In various threads, we are discussing mind upload to a computer. There are some confusions and I would like to state my understanding of such a task. Comments are welcome.

Once we have a technology to transfer the program and memory of a person (not anytime soon, but may be in the next 150 years), we are exploring the best use of such technology. Assuming that we can create a virtual world of cities, robots, transporters, food etc., we can upload minds to that environment to populate the virtual world. Then my proposal is simple.

As people retire, they can decide to move in to the virtual city, at first temporarily using a plugin device and then permanently when their biological body is at an end. Children of those who move to the virtual retirement can visit by pluging in to a mind interface port. When the children grow old and retire, they too can move in the same way.

In the beginning, the computers will be very large to house such a virtual community all networked to other communities around the world. As technology progresses over time, Each family can maintain their virtual family all networked to other virtual habitat. Since computer density doubles every 12 to 18 months, it should not be difficult to house several generations in the system.

Oh!, one benefit in the virtual world will be no real body and therefore you can eat anything without gaining weight and no sickness (except if somebody pulls the plug - you need SRAM memory to revive :D) - unless it is programmed differently.

So what do you think?

*Originally posted by kmguru
(except if somebody pulls the plug - you need SRAM memory to revive :D) - unless it is programmed differently.

So what do you think? *

Sooner or later, someone WILL pull the plug, especially if the computers are located in California.
Next brownout, someone will say, "What are these computers doing here, sucking up power?"

It might even be the cleaning lady, accidentally unplugging the mess just so she can get the vacuum cleaner closer to the wall.

Grandiose plans usually collapse due to minor oversights.

Kmguru,

No worry about power. Every significant system in the world is protected by double or triple redundant power supplies. All such systems in the world, e.g. stock exchanges, 911 services all have fault tolerant systems that prevent system loss even when individual components or power fail.

If a network is built that will hold millions of VR entities then it is certain that it would be well protected.

But such a system need not be limited to a virtual world, why not add real external sensors so that the inhabitants could freely communicate with the external world?

Cris

Somewhere in this Forum I discussed about connecting to the external world. As NASA is trying to design an interstellar network, I am hoping that we will have nodes in space that are powered by sunlight with redundancy such that any meteor strike will not damage the virtual inhabitants. The inhabitants can control their physical world by interface to the node motors and other repair systems.

When a child wants to visit Gradma or Grandpa, he /she can use an interface to go to the virtual world for a limited time. As long as Virtual world is time synced to the real world, everything should be OK.

Wouod these virtual entities of deceased persons actually think and talk or would just be a 3D graphical representation with animations etc or maybe you guys are thinking something else?

To have a virtual world that was static, meaning that they are not capable of orignal thought, would mean no need for external hookups of any kind to the real world. If that was so then there would only be one way hookups going to the virtual and none leaving. That doesn't seem so attractive does it? Especially if you are one of the residents of the virtual world.

Here is how it will work: (I think)

First several scientists brain will be scanned by MRI or some such machine and the neural image will be transfered to a computer in 2050. The team will include computer scientists, mathematicians, doctors, artists, special effect people etc. Once they are (their duplicate mind) inside the computer, they will figure out how to build a virtual world similar to ours. They will interface with outside world via normal audio, video and work with outside scientists to develop a mind interface. In the beginning, the virtual world time can be speeded up to make the creation faster and then the time cycle can be synced to outside world.

After some trial and error, we will have a system in virtual world that is identical but better than real world since the physical laws in virtual world can be broken and adjusted. That is you can pass through a solid door...or create dinosaurs etc.

You can travel to that world by brain interface. The world will be dynamic since the computer is time based. They are predicting by 2006, we will have 100GHz machines with 5 Terabytes of RAM. So imagine what we will have by 2050?

Originally posted by kmguru
In various threads, we are discussing mind upload to a computer. There are some confusions and I would like to state my understanding of such a task. Comments are welcome.

Once we have a technology to transfer the program and memory of a person (not anytime soon, but may be in the next 150 years), we are exploring the best use of such technology. Assuming that we can create a virtual world of cities, robots, transporters, food etc., we can upload minds to that environment to populate the virtual world. Then my proposal is simple.

As people retire, they can decide to move in to the virtual city, at first temporarily using a plugin device and then permanently when their biological body is at an end. Children of those who move to the virtual retirement can visit by pluging in to a mind interface port. When the children grow old and retire, they too can move in the same way.

In the beginning, the computers will be very large to house such a virtual community all networked to other communities around the world. As technology progresses over time, Each family can maintain their virtual family all networked to other virtual habitat. Since computer density doubles every 12 to 18 months, it should not be difficult to house several generations in the system.

Oh!, one benefit in the virtual world will be no real body and therefore you can eat anything without gaining weight and no sickness (except if somebody pulls the plug - you need SRAM memory to revive :D) - unless it is programmed differently.

So what do you think?

you were very wrong to say that one would not gain weight.....
did you know that under hypnosis,if tell a person that he is in north pole and kool breeze is blowing he "ll probably start to shiver.and secondly we dont..until now know where the conventional memory or ram is located..it is said to be scattered over various parts of brain.......
well the idea might be useful... for example in case of famine or shortage of food...or may be in case of sun dying out we could upload ourselves in and still manage to survive and flourish like we are right now.
and by the way if someone pulls the plug ....our brain
which is still loaded would remain there and we "ll eventually die..
did you know that if you were killed inside your dreams you die in the real world..that is because of our subconcious mind which shall produce changes in the real body so as to destroy it eventually

did you know that if you were killed inside your dreams you die in the real world..that is because of our subconcious mind which shall produce changes in the real body so as to destroy it eventually

In real life, the brain disconnects the motor functions from the dream state.

you were very wrong to say that one would not gain weight.....

In my design we wont... ...

When your dead....YOUR DEAD!



Who gives a crap if your entire neural patterns are precisely duplicated on some wonderfully large computer matrix, that spans the galaxy and has the interacting mind patterns of the long dead people who conceived this thing???????

WHEN YOUR DEAD, FANCY COMPUTERS THAT INTERACT AND BEHAVE AS THEIR HUMAN NAMESAKES WILL STILL MEAN NOTHING TO THE DEAD.

Maybe I have missed something about the possibility of "ME" being magically placed into this proposed matrix????? Personally, I could care less that my thought processes might interact with my other dead relatives' thought patterns, as well as other dead people.

Maybe this future computer system might appreciate having all the various neural patterns, for it's own pleasure, but I still don't see how it could ever possibly benefit me.....

Do you people think that you will live forever in such a computer matrix???? Wrong. So sorry! First you should try to determine what is the "ME" part of the human equation. It cannot be entirely the neural patterns that make our physical bodies interact with this physical world. For if it is, then our very living existence is futile and without any "real" purpose!

In other words, who gives a damn if soul-less bio-machines manage to capture, and then impress their primitive thought patterns onto a huge thinking machine that may develop into a conscious entity one day?

Computers make excellent servants, but I don't wish to become one of them. They are relevant only while I live.

Great post kmguru !@

Hi Riddler:

If you find out tomorrow that all these years you have been living inside a super computer, what are you going to do?

riddle away...crap is always cheap.... :D

I once turned this idea over, mapping the human mind into a machine so that you coud exist even after death.

I came to a few conclusions though, The first being that for a person to be mapped a system would have to follow them all their lives.
The problem here is if your mapping this person because you know they are going die from a genetic mutation, the very system that monitors them could be behind causing that very mutation.

Another point is that if you are to be mapped by such a system, everything you have ever known will be known to that system (at least what you can remember), including how people interact with you, what food tastes like, and your understanding of how things work.

(this compiled by the number of entities placed into such a system would give you the basic rules of how they exist, what they see and what physical laws are created.)

I did notice some uses of people being placed in such systems so as to get information from them if they have been murdered, but I noted that it would be particularly difficult as the brain would have to continue functioning or caught soon enough so their hasn't been any cellular damage (or deconstruction).

Of course there are mentions of visiting dead relatives of course that could be particularly upsetting to the living, and the dead since you can only meet them half way and not share the same plane of existance (well until you end up in there)

Of course people are right to question about how you would accumilate the infrastructure and processing power to create a whole world for people to be implanted into. (This is most noticable when you realise that you would need about 10,000x1Ghz Processing power just to simulate the number of synapses within the brain [I boosted the Hertz, since your running to different rules than the brain])

That many Processors is going to:
Take alot of Constant power to run (apart from sleep patterns)
Create an extreme amount of heat
Need maintainence.

This pretty much means such a feat would be impractical and costly, although their might be a few exceptions made. Of course if this is to happen to only the chosen few, How would they interact with the normal world?, and How many people would be upset at being left out?

Not to forget to mention from Gibson and his Cyberpunk genre, Who will be the first artificial intelligence/Life to ask for citizenship from Switzerland?

The best way to explain it is to watch the voyger episodes and also some of the pre-voyger StarTrek-next generation episodes where they interact with the holodeck people.

Once you get an understanding of that, it will be very clear, what I am talking about.

Thanks.

From that I suppose you could look at the understanding of how the doctor of "Voyager" was created, just a bunch of memories. Of course they possibly are suppose to be a matrix of information drawn form transporter patterns and notes that they had placed into their journals.

This would mean that for you to be placed into a system you would have to allow yourself to be mapped not just from scans but everything you write to get some form of understanding of the capacity of the individual.

Of course in "Voyager" they might of had all this information compiled together with a generically programmed holographic doctor (Which I would guess to be programmed rather than just mapped upon an individuals thought patterns), that would formulate the information database, but not necessarily his character, which was apart of the plot since he was to learn more about being a character within the starship than just a prop (Or light being turned on)

Perhaps the idea of a room where you could be surrounded by a light matrix would seem appealing, but again their would be certain laws of physics that would have to be understood and worked around to make things materialise so solid.

