Is it possible to upload our minds into a computer or in engineered living tissue?

[Whateverist]

[quote='Whateverist the White' pid='1082797' dateline='1444752702']

Personally I don't burn for immortality.  Would the world be a more interesting place if no or few new mortal humans were needed since those born with the choice chose to continue themselves instead?

Those born with the means...don't forget the means.  When they roll out immortobots, guys like the Kochs will get them, not you and I.  What do you think...if people like the Kochs condensed and became over-representative in the way that their wealth currently does ..

That would be ironic if the Kochs actually expanded to inhabit all the human mind niches with their own clones - and NOBODY else. Would class struggle finally be at an end, perfect democracy become possible?

...would that be a more interesting world to you?  I don;t think so.  I think that it would be a petty and boring world.  Our mortality and diversity is the spice of life, imo.

Amen.

[Whateverist]

There is a recent thread on this topic:

Let's create an eternal blissful life through science

I don't think it will ever be possible, for reasons specified in that thread.  Nor do I think it would be desirable even if it were possible.  For reasons specified in that thread.

Yeah, I wondered if anyone might already have started a thread inspired by the article but was too lazy to check. I pretty much agree with you that it isn't likely possible at all. Your position there:

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First, why I think it is not possible.

Your mind is some processes in your brain, or the result of some processes in your brain. Your brain cannot be kept going forever, so there is zero chance of eternal life. It may be possible to extend human life dramatically, but it cannot be made to last forever.

As for resurrecting people, once the brain deteriorates, there is no way to make it how it was before, as how it was before is not known. If one had a magical scanner that could scan the exact state of every minute particle of a brain, and if one had a magical machine that could exactly arrange such a collection of particles, then it would be possible to recreate a brain at the moment of the scan. (Of course, such a recreation would be a copy of the brain, not the original brain, so it still would not be the original person.) But if no scan had been made of someone, then one would have no way of knowing how all of the particles should be arranged, and so even a magical machine that could arrange particles perfectly would not be enough to resurrect someone.

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But this article inspired me to move on from that position to explore what questions that arise if in fact it were possible to transfer the exact mechanics of a particular brain to either a computer or a cultured biological medium. The author, I take it, is an expert in mapping the activity of the brain to the extent that is possible to do now. Yet he seems to have a sensible outlook on the desirability of the endeavor. So, fine, I'll set aside considerations of the difficulties (since he seems to acknowledge these are far from trivial).

Also, our brains may already be transferred to new media even now. Most brain cells are not replaced, but those in the hippocampus are and that is the area most responsible for memory*. So if we already rewrite memories from the original cells which stored them to new ones, then in principle there may in fact be a mechanism for doing so beyond the lifespan of the individual and that of his neurons. (Admittedly, I don't know whether long term memory relies on transference to new cells or if the life long generation of neurons in the hippocampus merely permits more memories.)

*

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Most cells in our bodies’ organs and tissues, such as the liver, guts, or skin are continuously renewed. In contrast, the majority of the approximately 100 billion nerve cells in our brain and spinal cord are born — through a process known as neurogenesis — before birth and will last a lifetime. However, a few brain structures add new nerve cells during infancy and a single region adds new cells throughout the lifespan.

Shortly after birth in humans, a substantial number of new nerve cells are produced and added to brain regions called the cerebellum, olfactory bulb, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus. But by age 2, neurogenesis in most of these regions disappears except in the hippocampus — a region involved in learning and memory. This may be the only location in the brain where new cells are added throughout one’s lifetime.

http://www.brainfacts.org/about-neurosci...w-new-ones

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Be that as it may, I'm now willing to concede that it may eventually be possible in principle to create new vessels for the brain states which account for all of our experiences. But you of course are welcome to go on fighting the good fight. But I'm moving my fight a little further down the road to "so what if it is?"

[The Grand Nudger]

It would be the sort of thing I could be convinced to commit acts of violence against, I can tell you that.  If there were a facilty pumping out immortal clones of the american aristocracy, this would be a 2nd amendment nuts dream dystopia. Pew pew you clone sons of bitches - I don't even feel bad, it's just easily replaced bioautomata. The foot soldiers of the ruling class (and there's where the tech would be deployed after the rich get first pass at the trough...military application). I mean, how close is the Koch brothers scenario to Day Z, eh...eh..eh? Tell me you'd feel bad gunning down an unending stream of cocksuckers with the full knowledge that you can;t actually kill them proper?

