Copying your brain

[marjorienoble]

Hello curious and curiouser,

 

In 2000 I read an article in Psychology Today on the possibility of copying your brain and continuing to exist as a file in a computer program designed to simulate a physical environment ala the Matrix--only we wouldn't hang around in pods. I know what I think. I'm curious about what others think about it and would they do it and what would they do. Someone commented on the impact and that society would be greatly affected.

 

:hyper:

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography Marjorie! :hyper: Please feel free to use this thread to tell about yourself – interests, background, etc.

In 2000 I read an article in Psychology Today on the possibility of copying your brain and continuing to exist as a file in a computer program designed to simulate a physical environment ala the Matrix--only we wouldn't hang around in pods.

You might find this old thread (7/1/05 – not quite as old as the PT article you mention) 3083 interesting.

 

As someone who describes himself as an extropian, I pretty much eat, drink, and sleep (but, alas, don’t serious work on programming) virtual person/world idea – and have to some degree my whole life, as the idea is at least as old as my 50 years, at least in science fiction literature. As nonfiction, the first serious treatment I recall reading was Hofstadter’s famous (at least in my circles :rolleyes:) 1979 Gödel, Escher, Bach, AKA (again, in my circles) “the golden bible”.

I'm curious about what others think about it and would they do it and what would they do.

Though I’m somewhat apostate as an extropian to think it, I suspect we’ll be able to create artificial virtual people well before we can create a virtual person from measurements of an actual human brain, because I think the problem of imaging the necessary features of a human brain at sufficient resolution is very difficult in terms of fundamental physics and practical engineering. Note that Moore’s law doesn’t apply to medical imaging and microscopy, only to electronics.

[marjorienoble]

Craig D.--

 

Thanks for your welcome. I've looked at a number of mind-uploading sites and people seem convinced it's a when, not an if. The article I read was by Randal Koene, who seems to be at the center of a lot of it. I've always loved science fiction and frequently read light-weight science magazines like Discover or Scientific American that are non-scientist friendly. For the most part that's as far as it goes. I live in Los Angeles and sometime in the distant past when jeans were belled bottomed and flowers had power I got a degree in theatre from UCLA. After a checkered past as a doctor's wife, I ended back in LA working in film casting. My next incarnation was spent in one of the outer circles of hell teaching public high school English to eye-rolling texting teenagers. About four years ago I started writing and wrote a horror novel that I published on line. Recently I finished writing a sci fi novel based on the future "virtual environment" industry that provides "post biological" destinations and there's cutthroat competition for the most bells and whistles. Where you go after you die depends on what you can pay. I'm sure my book won't be the last on this subject.

 

The whole thing is fascinating--a potential reprieve from the grim reaper.

 

I had never encountered the term "extropian." If you could be copied and uploaded to live indefinitely in a virtual environment, would you? I would for a while just to see, but then I'd want to be deleted without HAL letting me know my bytes were up.

 

Thanks again,

 

Marjorie:)