As well as I did mention that you would need an infinitely growing system that could sustain the increase in Data. Take for instance if you were to run a simulation that builds and runs something like a city (i.e. sim city) at first in its infancy it might not need too many resources, but as it grows and more information has to be handled, so too should it's resources or it will reach a point where it can't grow or develop any further.

Perhaps you could be downloaded to some goo or Fungus like Sid Meyers "Alpha Centuri", at least if it's another living organism it could replicate and continue to grow far easier. Of course this would mean that we could all be an illusion within a tub of goo :p

As well as I did mention that you would need an infinitely growing system that could sustain the increase in Data. Take for instance if you were to run a simulation that builds and runs something like a city (i.e. sim city) at first in its infancy it might not need too many resources, but as it grows and more information has to be handled, so too should it's resources or it will reach a point where it can't grow or develop any further.

May be we are in a system on Earth that is finite and human kind can not grow any further....the sum total of all atoms on earth is finite...

Is that what you are worried about...the sun going super nova...our world dying....may be in a billion years....

Although the sum mass on earth is finite, we still collect matter from the stars like meteor's scratching the sky.

I have to admit I'm not too worried about humankind being wiped from existance in some senses if you look from a perspective that would seem self serving.
Of course to see from their you would have to adopt a narrow minded view of your own existance and nobody elses, In reality though my thoughts and dreams are that I don't just make a mark on the planet but to make sure that their is a future for my descendants as well as anybody elses.

At present of course Humankind sits on this planet like the preverbial saying "All your eggs in one basket", If you drop that basket (something happens to this planet) then our existance could be wiped out without a trace from the universe.
So for such a system as you were considering perhaps you would have to embody it outside our solar system, or better just move onto the population of planets. Then perhaps marks could survive.

Slowly...but surely....

Like pulling teeth....

Originally posted by kmguru
Hi Riddler:

If you find out tomorrow that all these years you have been living inside a super computer, what are you going to do?


wow! i was also going to ask him the same!!

Originally posted by kmguru
Somewhere in this Forum I discussed about connecting to the external world. .
this line sparked off an idea,what if the black holes are the real connection of our virtual world to the real world(IF we consider that we are inside a computer indeed)??

Interesting.... Along the samelines, is there a very large natural computer out there that is simulating a world?

Originally posted by kmguru
Interesting.... Along the samelines, is there a very large natural computer out there that is simulating a world?
I personally believe that way.since it could explain the limits that have been carefully imposed on us,that we say is by chance,even Einstein once said "God doesnt play dice",pretty right remark!!!!

If that is the case, then we will never know, what is outside of this brain....unless we are allowed to cross different realities. I had a weird dream last night along these lines, but it belongs in pseudoscience or free thoughts, I will post later...

lol what a radical idea, virtual life after death, the problem is, is it really you?
When i sit at my computer i often make duplicates of files, these files are not the same, one was the orginal the rest are mere duplicates or clones if you like.
So if my thought patterens were fed into a computer then the notion that i would find myslef in a virtual world is rather silly as it wouldent be me would it?
More just a copy of me.
This issue goes right to the point of what it is to be human, its basically the same issue of cloning, if when im about to die i have a clone made of me, it could sound act talk and look identical to me, but the bottem line is it isnt me, is it?
I feel more educated and intelligent men have pondered this then i and have failed to deliver answers, before we head into the dark realms of self duplication we should at least have more information on what our part in the universal cosmo is and then make an educated desicion.

Kmguru,
Perhaps you mean our world exists in a very virtual machine.
A biological machine will multiple moving parts, multipule processors, multiple intelligences.

The human mind can be classed as something similar to a computer, and because of all the people on this planet trying to think for themselves, they inevitably add to others understands.

The combined intelligence and storage space is what I would class as your Universal Natural computer.

Of course there are some points we have neglected about living in a machine...

My thoughts kept reaching out for recreating the world that you see around you so that you wouldn't feel out of place or have to learn to adapt. I neglected to think in the lines of "TRON".

Imagine seeing your computer as a whole world in itself, and the processes being people walking around and doing their jobs.
Perhaps this is the direction that should be taught, after all you would become an integral within a machine.

Perhaps your mapped consciousness could teach AI's how to think

This question raises the question of whether or not the human "soul" would go into the computer with the information. Computers have all kinds of information and memory, but have no "soul" or ability to reason which makes them alive...

hi atropos,interesting...
well if there is something called human soul then it is only a computer program designed to run the human hardware inside this world(inside this world is important,as i am mentioning human body as hardware),if that is the case...then it will be uploaded,why not?if all the emotions are mapped into the computer identically,then the software part of us(so called soul) automatically replicates...but all this is speculation.i really dont know!:)

Soul is just conscious processing of thought interrupted by random emotions. afterall there is no piece of the body that contains the soul.

So would say a machine would be very capable of having a soul if it was mapped... or developing its own.

(an emotion is just a macro of thoughts and variables that control hormones and endorphines)

Just a few thoughts...

When we think of the computer, we are looking at its limitations at the present state of development just as one would think of a bicycle as a mode of transportation and not thinking about motorcycles, cars and logical extension to planes...

When we are speculating the extension of a computer, we need to think its evolved form, whether natural or artificial. Nature creates not only a magnificient computer but the software to control the chemical processes (in the body) are so complex that, there is nothing comparable that any human has ever done using automated control systems in chemical, refinery and pharmaceutical industries.

Natural robots such as us, love, make war, save, kill, and all sorts of stuff...we hope, we could build a comparable device, since we are so sophisticated...having said that, are we the result of a larger reality since we still have some bugs that need to be worked out (like bin laden and small pox....)...

Soul is just conscious processing of thought interrupted by random emotions. afterall there is no piece of the body that contains the soul.

Well until someone can tell me why i only use around 10% of my brains capabilitys then i would guess my soal resides in the other 90%.
Another point sub consious, if we were indeed souless machines then the need for such a thing would be irrelivent, but it exsits nevertheless.
I find keeping an open mind on such things helps me to deal with the realitys of being human, lets face it in the western world we are born slaves, not to any perticular person but to money.

Originally posted by Benji
Well until someone can tell me why i only use around 10% of my brains capabilitys then i would guess my soal resides in the other 90%.

Perpetuating a rumor...why are you using only 10% of your brain? Rest of the world uses as much as necessary to do the job...just because you use 15% of your GDI resource of your computer when replying this post does not mean you should not buy a 1.8 GHz machine...

I agree with Kmguru.

I also am going to show something with my (Not too brilliant) diagrams :D

Firstly we have the "Humans only use 10% of there brain, and what do we use the rest for?"

Well the first thing that pops into a persons mind when they hear 10% is something solid, a 10th of a whole. We tend to characterise it as whole.

<CENTER>http://www.chatsoba.btinternet.co.uk/images/10perc.gif</CENTER>

This perception is of course in error, We don't use a chuck of our brain thats assigned to 1/10th of the whole. Our processes bounce through the brain and at any given point could take up 10%. This means the image we should see is like this:

<CENTER>http://www.chatsoba.btinternet.co.uk/images/10perc1.gif</CENTER>

Of course the reason why our processes allow a bit of room between each other is so they don't conflict with each other.
I'm sure if any of you have used a Windows operating system prior to 2000 and XP you should be aware of the Blue screens of Death.

They are caused because windows isn't very good at managing it's memory, so a program will ask it to hold some information in the memory, and windows will assign it the memory it's using to run your video output, or sound and suddenly you have two processes trying to use the same area causing not just a conflict but an operation error.

(Of course in my diagram the crossing over, doesn't symbolise that they run through the same neuron, but go above or below the line.)

I would hesitate a guess that the brains impulses give out an energy surge that also inhabits through nonlocality in nearby neurons also, which means that there would have to be ample space or they would cause conflictions of thought.

Thus the reasoning to why we only use 10% of our brains.

In response to the human computer point: Our bodies certainly are very complex, almost to the point of perfection. We have the ablility to power ourselves, automatically heal wounds, and possess a body perfectly suited to survive in this world.
One must question whether or not someone or something created us then...
I don't necessarily mean God, but something...

Originally posted by Atropos
In response to the human computer point.... .........
One must question whether or not someone or something created us then...
I don't necessarily mean God, but something...

OpSys_Pax2.02> verification implication correlation abstract entity-cluster == proto-extant entity-cluster ?
OpSys_Pax2.02> verification implication unique extant supra-proto-extant entity ?
OpSys_Pax2.02> verification unique supra-proto-extant entity proto-designation "God," ?
OpSys_Pax2.02> request response recipient system (sciforums) variant analysis syntax abstract entity "OpSys_Pax2.02"

BTW,
Who's gonna run the system , once we are in the virtual world?
i mean,we are just not emotionally fit...our small mistake would lead to a lot of trouble,will we have elections for our second fiddle to god person?

One must question whether or not someone or something created us then...

May be...until we evolve to a level of sophistication where we can understand more about us, it is just speculation either way..."Yes" or "No" will not change our daily routine....

Who's gonna run the system , once we are in the virtual world?

By the time, technology is ready for us to be in the virtual world in a Fault-proof system, our planet may have too many people to feed. So, a large chunk may retire to that virtual world at age 75 (or 150). Rest will maintain the system until a zero growth is reached. Just a thought...

What if a persons conciousness(alredy uploaded inside "THE VIRTUAL WORLD")is downloaded into a different person,what is going to happen to that guy?

will he become crazy?
will he become the uploaded person?
will he change physically?

bye!:confused: :confused:

I apologize for joining late. Wanted to show an alternate path for a human mind to enter a computer world.

The first steps have already been taken. I store critical memories on my computer and interface those memories through my hands and eyes. As better interfaces evolve I’ll plop down my dollars.

Sub-vocalization might be next. Just whisper a question to myself and have the answer whispered back into my ear. Great for exams. Is it cheating when you have access to all the world’s info? Is it telepathy when you can whisper and know your friend can hear ya wherever he is?