[Whateverist]

It would be the sort of thing I could be convinced to commit acts of violence against, I can tell you that.  If there were a facilty pumping out immortal clones of the american aristocracy, this would be a 2nd amendment nuts dream dystopia.  Pew pew you clone sons of bitches - I don't even feel bad, it's just easily replaced bioautomata.  The foot soldiers of the ruling class (and there's where the tech would be deployed after the rich get first pass at the trough...military application).  I mean, how close is the Koch brothers scenario to Day Z, eh...eh..eh?  Tell me you'd feel bad gunning down an unending stream of cocksuckers with the full knowledge that you can;t actually kill them proper?

Hell, I'd be happy to stake them through the heart, cut off their heads and burn the lot.  Shooting would be relatively neat and easy as well as rhythmic.

[dyresand]

In recent times it has become appealing to believe that your dead brain might be preserved sufficiently by freezing so that some future civilization could bring your mind back to life. Assuming that no future scientists will reverse death, the hope is that they could analyze your brain’s structure and use this to recreate a functioning mind, whether in engineered living tissue or in a computer with a robotic body. By functioning, I mean thinking, feeling, talking, seeing, hearing, learning, remembering, acting. Your mind would wake up, much as it wakes up after a night’s sleep, with your own memories, feelings and patterns of thought, and continue on into the world.

We have often batted around this question here.  Not sure if anyone would like to have another go at it.  If so, this article by Kenneth D. Miller could provide a nice jumping off point for another go around.  Based on this article which appeared in last Sunday's NY Times which is all I know of the author, I believe he thinks it is not an in principle impossibility.  However he thinks it would be an enormously difficult problem requiring centuries of conceptual and technological breakthroughs.  In other words, we're skating on thin ice here since we must assume we will somehow answer questions we can't yet specify.  Yet he seems to be as much an expert as anyone we might like to find, and the article is pitched to our interested layman level.

Extended quote:

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I am a theoretical neuroscientist. I study models of brain circuits, precisely the sort of models that would be needed to try to reconstruct or emulate a functioning brain from a detailed knowledge of its structure. I don’t in principle see any reason that what I’ve described could not someday, in the very far future, be achieved (though it’s an active field of philosophical debate). But to accomplish this, these future scientists would need to know details of staggering complexity about the brain’s structure, details quite likely far beyond what any method today could preserve in a dead brain.

How much would we need to know to reconstruct a functioning brain? Let’s begin by defining some terms. Neurons are the cells in the brain that electrically carry information: Their electrical activity somehow amounts to your seeing, hearing, thinking, acting and all the rest. Each neuron sends a highly branched wire, or axon, out to connect or electrically “talk” to other neurons. The specialized connecting points between neurons are called synapses. Memories are commonly thought to be largely stored in the patterns of synaptic connections between neurons, which in turn shape the electrical activities of the neurons.

Much of the current hope of reconstructing a functioning brain rests on connectomics: the ambition to construct a complete wiring diagram, or “connectome,” of all the synaptic connections between neurons in the mammalian brain. Unfortunately connectomics, while an important part of basic research, falls far short of the goal of reconstructing a mind, in two ways. First, we are far from constructing a connectome. The current best achievement was determining the connections in a tiny piece of brain tissue containing 1,700 synapses; the human brain has more than a hundred billion times that number of synapses. While progress is swift, no one has any realistic estimate of how long it will take to arrive at brain-size connectomes. (My wild guess: centuries.)

Second, even if this goal were achieved, it would be only a first step toward the goal of describing the brain sufficiently to capture a mind, which would mean understanding the brain’s detailed electrical activity. If neuron A makes a synaptic connection onto neuron B, we would need to know the strength of the electrical signal in neuron B that would be caused by each electrical event from neuron A. The connectome might give an average strength for each connection, but the actual strength varies over time. Over short times (thousandths of a second to tens of seconds), the strength is changed, often sharply, by each signal that A sends. Over longer times (minutes to years), both the overall strength and the patterns of short-term changes can alter more permanently as part of learning. The details of these variations differ from synapse to synapse. To describe this complex transmission of information by a single fixed strength would be like describing air traffic using only the average number of flights between each pair of airports.

