody to make them a better athlete? For one thing, we know that steroids can have bad side effects. What side effects would these mental enhancers(or even the drugs people use licitly or not for such a purpose) have?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, too often these discussions about the nature of the soul get boil down to a stand off between Cartesian dualism(or something similar) and materialism. But there is another way to think of the mind/body/soul/spirit issue in the western tradition:
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/soul.pdf
See also:
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/wjf/CR%20FreemanAquinas.pdf
I doubt that this kind of "computer immortality" will even be possible, and I don't think I would want to "live on" in a computer even if I could. It's fascinating that this quest for immortality seems like quiet the religious impulse from a group of people that probably aren't very religious otherwise. Is this modern quest any less foolish than the biblical story of people trying to build a tower to heaven(i.e. the Tower of Babel)? I'm skeptical of AI as well-in the sense of having computer actually be sentient and think as humans do. Brain enhancement and some of the other things in here seem more realistic. It was an occurence in college for some people to take other people's ADHD meds and use it as a study aid. The ethical issues involved with mental enhancement seem like the same issues involving steroids and physical "enhancement". Couldn't the author find any people who had ethical qualms with the idea of mental enhancers for the healthy? It's not like there's no distinction between giving drugs to help sick people and giving them to already healthy people. We don't just give out steroids to everybody to make them better athletes. For one thing, we know that steroids can have bad side effects. What side effects would these mental enhancers(or even the drugs people use- licitly or not- for such a purpose) have?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, too often these discussions about the nature of the soul boil down to a stand off between Cartesian dualism(or something similar) and materialism. But there is another way to think of the mind/body/soul/spirit issue in the western tradition:
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/soul.pdf
See also:
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/wjf/CR%20FreemanAquinas.pdf
While death would certainly keep the question of eventual population explosion at bay, it's also possible to argue that with more people on the planet, we would have a faster development of technology in the way of space travel. In fact, it could give impetus to that. And, given the way children are seen as inconveniences, it's not inconceivable that wanting children would go away, especially since you have all the time in the world to have them, literally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd besides, we are not currently experiencing overpopulation. This is a myth pumped out by environmentalists and by the likes of Rockefeller. As you probably already know, there is a very strong connection between environmentalism, birth control, and abortion advocacy, and while it's spinned in a variety of ways, the goal among such influential magnates is none of the three. I encourage a more scientific outlook on such subjects instead of swallowing the media nonsense. All it takes for some people to believe something is to hear the words "Scientists say...". Ah, yes, those "Scientists", the Magisterium for the New Age!
You're right. Now, I don't want to presume anything, but I can already feel the snide, self-righteous sneer of materialists balking at the notion of a soul. But we needn't even go there. It's enough to consider what was said earlier on, although later erroneously elaborated, specifically that "downloading the brain", Raelian-style, isn't going to put you in another place. All you're doing is producing a copy of the content of the brain into another substance. That copy of course isn't the original. So while that new thing might even behave as the original for observers, it's not the same thing in se, which ultimately undermines the end goal of this cult. And by the way, the whole going to sleep and waking analogy is false because the consciousness isn't tied to the same substance. The same self isn't there. Buddhism talks about the false self, sure, but that isn't the same thing as denying that one person is the same as a copy. Quantum teleportation, which isn't quite the same thing I imagine, also works by transferring state not identity. The original is destroyed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor Aristotle, the soul is the act of the body, and as long as the body acts, the soul exists. I'm not sure how Christians approach the nature of soul exactly, although Aquinas was heavily influenced by Aristotle (perhaps even his De Anima), although we all know that Christians speak of the immortality of the soul beyond biological death. But, regardless, the question of whether a seamless transition to mechanical neurons could somehow provide a means of maintaining a continuity of being, I don't know. However, the motivations behind some of the whacky folks in this camp are off. They are trying to cause something greater than themselves, and that is philosophically impossible. Meaning, man can assemble pieces of matter into new combinations, but he cannot create anything greater than himself as being. We talk about computers being able to add numbers faster than humans, but it is an error to assume that what we call computations (an ordered coordination of physical operations which only have numerical meaning to the human interpreter, not the blind computing machine) has any relation to thought, thus proving computers to be superior to humans in terms of being, and thus demonstrating that human can create things greater than themselves. We're not talking about bridge-building, we're talking about building a human from scratch. Materialism is not a scientific outlook, only a metaphysical one.
Chalmers is a nitwit and an opportunist who steals ideas from others. Charming though. Just don't take him seriously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure how this would all work...what about "I" - there seems to be the feeling that we are separate from our memories... that "what I think I saw wasn't what I really saw..." - you see? In this way memory is altered, and perhaps it is changing all the time...as we change. So, pretty much fail.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me respond to Chalmers' particular question and comments that were cited by Zimm, "Will an uploaded system be me? It's not a whole lot better to be conscious as someone else entirely. Good for them, not so good for me."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the most important question of all, for me at least. I doubt I will survive to see it happen, if it ever happens. But if it does, this raises the question, namely, what makes me "me" to me and what makes you "you" to you?" In other words, what is it, exactly, that makes me know I am me, the real me?