Or have a laser scan information directly on the retina. Go whole hog…feed optical images through visual processors before scanning onto the retina for super vision. Finally get those X-ray glasses you’ve always wanted. Hmmm…a little morphing of those visual images has interesting possibilities. Or for us old guys no more presbyopia. Cool shades.

Hey I think I’ll buy that nifty truth/emotion option. When I look at a woman I’ll KNOW if she’s interested and whether that number she gave me is only good for ordering pizza. Hmmm…better invest in an Always-Sincere unit to override my facial muscles. (Hope it works better than the abdominal muscle stimulator.) Wouldn’t want her truth detector catching ME.

Given time and money my brain will be augmented with more hardware. The interface between wetware and hardware will improve leading to direct integration of nerves with chips. Aided by biochemical growth factors in conjunction with programmed nerve stimulation my brain will rewire itself to make better use of the augmentations. Portions of my brain will be used infrequently (Hey, much like today.) and then not at all. Eventually I won’t use any of my original brain. (Maybe I’ll store it in the attic with my old Mac.) Center of consciousness will have followed functionality from wetware to hardware.

The new me will bear little resemblance to the version 1.0 model, much as I bear little resemblance to the baby I once was. Did I die somewhere along the process? I don’t know. “What is self?” is a deep question.

Having a continuous memory of the transition I’d likely feel I was the same person. Of course fifty other copies of me might feel the same. Including those that opted for a sex change somewhere along the road. The important question would be which of us controls the bank account.

I have now transmigrated into a computer. (However that future computer resembles a brain far more than it does a vintage PC.) Presumably I could be copied, transmitted, or modified as software. I could interact with the real world or simulated worlds. The divide between real and simulated would likely disappear. (As a human I already interact with simulations within my brain and call it reality.)

Welcome “change” as your friend. He’s knocking on your door whether you want him or not.

I like the way you think, Imahamster.

For me, reality bites. I do not have much room for new information in my brain. All long term memories have been hardwired through synapses and I have too much stuff in all engineering fields that I do not use anymore.

So, I am thinking to develop a special PDA with a terabyte of information I can pack it on and carry it with me all the time. Transfer only memories that I need for cross references to my synapses.

Interesting Kmguru…use most of the brain as a volatile associative memory for whatever subject you were currently pursuing. You’d need a non-volatile core memory with links to the PDA memories so you’d know what you know. Strong activation of a PDA link would download the relevant subject matter.

Could I get used to my head gurgling as memories were loaded onto my synapses? I’d have ta think twice before thinking about anything. (Do you really want to upload “Quantum Mechanics Level 5”? Y/N)

What if I tried to load someone else’s knowledge? How embarrassing to get the message, “Insufficient space available.” Or worse, ”Belief systems are incompatible…shutting down.”

In the near future, I am going to have a voice interface. Forward looking, I am not sure what kind of interface will be needed to download at a faster rate. The five senses wont work. We need a direct signal injection to the brain (wireless ofcourse). Any ideas? I could start working on that.

Outputs and inputs speed of the brain are drastically reduced due to voice output and ears and eyes as input.direct brain inputs and outputs for transmission is what will be required in the near future.cortex is perfect i suppose for this.i have heard that cerebral cortex is what interprets and transmits signal a kind of decoder.

bye!

Kmguru,

Your speaking of a Tantelising subject Mneumonics.

Admittedly there are many playing with Cybernetics in varying research institutes and Universities. The Information that has been outputted over their acheivements usually concerns Watching a computer screen and moving a cursor, Of course these are very simplified explainations designed to allow people of a young age to get an understanding and feel of what the future might hold.

This doesn't mean of course that the capacity and research is that undernourished (although it might be made to feel so, to gain extra funding... as we all like toys!)

From what I understand, monitoring Brain signals through a Cap (with sensors for picking up electromagnetics) is one method of obtaining some interaction with a person. (Of course they would have to be looking at a visual input, for the signals to be deciphered)

It is possible in using Dopplers of a low level, but and extended usage can cause certain radiation drawbacks, like blocking the Short-term memory from storing long-term information.

In recent tests it's proven that a person can't even work out what day it is, due to this draw back. (there are also concerns that the radiation has an effect on the genetic structuring of the individual, of course the guinea pig concerned is using a far different system involving "Surround Matrix Mechanics")

There are methods of invoking higher electromagnetic fields from the brain, by using such devices as implants but they too suffer drawbacks (Like their conductivity through microwaves runs at a high enough temperature to cause heat damage to the surrounding tissue.)

There is also the possibility that the increase in radiation can cause the tissue to become Photo-sensitive, and possibly trigger Epilepsy in people that originally didn't suffer, or suffer to such a degree.

There are many other points too, for instance you might store information or a memory outside of your being, but what if your information is tampered with and forced back into you. You'll find yourself subjected to false memories. (Of course these are Super-Criminal Worse Case Scenarios)

HULLLOO??:confused:


did i ask anything stupid??:confused:

bye!

A thought...

in the near future say this system becomes a reality,all Kms,Zions,Stryders etc etc are uploaded inside.we can have wars within it and make earth a better place to live in.a soldier will just have to upload himself to the computer and fight the war (just like a game thing).off course that would require non-destructive method of uploading humans inside...:)

bye!

Another thought KM,


if say your scanned brain part is uploaded to this world where its all perfect...no one dies...etc etc will brain accept this fact?the idea of perfect isnt just acceptable to our species.

to quote from "THE MATRIX"

A.SMITH:"SO YOUR PRIMITIVE CEREBRUM KEPT TRYING TO WAKE UP FROM THE DREAM,WHICH IS WHY THE MATRIX WAS REDISIGNED TO THIS,THE PEAK OF YOUR CIVILIZATION..."

bye!:confused:

Zion, this hamster doesn’t find your interest in IO bandwidth stupid.

As a hamster I hear, see, taste, and smell fine. Don’t really need more IO bandwidth. My little brain couldn’t deal with more. Already I ignore most of my sensory information and pay attention to only the most important. As I try to understand human ideas I tend to shut out all my external senses. I’m more interested in better understanding the information I’m already getting than in increasing the rate of the information flow.

I’ve sniffed several possibilities. Perhaps I could grow a bigger brain, maybe even as big as a human’s. (Might have to drag it behind me in my hamster ball.) Or maybe my own brain could function better with some tinkering of nutrients, growth factors, or stem cells. Might have to rewire major sections. (What changes would be required for me to think big human thoughts?)

Maybe my little hamster brain doesn’t have to do all my thinking? Could I delegate some of the work? Surely some problems are better solved with circuits than with my neurons. If I ask and the answer immediately returns is it the same as my knowing? If nerves and circuits could be integrated with my brain then I might be able to store and recall words and facts instantly. Might understand more complex ideas. Transcend the limits of my hamsterness. What tasty seeds I might discover.

Zion there are so many possibilities and so little me that I tend to focus on my own interests. No slight was intended.

Zion
If such an "International Mainframe" was brought into creation, I wouldn't want to add war to it. There would be enough waring to keep hackers at bay, think rather than trying to implace a code into a box and get it accepted, you just know it would be accepted and so it is. A kind of NEO picklock, with Bending a spoon all rolled into one.

Of course just mentioning hackers in such systems should bring up the Cyberpunk Genre's "BLACKICE". Now I'm not talking about that firewall, I'm talking about the Hackers that in fiction start using techniques of turning up dopplers to give people "a personalised form of Cancer" (Burning Chrome - William Gibson), namely they kill you while your interfacing (or HACKING).

Of course this is where Gibson then utilised a method of "CONSTRUCTS", Flash-ROMs that hold a "dead" persons personality and that could be inplanted or just hooked to an individual to act as a Purposely created extra personality, with all their experitise at hand.

You'll notice this if you ever read Neuromancer, when Case interfaces with DIXIES FLATLINE (The construct of a Hacker that died to Corporate Blackice but got his Personality captured in the matrix.)

This pretty much concludes that any system like this shouldn't be for war. If you want to do that, then you would have to have a "ZONE" for doing that in to keep the system from destroying itself. (Namely a PK[Player Killer] ZONE).

As for IamHamster, The usage of a system that has the capacity to manipulate DATA and programmed integrals means you could infact CLONE YOURSELF Virtually, Image getting a multitude of yourselves and sending them out to do different tasks and learn different things, then managed to get them all to communicate back to one that calls himself the processor, This would mean that your Processor would be like a GURU, A master of one, but a parallel processing army of infinity.

Virtually a Rodent brain could be constituted in size by a Holographically represented manipulation, Namely UP-SCALING your brain, to DOWNSCALE the area that information takes up.

Stryder,

Agents are an interesting means of delegating “thought” work. But should an agent be an Imahamster copy? Most agents would be doing grunt work. If Imahamster don’t wanna do it why should an Imahamster copy? Centralized command and communications has drawbacks. (And if the agents were copies of Imahamster they would have BIG issues with accepting orders and reporting results.)

Having Imahamster copies might help with the “self recognition” problem. If hub and agents are all Imahamster copies then we’d presumably all know we were part of the same entity and what any agent knew the central Imahamster would also know. That might not be so clear with non-Imahamster agents.

Even with copies the central Imahamster might not view the agents as “self”. The agents would develop unique memories. If the agents were adaptive they’d develop unique capabilities. Delayed, varying, or lost communication between central and agent Imahamster might contribute to the central Imahamster feeling the agent was not part of “self” and what the agent “knew” was not what the central Imahamster knew. (Imahamster asked our local authority /777 for its views. No reply.)

This cyber hive seems less capable than a human corporation. (Though a lot cheaper.) Humans have different abilities and employ diverse strategies. A thousand diverse humans solve problems better than a thousand Einstein clones. (Did Einstein know anything about plumbing?)

Could a thousand hamsters understand human thoughts any more successfully than a single hamster?