Underlying this complex behavior is a complex structure: Each synapse is an enormously complicated molecular machine, one of the most complicated known in biology, made up of over 1,000 different proteins with multiple copies of each. Why does a synapse need to be so complex? We don’t know all of the things that synapses do, but beyond dynamically changing their signal strengths, synapses may also need to control how changeable they are: Our best current theories of how we store new memories without overwriting old ones suggest that each synapse needs to continually reintegrate its past experience (the patterns of activity in neuron A and neuron B) to determine how fixed or changeable it will be in response to the next new experience. Take away this synapse-by-synapse malleability, current theory suggests, and either our memories would quickly disappear or we would have great difficulty forming new ones. Without being able to characterize how each synapse would respond in real time to new inputs and modify itself in response to them, we cannot reconstruct the dynamic, learning, changing entity that is the mind.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinio....html?_r=0

In short it is possible but the larger issue becomes is with ethics and technology and our knowledge we do not have a fully grasp  over 
sentience or fully understand the mind, one we finally really understand then we can and if we have the technology upload away.

[Reforged]

Me and my Dad used to have this conversation alot. Hes always had this fantasy of immortality by having his consciousness uploaded to a really advanced computer. Ultimately it always ended like this;
"Right so, you die but someone uploads a copy of your mind to a computer. It acts like you. Is it you?"
"Yes."
"Ok, turns out there was a mistake. You're not dead. Is it still you?"
"Yes, we're both me."
"Nope. One of you is the original, the other simply has the same set memories. It may be living in the sense that it has consciousness but you are two completely different individuals. One just happens to be a replica of the other. You're similar but your paths diverge at the point the copy is created. *You* are your brain, he is whatever equivalent of a brain he happens to have. The information on that is just that, information. When your brain dies so will you."

Eventually he would concede the point begrudgingly then suddenly have to do something.
The only way to actually achieve real immortality in a sense we would recognize would be to make it so brain death was impossible. However, the point could be made that since we replace most of our bodies cells over a seven year period we actually die multiple times before we classify ourselves as being officially dead. We are replaced by exact copies multiple times in our "lifetimes" yet we do not acknowledge the fact in our day to day lives. The person I am now is literally not the person who was known as me seven years ago, he is very dead. I simply have his memories.

[robvalue]

Yes, it is.

Go to http://www.mindz4u.com

Download robotme.exe

Follow the simple instructions, and within 4-600 years a terminator version of you will arrive in the post.

[I_am_not_mafia]

What do we do /w the originals...is it off to the meatgrinder, lol?  What happens in a dispute between the original and the copy?  Can you murder yourself, or would it be considered suicide, or even less, property damage, or maybe it would be seen as akin to getting a piercing?  Theres little restriction as to what we can do with our own bodies, even if it incurs harm.
(I finally had an idea for a book, just in time for nanowrimo, yall rock)

Imagine there is a way to upload yourself to a machine. You decide to do it yourself. The scientist plugs you into a scanner. This reads the entire state of your brain, which neurons you have, how they are connected, the current voltage of each neuron, the number of vesicles currently traversing across your synaptic clefts etc.

It then simulates this on a super computer. There are a few tests performed to make sure that it thinks and talks like you and the results come back as positive. The scientist then turns round to you and says "Excellent. You have been uploaded into the computer. You can die now"

[Whateverist]

The scientist then turns round to you and says "Excellent. You have been uploaded into the computer. You can die now"

You first, doc.

[The Grand Nudger]

Imagine there is a way to upload yourself to a machine. You decide to do it yourself. The scientist plugs you into a scanner. This reads the entire state of your brain, which neurons you have, how they are connected, the current voltage of each neuron, the number of vesicles currently traversing across your synaptic clefts etc.

It then simulates this on a super computer. There are a few tests performed to make sure that it thinks and talks like you and the results come back as positive. The scientist then turns round to you and says "Excellent. You have been uploaded into the computer. You can die now"

LOL, they'd probably be having that conversation /w the new me about the old me.  After all, if this was something we could do, and it were being done, I'm sure we'd have a chain of fiduciary responsibility layed out somewhere...and I doubt that it would side for the discarded or otherwise in need of replacing "me".   Someone has to sign the check for the procedure, lol.  The doctors don't spend much time socializing with the tumors they remove, with the problems they solved.....

It's be more like this - "Oh, btw, is there anything you'd like us to take from the body before we dispose of it?"  I could use a spare kidney on a friday night, myself.