I pondered a related for as long as I could remember. Am I only my consciousness? Or am I more? It seemed that I was more. And then I read Francis Crick's, The Astonishing Hypothesis.
His book opens with what remains a great epiphany for me:
"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrow, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
I think Crick's point sheds some light on Chalmer's question. From what I can tell thus far, it would be necessary to retain at least "some part" of the biological brain to retain consciousness and hence self-identity. It's possible that in the future, the brain could be regenerated, biologically, like other organs are today. Eventually, the original would be long gone, but some biology would survive.
I have been involved in the elements of the singularity, nanotechnology and AI, since the late 1970s when Eric Drexler started talking about them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI finally had to resort to fiction to express my thoughts on the subject. Google "The Clinic Seed" for the story.
of course we could all live for a very long time. all we have to do is look at the history of the HU-Man race vs. the man and woman at the beginning of time. when we are subject to so many negative influences from all around us we are then continually harming our own bodies through unconscious descions. this is due to the fact that we as people in general have hgh that decreases through time. yet as we have seen the hgh was very prevalent in the humans in the past thus creating longer life. So to say it this way we are all pure energy in which we never do die. we only move on to another realm of existence, depending on each persons belief system. 21.3 grams of 2/64th power is infentisimal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI honestly think loading the human brain to a machine isn't what we should be doing. you know how we have robotic exoskeletons and even robotic limbs? well i think, once we have the technology, we should be doing that to our brain cells. i have no idea how something like that should be done, but it's an idea worth considering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Star Trek teleporter thought experiment is an ideal example of how "you" are surely more than the sum of your parts. In one episode William Riker ends up effectively cloned by a transporter system. Another useful idea is cloning of your body and memories - right up-to-date. In either case, this copy would not be you, it would be a perfect facsimile. The direct proof of this would be to ask: can you feel what the copy is feeling at this moment, see what the copy can see, hear what the copy can hear. If the answer is no but that copy is indeed experiencing something that you are not then it is not "you".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother question would be to ask if it would be ok to shoot you in the head now because "you" won't be dead because you will still live through the copy. The answer would likely to be no. For what reason? Because although the copy would continue living happily and, to external observers, it would appear that you were still living, "you" would be dead, will have ceased to experience life since being shot. Why would uploading your conciousness to a computer be any different to these scenario's?
I think that this kind of analysis clearly illustrates that "you" are not made merely of hardware (whether that hardware is your biological body and brain or a machine), there is something else outside of this purely physical presence which makes "you" - almost like the concept of a spirit or soul - something else that makes you unique in addition to what you are physically made of and without that ingredient, "you" are not there.
It's like the movie "The Stepford Wives" where husbands in a wealthy gated community (who were Disney engineers in the original) created cyborg copies of their wives down to their memories, and each new "wife" killed her original (whom the company presumably had discreetly cremated to avoid any mess or legal entanglements).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagine a dead universe where we are all there, living happily ever after, although "we" aren't there with us.
Kurzweil talks of resurrecting his body by preserving it in liquid nitrogen... Will he freeze the "I" too? Mind is foolish, it spins theories upon theories... It is only wise to use it as a slave, not the master! And by the way cybernetic singularity might achieve the same thing as what the Shamans and Yogis did... Connect the "i" (Atman) to the "I" (Brahman)... The approach is new, thats all! There is nothing jaw dropping about this... Everything is but one consciousness! Why spend kazillion amounts of dollars on realising something like this, when one can do it by just being? Stupidity reigns supreme, not intelligence! Sorry if "i" am sounding rude , people! Peace...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou have touched a very critical and sensitive subject here... In the Indian tradition too we have Babajis, Naths, Yogis etc who have reached the status of Chiranjeevin, which means "immortal" in Sanskrit and are called Siddhas (the attained or awakened one)! Currently, it is widely acknowledged that Mahavatar Babaji is here living amongst us interfering and showing people the path of order or Dharma.... Babaji is believed to be living for over 500 years now! Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavatar_Babaji My point is that cybernetic singularity doesnt look like it will accomplish the same as the ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Norse and all the yogis and sannyasins who have accomplished it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may be able to program a machine to solve more complex questions--..but you could never get a machine to wonder where you've gone went you go to eat a snack in the kitchen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA machine cant have an inner self. To think it can is so utterly irrational only a machine would think such a thing.
You know your identity, you know your real and make real choices...your just denying what you know because you cant accept you're created.