Stryider wrote:
“Virtually a Rodent brain could be constituted in size by a Holographically represented manipulation, Namely UP-SCALING your brain, to DOWNSCALE the area that information takes up.”

Essentially the same as growing a larger brain? (Assuming intelligence scales with size.)

Thanks for chattering with Imahamster.

Imahamster

a cloneing process is simple, First the thought:

I'm going to clone, I will be the control processor and all those that are below me will be agents. I have full command, and any clones of this thought will make it so, as they have their own eventual objectives.

Your original then clones once, the clone appears in designated RAM and the original is still in its own RAM, The original Assigns itself a number "1" and tells the clone you are "2", between the two they name "10".

"2-10" are the register accountants (Co-processors) and "1" is the main processor, they now assign a group of 9 to each (A bit like a pyramid scheme, but using processor, co-processor like foreman.)

The foreman get the orders for the clones beneath them from "1", each job is different from each other, and "1" knows what they wouldn't mind learning if they ever got the change.
This means that all agents are happy to learn their individual skills, infact if the agents after they have learn as much of that information have got some spare time, they might be able to ask the other agents for information upon the tasks that they too would like to have learnt.

Since each agent would have a simplified way of explaining to itself the information its learnt rather than having to spew out the whole, it's possible for a whole cloned hive to become capable of doing many Knowledgable things.

(Of course with each interchange of information there would still be the possibility for polymorphic whispers, but the agents should still be able to go to an archives source if they find that their two versions of doing something don't collaberate.)

"Go forth and multiply" :p

Stryder,
The Intel Personal Super computer in the mid eighties used such a strategy. Hypercube architecture with 64 nodes. (Very powerful for its time but less than a Palm Pilot.) A 286 based PC acted as the master scheduling node. All other nodes had their own copy of identical software. The software ran differently on each node by querying for the Node ID as it ran.

Several “BlackBoard” AI systems used cooperating sub-agents. These agents weren’t identical. Specialized agents were used for specialized tasks. Several “speech understanding” systems were built using this architecture.

As long as the problem is simple, e.g. a web search or processing a piece of SETI data, this works. However for less structured problems these systems have been remarkably unsuccessfully. Likely because the agents just weren’t sufficiently smart. Couldn’t transfer their problem solving skill from one domain to another. (Where’s /777 when ya need it?)

Stryder wrote:
“Since each agent would have a simplified way of explaining to itself the information its learnt rather than having to spew out the whole”

Restructuring general information in smart ways might be the crux of having a smart agent. Tough problem.

A cloned hive would have many capabilities much as a human army is more capable than a single soldier. This hamster still wonders if such a hive would have a “self” that knows what it knows and if such a hive would be significantly more intelligent than it’s components. Useful tool but maybe not the next step in this hamster’s evolution.

The Mainframe i mentioned would be useful in sevral ways as i mentioned in thread called cars by Stryder.
idea:
==============================================
there is a Supermainframe somewhere,(also the Master mainframe),and all teh other countries have their own mainframe connected to it.all the people all uploaded to that computer in the following way:
the program is loaded in their memory and refreshed every time a new person is uploaded inside the system...if he is nearby that man of course inside the system.the system has rules accordingly.all teh people thus remain in their dream state(matrix style)the dream state is done like this:

the Sub-Mainframe(Local or country Mainframe) makes a point to Point connection with the Human to be uploaded inside it.the the connection is made by boring a small cavity inside or nearby cortex to enable it to understand the electrical signal generated from the program,then the pattern of signal once understood is loaded inside the temporary memory.the program (The virtual world that is)will be designed to make the whole thing interconnected,as if we are in world itself.

now suppose we want to visit say South Africa all we have to do is tell the real world administrator about the position and then it will download us once again to the real world and then upload us once again to south africa mainframe...or directly transfer us to South Mainframe.the transportation will be Fast,very Fast...

bye!

Most uploading proposals assume that the detailed morpholgy of neural tissue will need to be determined as an integral part of the procedure. No current technology(Mind it NO CURRENT)can achieve both the resolution and sample size needed for the task. it is necessary to have good depth resolution as well. A scanner with a very narrow depth of field can effectively "section" a sample into slices optically rather than physically.
Electron microscopy (EM) offers adequate resolution, though the samples must be both small and very thin. Work is underway to increase these bounds, using high-voltage EM to increase sample penetration, tomography or optical sectioning to make effective use of greater thickness, and mosaics to increase the imaged area. These developments are well justified.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI, also called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) can achieve roughly 1 mm resolution in an intact human brain -- a valuable achievement for neuroscience and medicine, but orders of magnitude lower than the resolution that uploading requires. The resolution of MRI is determined mostly by the steepness of a magnetic field gradient which is generated in the sample; when extended across the breadth of the head, sufficiently steep gradients appear impossible. However, much steeper gradients can be achieved over short distances; researchers routinely obtain 0.05 mm resolution in live rats. It may be that a properly built scanner could achive the desired resolution in brain slices which would be thin compared to normal MRI fare, but still large compared to EM slices. For example, the ability to image 1 mm slices with 10 nm resolution would surpass EM by several orders of magnitude. If this thickness could be increased to several millimeters, and the area extended to 0.01 m^2, then processing the brain tissue would become relatively straightforward.

Other techniques have various drawbacks. Light microscopy is limited by the wavelength of light to a resolution which is probably insufficient for uploading. Acoustic imaging suffers worse resolution still.

so we can see that technology is still not advanced enough for Non-destructive Mind Uploads...work is still underway...

Enviornments for Uploaded people:societies,Issues.
==============================================
The society inside the Computers will be an important aspect.questions as to wether duplication should be permitted or not also holds ground for some discussion.As we see in case of an accident like a technician shutting a PC down while for repairs,etc.then we would require extra copies of us,but if this duplication is used without any accidents etc then it"ll lead to virii like chaos and activity.Artificial realities present a host of policy issues. First, will citizenship (or even the rights of humans) be granted to those living in a computer simulation, with no physical bodies? It seems obvious that it should, but it will be a big step for governments to take.
Another possibility is that the government may actually require some patients to enter an artificial reality under some circumstances. For example, patients who cannot afford the uploading procedure may be uploaded by the government into artificial realities, which will no doubt be cheaper on the large scale than manufactured bodies. Another possibility would be to upload convicted criminals into a "prison box" -- an artificial reality safely insulated from the rest of society.

Finally, artificial reality pose a real threat of abuse. A programmer of such a system would have nearly godlike power over its inhabitants, and "god syndromes" would be a chilling possibility. To prevent the abuse of uploaded people, careful safeguards will have to be put into place.

Artificial realities would probably come in varying degrees of realism -- to duplicate the patient's familiar world, you'd have to calculate wind currents, light reflections, gravity,Thrusts, friction, and so on, as well as the effect all of these have on the senses. Then you'd have to interpret activity in the motor neurons of the simulated nervous system, to update the patient's simulated body position. These will be difficult, and will never perfectly match the real world, but it is reasonable to suppose that algorithmic shortcuts will be found which generate results that are "good enough". Artificial reality would have the advantage of being able to shape the laws of physics to the programmer's whim, allowing, for example, magic spells or anti-gravity devices. However, there would be a risk of people getting addicted to direct brain stimulation, or simply getting lost in some virtual game and losing touch with reality.

Or may be another solution could be to build a mechanical body which carries the brain simulator around, just as our bodies carry around our brains now. The body would need to duplicate the senses and motor functions of a real human body if we want to minimize the patient's adjustment. Artificial bodies would no doubt be crude at first, with numbed senses and clumsy muscles, but if demand is high, technology is sure to improve. a properly designed body may still allow for the act of eating, for the pleasure of it. The same goes for other bodily functions (e.g., sex) -- if there is demand for it, then artificial (or simulated) bodies will no doubt be capable of it.

But there is a problem with uploads.and that goes like this:
==============================================
will the brain scanned inside be ready for a perfect world?will the upload not become unstable insuch a world? will No-death scenarios induce some evolution inside the Matrix so as to adjust accordingly?

Brain Enhancing:Another ethical part
==============================================once Inside this Matrix,there will be certainly a kind of ethical issue raised on brain enhancements,like deleting or altering a data for the stability of the system and the whole programs.

the issue will certainly hold a lot of debate,as it"ll be like changing a man's percpective(!change almost the soul,if there's one).

God-syndrome:
==============================================
The programmers of such a syndrome will feel like God!!.they have acces to virtually everything.once equipped with great knowledge of brain they"ll able to make or emulate a God like brain to produce significant results inside their own systems.such a thing will be dangerous as they"ll be using their own names to emulate such brains inside the computer to carry on and finish the task assigned to them.these special programmes created will be known as Gods inside those systems(!!Amazing!!).
Such a thing is dangerous as We dont and are not emotionally stable to handle such responsibility.our emotional levels are just not configured to be so neuutral and stop being or responding emotionally in case of a crisis inside the system.

And in such a case it"ll lead to a complete loss of million of "lives" inside.:mad:

although i have little knowledge or practically none to describe exact part of uploading proceedures and consequences of it,but for an amateur yes i know a lot,still rectifications,clarifying may and is most warmly welcomed...

bye!

I think, some of your concerns have been addressed in previous posts here and other topics. Please review and redo your concerns.

God syndrome......??:confused:


bye!

Nay...

Even though we can create the virtual environment, everyone will have the same capabilities and vote to have the capabilities turned on. For example, inside the virtual world, if every one decide to move objects with their minds, then it will be setup that way.

The personality will have a backup system outside the VW and governed by rules and ethics such that personalities are not abused. and so on...

I do not think God sysndrome is an issue.

Mind Uploading Home Page (http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/MUHomePage.html)

The main concern I have is the point that a virtual world that is mapped (rendered) from information recieved through our world being "scanned" can have a reversal effect of control.

For instance, we would look at the world we exist in as being the model for another, remove the people and you have the fixtures, the objects that would live in a virtual world.

