"Imagine that a person’s brain could be scanned in great detail and recreated in a computer simulation. The person’s mind and memories, emotions and personality would be duplicated. In effect, a new and equally valid version of that person would now exist, in a potentially immortal, digital form. This futuristic possibility is called mind uploading. The science of the brain and of consciousness increasingly suggests that mind uploading is possible – there are no laws of physics to prevent it. The technology is likely to be far in our future; it may be centuries before the details are fully worked out – and yet given how much interest and effort is already directed towards that goal, mind uploading seems inevitable. Of course, we can’t be certain how it might affect our culture but as the technology of simulation and artificial neural networks shapes up, we can guess what that mind uploading future might be like."
I always find these types of articles fascinating. The way I see it our mind (the brain is easier to define) sits in the skull but it has all these sensory input devices like eyes (cameras), ears (microphones), can speak (speaker), can feel pressure, temperature, taste, etc. It can signal limbs to move but the brain/mind itself does not see, feel, hear etc – it just senses. So what if we connected VR cameras, microphones, etc to a mind – for it knows it is living in The Matrix or anywhere else. How will the brain experience any different to what the old body would have experienced if all its new sensors are providing high-quality inputs? If we used the Internet those sensors could be 1000’s of km away, or even on a different planet. We are already starting to tap into this with Neurallink. Yes, it does pose some challenges around who the real You is if you could clone a mind (which has not happened yet). But imagine a quadriplegic being able to experience the real freedom of movement, or a deaf person actually having their brain/mind hearing music and voices, or a blind person being able to see in high resolution with a camera. This we may well experience in a coming lifetime. Cloning a mind (even to virtual space) poses some philosophical challenges about the essence of a person is.
#mindhack #neuralink
#^What happens if your mind lives for ever on the internet?
It may be some way off, but mind uploading, the digital duplication of your mental essence, could expand human experience into a virtual afterlife