Since our planet (the one we exist in now) would and is bombarded by frequencies with a number of scans, it's possible for those frequencies to react with our reality.

This means you might put a program in a virtual simulation to float and object with nothing but your thought of floating it, and in reality the computer super-organised body could calculate how to make the same feat possible through dopplers.

This of course would mean that you haven't just cloned our world, you've developed a tool to manipulate matter (well in the form of EM buffering).

WhatsHerFace, good seed. Lots of chewing. Thanks.

I didn't read the mind uploading page, but I got through everything else.

I believe I didn't see anything about privacy issues. People could know all your thoughts. Maybe people would want this and program in telepathy maybe not.

I think that many issues abound over rules and details that are very easy to sweep under the rug, but our governments don't work now. It isn't clear that technology is helping to clear up this problem. So it makes sense to think things won't necessarily work well then. Imagine people uploading you for easier torture. Making copies with certain memories erased to just trick you into giving up info. Then again I guess you wouldn't have to bother because you could extract them directly.

Technology simply empowers. Technological utopias are not such a great idea as the technology simply empowers and it isn't clear that people will make proper use of it.

Interesting ideas though. I've always wondered how an idea hurts so much ... that's all pain is. Or how an idea can be so red.

I also thought the point about the difficulty of the simulation was very warranted. What if part of us is in quantum mechanics. Imagine having to simulate every particle/wave in every molecule in the body to have things work right. Even if we can make a copy that seems pretty close, how do you know you didn't miss something? Would the copy know enough to be uncomfortable with the difference. What if when you were testing the techniques things didn't work quite right and you created a simulation of a person in a very painful predicament (I've always wondered if we need to simulate enough about a person to really nail medical simulations that it's just as bad as working on a living human).

Just some thoughts ... but the social problems of the capability are huge and would take forever to work out. And the technical implementation would be treading on some pretty dangerous territory ethically. Imahamsters indivual evolution thing does point to a quasi believable route, but there you become very different from who you are now. Maybe worse maybe better (definitely a better calculator, but that isn't necessarily what I want to be).

I believe I didn't see anything about privacy issues. People could know all your thoughts. Maybe people would want this and program in telepathy maybe not.

Privacy is or will never be absolute. They are degrees of grey. What is private to a burkha clad female may not be to a porn star. This just happened to one pakistani female that had a head cover (not face) while going through the airport security. The male security people (the same ones who barely mustered GED) asked her to remove it. The woman asked for the female security guards. It took a long time to get there.

So, privacy is in the minds of the beholder. I am sure rules and logics can be setup to comply with the right groups. I remeber an Indian friend telling me how he shared an apartment with a whiteboy during his cllege studies. The first day, he found the roommate running around nude in front of him after taking a shower and getting his clothes to put on. It continued for a while, until he finally spoke up and told the roommate that where comes from, it is an insult to do that. His roommate did not know the culture but learned quickly.

So, I think we can work it out....the privacy issue...that is...

If you just want to talk about the technical aspects and the possibilities that's fine. People clearly can't work out there differences in many group situations. Even if privacy can be I brought up other issues as well. Don't sweep them under the carpet and say they aren't problems though. That approach will always bite you in the ass in the end if it is a serious undertaking and it is an issue science has to learn more and more to deal with. Often it doesn't the outcome is not so great.

Privacy??? Does that actually exist?

Privacy never really exists, there is always someone that knows something about your affairs who's quite happy to talk to others without even asking you. Okay so they keep it a secret from you, but suddenly this betrayal in the form of polymorphic whispers and your walking around like the Emperor wearing his new cloths. (I'm sure you've heard of the story of the Tailor that made the invisible but equisit garments, and everybody kept quite about it, until he walk infront of the populous that laughed at his foolishness.)

The only true privacy would be to be marooned on a desert island and sheltering in a faraday cage while listening to a variable hum, no not meditating just stopping people from being able to train their systems on picking up on thought dopplers.

You could also mention that no matter how secret you would like to keep the way you look beneath you clothes, we are all pretty much built the same and this leaves it to the imagination.

So is imagination a breach of privacy? Afterall if I imagined a female that I liked alot and thought of in comprimising positions would that be a breach of her privacy (without of course you knowing about it) Of course if that was a real statement, this could be classed as a breach in itself.

At the end of the day what would a world void of lies, deceit and treachory be like? Afterall if people could see your thoughts during businesses negotiations, or at a job interview or trying to get in at a college or university then you wouldn't be able to lie.
If you were a criminal you wouldn't be able to hide what you did and to whom or what "conspiracies" your plotting for the future.

Crime would be cracked at every turn.

Of course the problem is then what if the criminals begin utilising this system themselves, or for that matter those with power being corrupted by power.

Again an equilibrium, the blight of balance.

My point is, if we are going to address the "privacy" issue, we need to define what it is in excruciating detail. Otherwise like "environment" issue, "cultural contamination" issue (french are big on this), it is meaning less or will not provide adequate understanding to manage it.

For example if it is found that the spanish speaking countries are falling behind (in economy) the english speaking countries - does that mean it is a cultural issue as many have suggested. And if so what should be done about it?

Personally, I don't think there is any need for privacy other than the fact that people have an easier time learning things when they aren't worried about embarassing themselves. Privacy often leads to a lot of serious problems, like in domestic abuse cases. I'm not worried about privacy issues myself.

My main point is/was that I think conversations about technology that will drastically alter society should try and explicitly discuss social impact. Since this is a very hypothetical discussion you are free to skip this part, but I think that people should try and be as socially aware as possible. You seem to have thought about all the good things about it, but not the bad. That situation makes me nervous in a general technological context ...

That is understandable. Looking at the dark side of technology. The difficulty here is the same people faced during industrial revolution and automation. At the time, the dark side was discussed at length. People will lose their jobs. We will have a society of beggers. Crime will be rampant and so on. Even though there were definitely some bad side effects initially, the society adjusted itself to stability. It is difficult to guess the extent of side effects and whether the society can manage. Our law makers do not have any faith in our society. That is why marijuana is still same level as heroin. Here there is already a society such as India that has minimal restrictions on Marijunana, yet that country did not turn into a nation of jombies.

The point is the degree of side effects and whether a matured society can handle it. Any new technology, process, activity has both good and bad effects. It is matter of degree. As long as good things outweigh bad - most society go for it.

So, yes, we should look into all the issues - but should not throw the baby with the bath water because we get paranoid on our predictions or lack thereof.

Good thoughts though...

I wasn't suggesting that the good get thrown out with the bad. I think you might be a little optimistic though (including considering our government mature). If technology is developed intelligently it can help avoid potential social problems. If people race to market for economic reasons the incarnation of a technology can have bad implications.

For instance if these computer entities can vote, the company that does the transfer might be encouraged to distort their political beliefs for its own empowerment. Say energy can be used on agriculture to feed people or keep the virtual world powered (and remember with NO death these numbers can grow very fast) if they can vote they will outnumber the living quite quickly.

Just something to keep in mind, I think technological development is a good thing in general. Population growth does have me a little nervous, and is semi-relevant here. If people kill off too much of the biotic environment we could de-stabilize the whole web. The virtual world is less dependent on that web than the living population would be. If power is shifted to them we might lose a lot before it was obvious that had happened and we might even kill a lot of the world off and drastically reduce the population that could be supported. As long as an energy source was available the virtual world would not have lost as much. Maybe they wouldn't be as careful or maybe they would be more wise and help us avoid it. Society is a complex beast ...

Again I agree. It all depends on the applications of the technology. One possible scenario is where you can retire into a computer (assuming the safety and security issues have been solved). One way that might work is that you will be scanned weekly until your natural death. Upon your death, the previous memory scan will be activated inside a computer simulation environment based on the conditions you set in your will that is socially acceptable. That virtual world will co-exist with our real world (which could be as zion puts it, another virtual world by an alien race that we do not know). Your living loved ones could interface with you through a neural connection just like you visit the hospital during visiting hours.

Inside the virtual world, you could have two moons, snady beaches with crystal sands and so on. You could move into a designer habitat or a base habitat depending on the fees you paid.

Let your imagination run wild....

Early stage of biological to computer transition.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-01/oonr-mgb012402.php

Refreshing the memory by weekly scans may be good idea,but it is hectic for a life to be immortal.if brain is scanned and exactly and if it behaves exactly inside the system as it did earlier,we "ll have the memory of the man scanned within the system.the scanning off course would occupy loads of memory,but imagine linked lists,(Data structures i mean) we"ll simply add more as when there is requirement,but adding will be based on brains needs.if system runs out of memory,we"ll transfer the man to another...


bye!

Gaming as i have discussed before,can be arena excitedly used for approaches like brain downloads etc.

future games as i mentioned earlie will be Matrix style loader.they"ll load inside the temporary memory and refresh constantly to give a realistic effect,as if you"re in a dream.designed dreams you may call it.


bye!

I had an eureka moment that may fit in this topic. Suppose we are inside a giant natural computer that creates the self learning program and we are part of that simulation. Even if we become aware (a la Matrix), how can we change the program so that we will know for sure, we are part of it?

Green Codes??;)...:cool:




bye!

I don't think you can ever be sure unless the "programmers" made some mistake that made it obvious (here the evidence would depend on the mistake).

Our world obeying the laws of physics is certainly being computed in some respect even if it is the fundamental elements and laws which do the tallying ...

Originally posted by kmguru
I had an eureka moment that may fit in this topic. Suppose we are inside a giant natural computer that creates the self learning program and we are part of that simulation. Even if we become aware (a la Matrix), how can we change the program so that we will know for sure, we are part of it?

In fact thats where our concious mind will play an important role to make us realise...

bye!

In fact thats where our concious mind will play an important role to make us realise...

Unless it is our conscious minds which trap us inside the program, then the glitches will come from our unconscious, where the programming is done.

All of this discussion brings to mind a question for me. Is there such a thing as "ABSOLUTION?"


bjl:confused:

Is there such a thing as "ABSOLUTION?"

No.

Absolution in what sense??:confused:




bye!:confused:

The following interesting article i have taken from MURG site.

The Prospect of Mind Uploading
by Graham Hearn
(Editor's note: This is a draft version of an article submitted to Open Scientific Publications for review and publication, January 2000. Please quote and reference the final version of this article, as it appears at Open Scientific Publications.)

ABSTRACT

Mind uploading is a hypothetical and actively pursued technology whose purpose is to achieve the transferral of a human individual identity into an artificial system via whole brain emulation. Stated another way, mind uploading aims to create "software with human-level intelligence, yet created using little understanding of how the brain works, on anything but the lowest levels of organization." [1] The author will refute the arguments denying the possibility of mind uploading to show that there are practical routes to the attention of whole brain emulation.

INTRODUCTION

Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) (or mind uploading) is a technological objective that has been used as a motif in science fiction for a considerable amount time, [2] but was not mentioned in a widely read work of nonfiction until 1988 by Hans Moravec in Mind Children [3]. Currently, there is an expanding field of awareness being payed to the objective of mind uploading, including the recently established Whole Brain Emulation Research website [4]. Conversely, as with all technologies that are difficult to conceptualize in advance, mind uploading has also been a target of ridicule [5].

In order to develop science from science fiction, it is necessary to establish that it is theoretically possible to transfer the mind into an artificial system. The transferal is done by scanning the brain, analyzing the scan to extract relevant features and constructing an equivalent reprensentation of the mind in an artificial system with brain emulating behaviour [6]. Objections at this level arise mainly from the fields of philosophy, physical anthropology, and psychology.

Once it is established that mind uploading is scientifically realizable, there are myriad philosophical questions regarding the future status of ethics, law, morality, and public policy to consider. There are also many issues for futurists to deal with, concerning cultural anthropology, economics, and the future effects of answers to the above issues [7]. This level of study goes beyond the scope of this paper, as is the question of how to realize WBE scientifically.

THE MIND-BRAIN RELATIONSHIP

In order to reproduce a person's mind such that their identity and self awareness remain unchanged, Whole Brain Emulation requires (a) that the mind is an emergent property of the human organism; (b) that the mind is localized to the brain; and (c) that both personal identity and self awareness are properties of mind [6]. These assumptions combine to form the major assumption of WBE: that personal identity comes from the matter making up the brain (or the behaviour thereof).

To show (a); we know that each living human body with which we communicate is correlated with a unique mind. It is worth noting that identity comes from primarily environmental and not genetic factors; Identical twins that are an accidental occurrence of early splicing of the same fetal cells do not share the same mind. [6] Thus we cannot reproduce a persons mind simply by cloning her.

To show (b); "Exchanging (or losing) any part of the body - except the brain - is not fatal to the sensation of" mind. "Conversely, any drastic damage to the brain...has a major impact on" mind [6].

The proof of (b) also applies to (c). In other words, something affects personal identity and self awareness only if it affects the brain. Thus the mind is defined to include self awareness and hence personal identity (and not vice versa). To clarify that personal identity comes exclusively from the mind, consider adding a prosthesis to your body (but not your brain). Your personal identity remains the same. Do this to your brain and the issue becomes debatable.

With regard to the mind-body ontological problem, the assumption that personal identity comes from the matter making up the brain amounts to physicalism, or more precisely non-dualism. Physicalism includes the theories of reductive materialism, eliminative materialism and funcitonalism. What each physicalist theory has in common is that it holds matter (or the behaviour thereof) to be the sole cause of consciousness. Dualism, however, contends that consciousness comes from a nonphysical form of existence that is in no objective way perceivable from this universe [8].

For dualism to be compatible with the assumptions made by the pursuers of mind uploading, a further assumption must be made that shall be coined here as functionalist dualism. Dualism holds that a human soul or spirit is an essential property of a person's identity. Functionalist dualism would hold that the soul is "attached" to whatever matter acts the role of a person's material brain. Thus, an uploaded mind would maintain its soul in the new medium for the mind. "Popular dualism," [8] however tends to be of the non-functionalist variety which is a severe hindrance to the acceptance of WBE.

Since dualism is based upon asserting the unknowable, it cannot be proven (or even argued using logic) whether functionalist or non-functionalist dualism is correct until mind uploading is actually attempted. The only source of appeal is God who is not known to have written on the subject. The main arguments for dualism [8] and their simplified refutations are as follows.

The argument from religion and the argument from introspection are arbitrary assertions because they are not falsify-able. In other words, there is no scientifically valid evidence for either argument, nor can there be. Arbitrary propositions such as these are not admissable for consideration, i.e. they are neither true nor false [9].

The argument from irreducibility, however, is falsify-able. The Cartesian and Platonic views that knowledge can be apprehended "directly" from its non-physical existence both require that consciousness possesses primacy over physical existence. The primacy of consciousness can be proven wrong given the axiom that "existence exists" [9]. To avoid going into the long, boring proof (see the reference "[9]" for this), notice that the term physical existence is redundant and that non-physical existence is an oxymoron. The argument from irreducibility uses contradictory terms which implies that it is false.

The next most difficult ontological theory for mind uploading is materialism, both reductive and eliminitavist. Their main difference, over the Semantical problem [8], is not relevant to WBE. Since materialism holds that the specific form (rather than function) of the brain is essential to consciousness, artificially constructed hardware for the mind must be an exact duplicate of the natural, biological human brain.

This understanding is problematic for certain approaches to mind uploading because is raises problems for using non-organic materials and chemicals to improve the performance and adaptability of the brain. The question of specifying the exact physical properties that must be possessed by the matter used for uploaded brain hardware become crucial to solving these problems. The purist materialist answer would be, "All of them!" which makes it very difficult to replicate the human brain.

However, materialism is compatible with certain approaches that try to form a perfect reproduction of the brain down to the smallest possible level of detail using tools like scanning tunneling electron microscopy. Such an approach would require advances on par with mature development of nanotechnology, which are not predicted until betweeon 2010 and 2050 A.D. or more [10].

The author finds pure materialism to be unlikely, given the recent successful use of a cortical implant for a man who was previously incapacitated by a cerebral hemorrage. The form of the brain was altered when brain tissue grew around the implant and the brain developed a new function to interface with the implant [11] to move a cursor on a computer screen. This implies that the brain's form is far more malleable than materialists assert.

The most uploading friendly ontological view of mind is that of functionalism. Functionalism is essential to the Strong AI Postulate [12], which basically states that an intelligent machine can be built, at least in principle.

Functionalism has the advantage of not only being compatible with the materialist approaches to mind uploading, but it also presents the possibility of developing intricate cortical implants and auxiliary systems to enhance cognition once a strong understanding of the information processing relationship between mind and body is developed.

The author considers this to be the best view by elimination of the other two, but finds validity in the materialist idea that certain physical properties of the matter composing the brain are integral to the operation of mind. Functionalists also hold this view, to a certain way which is expressed by their strategy of modeling the brain using silicon instead of Play-Doh. Functionalists do not deny that an intelligent system can be built out of Play-Doh, but the material properties of silicon are a nearer simultation of the carbon based brains.

I will now discuss what amounts to a subtle difference between these two theories, whereby one logically leads to the other.

THE ADAPTABILITY OF THE MIND-BRAIN RELATIONSHIP

Another problem for Whole Brain Emulation is the "emulation" part. Even after conceding all of the above, one might still say that one's personal identity comes from the specific matter of which one is composed. This, literally, is what the major assumption of WBE (as stated above) says. However, this is a misinterpretation of what is meant, as I shall explain.

This argument only applies to the materialist position. A functionalist would say that since the properties of the matter are not limited (provided they serve the proper function in mental operation), the exact molecule of a certain type is surely irrelevant! And a popular dualist, would of course say that matter doesn't count at all -- only the spirit does.

The argument becomes especially interesting if a mind if reproduced by non invasive means. That is, if your mind were perfectly emulated (down to the atomic level) by a means that did not destroy the body you now have (including the brain), then which copy one would be you? Or suppose that your current body were destroyed in the process but an atomically perfect copy were created. Can you be said to have died? [16]

The problem presented here is that the "new" matter of which your brain is composed is not identical to the original matter. The emulated brain, it is claimed, is therefore just a copy and not really the same person as before--even if it possesses consciousness and claims to be the same person.

For Calvin and Hobbes fans, this problem is much the same as the title cartoon strip in Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" [13], where Calvin replicates many copies of himself with a cardboard box. A more abstract version of the same idea is the joke:

"This is a very old axe. It belonged to George Washington... But it got old, so I replaced the head and the handle. [i.e. All of it.] <laughter> It occupies the same space."

- Michael Davis, Juggler/Comedian

This problem calls for an explanation by the philosophical principle known as the Identity of Indiscernibles [14]. This principle comes from Liebniz's Discourse on Metaphysics and it states (essentially) that no two objects have exactly the same properties. If this principle is true, then your newly uploaded self cannot be perfectly identical to your earlier brain: There must be some discrepancy with which you can discern the two. The difference, however, can theoretically be reduced toward a limit of zero and it then becomes a matter of degree as to whether your uploaded self can be said to have the same identity you had before the upload.

If the Identity of Indiscernibles is not true, and there is evidence from quantum mechanics to that effect [14], then the problem theoretically goes away because it is possible to replace one arrangement of molecules forming a brain with another system of molecules that are identical in every way.

Recall, though, that there is a certain amout of uncertainty already existing in the brain from both Heisenberg's quantum uncertainty and from Brownian motion due to the kinetic energy of particles within the brain [15]. Recall also that the human body (,including the brain at the atomic level,) replaces itself periodically with the food that one has ingested [16] (,which of course consists of different matter than you do previously.) Thus you are constantly being replaced by "different" matter. So even if your uploaded brain pattern is not molecularily identical, it can still be sufficiently near to act identically to the way it did before.

To the attentive reader, that last sentence (which came from an argument that presupposes materialism) will sound suspiciously like functionalism; And indeed it is exactly what functionalism states!

To reiterate: If a system of molecules that produce mind are acting in the same way as a natural brain would, without being identical to that particular brain, then at least one of the actions of the molecules in that system must be different by the identity of indiscernibles. Thus the sameness of action that associates these two systems is a relational one; i.e. they are creating the same result from a different organization of molecules. Therefore, materialism reduces to functionalism.

THE ADAPTABILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Assuming that a human mind is successfully uploaded, there remains the question of what sort of system to attach to the sensory and motor control centers of the brain. There are four general possibilities: the use of an artificially designed and constructed body, the use of an artificially constructed body using the design provided by nature, the use of an organic body that has already been designed by natural selection, or letting the mind exist as software within a computer generated world. The most important scientific fields to consider in selecting how to approach the body problem are those of engineering, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology.

Engineering and neuroscience each deal with technical challenges in constructing an artificial body and connecting it to an uploaded mind. These areas are less important at this stage, as this paper concerns whether uploading is possible in principle. Since we have already covered the philosophical objections to the practicality of WBE, philosophy can only pose problems for law and morality which are also not relevant to the issue at hand. Psychology, however, is crucial in maintaining personal identity in a new medium.

The mind is utterly dependent upon the body in which it resides for gathering information through the sensory-perceptual system and for carrying out instructions through the motor-control system of the brain and body. Since a human brain has never been observed to function completely independently of the rest of the body, we can only theorize as to what the effects be might be. The effects upon the mind of the individual can be classsified into social psychology and cognitive psychology.

The difficulty presented by social psychology is that of interacting with other people while existing in a bodily form that is alien to our natural form [16]. An artificial body creates potential difficulties in communication due to losing or altering the subtleties of facial movements and body language. There is also a problem concerning a change in the ability of the body to experience touch in a social context using non-organic materials (eg. sex). This poses a major problem for catering to human values, which is essential to its practical application.

This problem can easily be translated into a technical one, because of potential advances in genetic engineering and material engineering that allow for effective emulation of human expressiveness and haptic emulation. There already exists a robot at MIT known as Kismet [17] that performs rudimentary social interaction via its facial expressions. Developments in the computer animation of humans and in facial recognition software also contribute to the understanding to facial expression. It is easy to imagine an extended and more sophisticated simulation of body language from an artificial system combining these three areas of research.

Cognitive psychology concerns WBE with the matter of maintaining sanity under new conditions of the mind-body interface. Because the brain is continuously interacting with the rest of the body, a change in the input and output systems of the body would significantly affect the functioning of the brain. At a conscious level, there is the constant flux of sensory information entering and of motor neuron signals exiting the brain system. At an unconscious level, there are continuous procedures dedicated to operating routine bodily functions such as the beating of the heart and regulating body temperature. The problem here is that the brain is intimately tied into the central nervous system and does not operate independently of it.

For unconscious bodily operations, the absence of a bodily subsystem to operate (,as in the case of respiration for a non-cellular and non-organic body,) does not interfere with the conscious mind and will therefore not affect consciousness. In other words the lack of lungs due to no longer having need of them will not cause automatic panic or shock to the uploaded person. This happens on a smaller scale now, where someone may lose the use of a lung or kidney. As for the brain's systems that give and take the brains input and output, these will have to be connected to the centers of the brain that already handle these protocols and made to simulate motor neuron activity as closely as possible. Similar breakthroughs exist that allow a person's brain waves to control a prosthetic hand [19].

CONCLUSION

In the end, the crucial inhibiter to actually uploading one's mind is that the technology just doesn't exist yet. It has just been shown that Whole Brain Emulation is an attainable technology given that that personal identity comes from the matter making up the brain (or the behaviour thereof).

Also essential is the ontological position of functionalism; or, using more limited techniques, materialism. This condition is valid because the competing theory of dualsim is an erroneous theory of mind. Functionalism is the more tenable theory and it requires less advanced technology to emulate a brain functionally.

When uploaded it appears likely that the mind will be able to adjust to the new situation. In 1970 a rhesus monkey's head was successfully transplanted onto the body of another rhesus monkey. "When the monkey awakened from anesthesia, it regained full consciousness and complete cranial nerve function." [20] This procedure is now feasible for humans and more advanced surgical methods may allow for the transplanted head to integrate itself with the new body.

All we need now is the desire to pursue the scientific development necessary to achieve immortality by whole brain emulation. Traditionally popular religions have long preached metaphysical immortality which is the immortality of the soul and life after death. According to the Principia Cybernetica Project: "The decline of traditional religions appealing to metaphysical immortality threatens to degrade modern society. Cybernetic immortality [which subsumes Whole Brain Emulation] can take the place of metaphysical immortality to provide the ultimate goals and values for the emerging global civilization." [21]

and it is interestng to note that :Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) (or mind uploading) is a technological objective that has been used as a motif in science fiction for a considerable amount time, For example, Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey; Del Ray, 1968. "writes that in the future, intelligent life will give up biological bodies in favor of mechanical or electronic bodies."


bye!

I took this from the given website that you might find interesting.
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Uploading/lama_upload.txt


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From: Michael LaTorra <mikel@accugraph.com>
Subject: Buddhism, AI & Uploading
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Quoted from the book _GENTLE BRIDGES: Conversations with the Dalai Lama
on the Sciences of Mind_ by Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela
[Shambala, 1992] pp. 152-153:


DALAI LAMA: In terms of the actual substance of which computers are
made, are they simply metal, plastic, circuits, and so forth?

VARELA: Yes, but this again brings up the idea of the pattern, not the
substance but the pattern.

DALAI LAMA: It is very difficult to say that it's not a living being,
that it doesn't have cognition, even from the Buddhist point of view.
We maintain that there are certain types of births in which a
preceding continuum of consciousness is the basis. The consciousness
doesn't actually arise from the matter, but a continuum of consciousness
might conceivably come into it.

HAYWARD: Does Your Holiness regard it as a definite criterion that
there must be continuity with some prior consciousness? That
whenever there is a cognition, there must have been a stream of
cognition going back to beginningless time?

DALAI LAMA: There is no possibility for a new cognition, which has no
relationship to a previous continuum, to arise at all. I can't totally
rule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and the
karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into
a computer.

HAYWARD: A stream of consciousness?

DALAI LAMA: Yes, that's right. [DALAI LAMA laughs.] There is a
possibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life
[with computers], then the next life . . . [he would be reborn in a
computer], same process! [laughter] Then this machine which is
half-human and half-machine has been reincarnated.

VARELA: You wouldn't rule it out then? You wouldn't say this is
impossible?

DALAI LAMA: We can't rule it out.

ROSCH: So if there's a great yogi who is dying and he is standing
in front of the best computer there is, could he project his
subtle consciousness into the computer?

DALAI LAMA: If the physical basis of the computer acquires the
potential or the ability to serve as a basis for a continuum of
consciousness. I feel this question about computers will be resolved
only by time. We just have to wait and see until it actually happens.

.................................................. .....................

This body is almost finished -- standby to upload!


Live long & prosper,

Michael LaTorra
mikel@huey.accugraph.com

You are here
^ | -
_/-\_.........v...................................... ........._( )_
ALPHA OMEGA

Here's another interesting article written by Toby Howard.

Ghosts, computers, and Chinese Whispers
Toby Howard
This article first appeared in Personal Computer World magazine, November 1996.

"CLICK HERE to upload your soul" was one of the tamer headlines seen recently in reports describing the "new research direction" of British Telecom's research labs at Martlesham Heath. BT, it was reported by such authorities as The Guardian, Reuters, Time, and the Electronic Telegraph, is embarking on a huge new research project. Funded to the tune of 25 million pounds, an eight-man team is developing a "Soul Catcher" memory chip. The chip will be implanted behind a person's eye, and will record all the thoughts and experiences of their lifetime.

The idea that we might migrate minds from brains into silicon has been around for a while, and is usually referred to as "uploading". This might be achieved destructively, by visiting each neuron in turn, determining its particular characteristics and interconnections, and then replacing it with an equivalent microscopic computer based on nanotechnology; or, perhaps preferable from the patient's point of view, by non-destructively scanning the structure of the living brain and reproducing it elsewhere in silicon, like copying a complex drawing using a pantograph.

The amount of data involved would be immense, since the hardware of our nervous system is believed to comprise around 1012 neurons with 1015 synaptic interconnections. But the capacity of silicon for storing information is increasing at an almost unbelievable rate. "Moore's Law", first expressed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1964, stated that the density of chips roughly doubles every year. Although the doubling period since the early 1970s is now more like 18 months, we are still seeing an explosive growth of chip-power. If the trend continues into the next century we might expect by 2025 to store ten million megabytes (ten terabytes, or 1013 bytes) on a single chip. If so, we might hope to record information about a brain's physical structure in a few of these chips.

But to talk about uploading thoughts and memories is quite another matter. When we talk about brains and minds, we must confront the classical "mind-body problem". We know that our brain is a collection of biological structures of (so far, at least) unimaginable complexity. Outwardly this "brain-stuff", once described by computing pioneer Alan Turing as like a bowl of cold porridge, is unmistakably physical. Deeper, a stained microscopic section of brain matter reveals a riot of interconnected neurons that looks like squashed rhubarb. How can this biology conjure or host the mystery of human consciousness? How can our minds influence the matter in the universe? Imagine: you're in the pub, and you fancy a bottle of beer. Within moments the bartender obliges. Your mind has somehow caused uncountable billions of atoms in the universe -- atoms in your muscles, your throat, the air, the barman's ears, his brain, his muscles, the fridge, the bottle, the opener, the glass -- to directly respond to your will. Quite a trick for porridge and rhubarb.

What is this "you" that has such power to disrupt the universe? Are "you" some ethereal entity -- a ghost, a soul -- operating the controls of the brain machine? Or is the machine itself just so complex that in our inability to understand its activity we seek refuge in the idea of a separate "soul"? For proponents of "Strong Artifical Intelligence", the answer is clear: human consciousness really is nothing more than the algorithmic bubbling of cold porridge, and in fact any sufficiently complex algorithm, running on any kind of machine, will lead inexorably to thinking and consciousness. Or so they say. A fierce debate rages over this claim.

If the "Strong AI" researchers are right, then we should one day expect to see computers which behave as if they are conscious. (It's the "as if" here which so antagonises the philosophers). But the possibility of creating conscious machines raises serious ethical questions. What rights would a conscious machine possess? Would concerned individuals form a Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Machines? Would those of a religious bent demand that a conscious machine be taught how to worship God? What if conscious machines did not like us, and turned nasty?

But we must, I regret, be sceptical futurists, and return to earth. Is BT really trying to cache our consciousnesses onto chips stuffed in our heads? "No!", says Chris Winter, the BT researcher quoted in the press as heading the "team of eight Soul Catcher scientists". "We are not building anything!", he told me. The whole story is a media invention, developed like a game of Chinese Whispers from its origins in an after-dinner press briefing Winter gave to local journalists, intending to enthuse them about the future-looking work at BT Labs. Winter's research group had simply undertaken a "technology trend analysis" to speculate on the future capacity of silicon, and using Moore's Law had estimated the 10 terabyte chip by 2025. To illustrate the immensity of such storage, Winter compared it with a back-of-an-envelope guestimate of the volume of data input through a person's sensory organs in an average 70-year lifespan -- 10 terabytes. The press took it from there.

Since current research into neuro-computational cochlear implants for the deaf, and retinal implants for the blind is proving successful, perhaps in the distant future something like the Soul Catcher will become a reality. However, the vision of Bob Hoskins saying "It's good to upload" makes me reach for another universe-changing beer. Toby Howard teaches at the University of Manchester.

bye!

GRADUAL UPLOADING AS A COGNITION OF MIND

by Algimantas Malickas

Institute Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4, Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail: malickas@pub.osf.lt

Abstract


Gradual uploading could be considered as an alternative to neuron-by-neuron
uploading. In this article we discuss some technological aspects of this
problem, including computer-brain, brain-computer interfaces and necessary
computational power for mind simulation. We interpret the uploading system
as a fault tolerant neural network (where damage would be brain death), as
a "black box" (brain) imitation system. We use children mind evolution model
for the description of uploading system evolution, where the external world
is changed to the brain world, receptors - to the brain-computer interface,
motor functions - to the computer-brain interface.
Speech communication as an interface prototype is discussed.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Functional uploading
3. Interpretation of gradual uploading
4. Brain - computer interface.
5. Computer - brain interface.
6. Computer
7. The system of brain cognition
7.1 The principle of world modeling
7.2 Comparison between real world and brain cognition.
7.3 Evolution of the external system
8. Speech as an interface
9. The problem of person identity
10. Discussion
11. Conclusions
12. Acknowledgments
13. References



1. Introduction

The gradual uploading of mind (also known as gradual extension, metamorphosis
[7], soft uploading, brain enhancement) could be evaluated as an alternative
of atom-by-atom, or neuron-by-neuron uploading.



The gradual uploading requires addition of artificial neural network (or other
means of AI) to the brain. After this, the brain and the external system would
operate as one system. During this common coexistence, the memory and other
functions of mind would gradually grow into the external system and would
survive after the brain's death. Therefore, the death of the brain would not
be fatal for the person, i.e. main goal of uploading would be achieved.



The goal of this article is to discuss some ideas, how this problem can
be solved, what is going on in this field of research, and what is necessary
to do in the future.
2. Functional uploading

The gradual uploading would be uploading of mind functions, not uploading of a
morphological brain architectures.
At first, the morphological structure of brain is defined by not only
functional necessities. Evolution is very stochastic process and accidental
factors contributed a lot to the brain structure.
At second, some functions (homeostasis, most motor reflexes etc.) are
not useful for the cyber system, if the 'cyber-body' differs a lot from the
human body. In addition, it looks like those functions are not so important
for the self-perception.
The mechanisms of brain functioning and functions unimportant for the
self-perception can be abolished, adapted or changed. This standpoint could
greatly facilitate the solution of the uploading problem.

2. Gradual uploading interpretation

External neural network of the uploading system could be implemented using
several ways. The interpretation of performance of this network can be various
too:
1. The neural network functions are distributed over the network (over large
field of network, at least). In some cases, the neural network is a fault-
tolerant i.e. after removal of some neurons, survived part of network can
inherit almost complete collection of parent network functions. Under certain
conditions similar properties could be used for the separation of external
system in case of death of biological brain.
2. The brain can be interpreted as a "black box" with complex inside structure
and functional properties. If the sufficient quantity of information about
brain properties were obtained, the imitation or reconstruction of these
properties would be possible.
3. Some ideas about organization and interpretation of external neural network
can be supported using the existing example of powerful neural system - the
human brain. Evolution of external system could be interpreted as a child
evolution, in this case. Some cognitive science, psychological and pedagogical
models can be used for this evolution description. We will discuss this point
of view in details later.
In any case, the problem of technical implementation of gradual uploading can
be divided into:
external system software problem,
external system hardware problem,
interface computer - brain problem,
interface brain - computer problem.
3. Interface brain - computer.

There are several possibilities of creation of this interface. One way is to
implement some electrodes or microchips into the brain. At this time some
examples of this interface are available [9,10,11 ]. Main disadvantage of this
method is necessity of surgical invasion into the brain.
Another way is to use multichanell electroencephalogram (EEG). Some
implementations of EEG brain-computer interfaces are also available at this
time [1]. For the EEG, the minimal distance between electrodes must exceed 1
centimeter, and this factor limits a number of electrodes, i.e. EEG interfaces
permeability. The EEG could represent brain information from the cortex only.
In addition, the EEG channel can represent only a sum of activities of many
neurons under channel electrode.
Other possible technology for the interface could be magnetoencephalography,
using SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) [13]. This is a most
sensitive technology for registration of magnetic fields, at this time.
For the gradual uploading goals, the brain-computer interface should have some
specific features. One problem is representation of necessary brain information
in the cortex field under EEG, MEG electrodes or near implant. This problem
can be partly solved optimizing the location of electrodes according to our
current knowledge about cortex structure.
More powerful method would be a brain adaptation itself. The brain - computer
interface would have feedback coupling (computer - brain interface), and this
fact would ensure good co-operation between brain and uploading system.
Through this co-operation, the brain adaptation would happen itself. Besides,
some additional means could be implemented for better brain adaptation and
those means could create necessary ways to transfer the information into the
brain. As one of examples of this adaptation some human learning methods can
be considered which relates the artificial electroactivity in the deeper fields
of brain with the electroactivity in the fixed field of cortex.


Some examples of human brain adaptation (Braille reading method, the speech of
gestures etc.) show that such adaptation can be possible in principle, though
these possibilities diminish during the human life.
4. Interface computer - brain

The brain implants could be used for information translation to the brain
too [9,10,11]. Other way is to use sensations of human body for the
transmission of computer - brain information.


Human body uses many nerves to translate information about external world to
the brain. Some of nerves could be used to translate the information from the
computer to the brain. One way is to use tactile nerves. In this case, the
interface hardware would include a matrix element, each consisting of a small
vibrator (like small needle).

The tactile brain input was widely investigated for hearing disorder
compensation using tactile sensation. Some bibliography about this studies can
be found in [2,3].

Another way to transmit information transmission is to use visual sensations.
Such interface would have better information permeability, but it might
interfere to world`s visual perception.
5. Computer

Using connection machine the processing speed up to 1.3 * 10^9 synapses per
second can be achieved [6], and using transputer system the processing speed
up to 2.7 *10^9 synapses per second can be reached [8]. In principle, the
most powerful current parallel hardware (1.8 *10^12 FLOP) [14] could implement
up to 10^10 - 10^11 synapses/second.
The evaluation of the computational power of human brain very uncertain at
this time. Some estimates of brain power could be based on the brain synapses
number and neurons firing rate. The human brain have a 10^11 neurons and each
neuron has average of 10^2 - 10^4 synapses. The average firing rate of brain
neurons is about 100-1000 Hz.
As result the brain modeling would require the computational power
of
10^11 neurons * (10^2-10^4 synapses/neuron) * (100-1000 Hz) =
10^15 - 10^18 synapses/second.
Other estimations [12] show that the brain power could be between 10^13 and
10^16 synapses/second.
On the other hand, some factors could diminish the necessary computer power.
Most artificial neural networks (backpropagation, Hopfield, Kohonen, Grossberg
etc.) use neuron activity represented by analog signal amplitude (firing
frequency modulation), not a firing signal. Computer simulation in this case
is more simple and speedy.
Change of all brain neural network to amplitudical network could be problematic.
For example, the temporary pattern of integration/summation is complicated for
amplitudical neural networks, but more usual for firing neurons. But some
systems (spatial processing parts of visual system, for example) could be
changed and simulated more effectively.
The brain have many systems (sensors and motor channels, homeostasis
system) which are not that important and could be replaced after uploading. Many
sensory - motor tracts would be incompatible with new body properties, many
old reflexes would be useless etc. The large sound articulation control network
could be replaced to few transistors, for example. The similar changes could
be done to most sensory-motorics systems of the brain, and this would let
decrease the necessary computer power.
The brain neural networks are redundant. Besides not all neurons in the
brain are active at the same time. Those facts could lead to decrease of the
necessary computer power.
The evolution of external system will take some time (the children evolution
take some