7 Scientific Reasons Why Brain Uploading is Impossible and Poor Strategy for Survival
I’m just a guy who codes all day. I copy and paste all day long. I write conditional statements and I study how processors work. I also host a Transhumanist meet-up and I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit arguing these points and I would really like everyone to read them. As a Transhumanist or Life-Extensionist you will at some point make the decision to spend your time and money on brain uploading or biological longevity.
I feel like I’m way ahead of the curve on this and it is terribly frustrating. A lot of people think they will magically upload their consciousnesses into a computer, but there are HUGE logic errors with this. It’s almost to the point where I believe people who believe in brain uploading have a cognitive perceptual problem. They don’t seem to believe that anything exists outside their perception. The is contradictory to the act of science, which is to study how the world behaves regardless of how you want it to.
If you want to spend your time and money on longevity do it on a sure bet, bet on the human cloud particle. If you’re not happy with your niche in the universe then by all means attempt suicide, but whatever ‘you’ are will never be transferred in any other way than how it currently moves through time embedded in your particle cloud. An attempted transfer would leave nothing left to appreciate the change. Let’s begin.
1.) Just because something appears the same to you doesn’t mean it is the same to everyone else or more importantly to iteself.
2.) 2 Very similar things in 2 different locations are in fact 2 separate things.
3.) Information does not really exist physically. It exists so much as you want something and things are important to you, but all information is an interpretation by some entity. The entity is real. The information is an effect that is consumed by the entity. We don’t transfer or move data, we affect other objects with our actions. Over the internet computers interpret blinking electricity to be data and consume that then turn it into something that is meaningful to them. Uploading information is merely having an effect on something else. The other thing does not become the other party in the communication just as much as you don’t become me if I tell you my stories.
4.) A computer is a completely different kind of ‘thing’ than we are. Just because we could get it to output behavior like a human or even simulate a world it doesn’t mean it would it becomes us in other ways. It does not have our particle cloud, molecules, or electrons. It is a different object. A computer running a simulated world is still just a computer on a shelf running math that we interpret as a computer world. To use biological beings it is just a processor on a shelf consuming electricity. In terms of physics of the universe it is occupying a very different niche in the universe. A human being and a computer are nothing alike and they will never be.
5.) The complexity of the human brain is immeasurable and cannot be fully simulated in this universe. Even a brick would take more computing power than exists on earth to simulate in all it’s properties, every state of every particle, and all those particles we don’t yet even know about. Any simulation must necessarily lose complexity in order to run. There is no reason to assume the parts that we would cut out of the simulation are meaningless. We are an incredibly complex part of the universe and attempting to extract out an opinionated version would only give you what you expect and nothing more. In other words you would gain nothing from a simulation because it would be more predictable than the actual universe.
6.) We exist as some sort of inevitable process of the universe. There is not reason to assume that a simulated or artificial life would maintain existence or will to survive.
7.) Any simulated life could only react to simulated input and could not survive unpredictable changes in the universe. It would be less likely to survive into the far future as primary universe changes underneath it. Creatures who formed inside the primary universe would be sensitive to those changes because they are part of the universe will change with the universe forever.
Now here are 2 examples to consider.
If hear a knock at the door, how do you know it is a human? If someone builds a machine that knocks on doors would it matter if it was a machine or human? What if you shot through the door with a gun? If you called out to the knock for it’s name would it matter? One perception of a thing is not all it’s properties.
Two clones grow in two rooms with simultaneous identical experiences happening to each one. One day the clones are let out of the rooms. Do they see the world from each other’s eyes? Do they share a conscious? If you tell one a secret does the other one know it? No, because information, even the simulation of information is meaningless. The meaning is derived by the matter or entity. In this case each individual clone despite having similar histories have always been different. It doesn’t matter what you tell them. It only matters that they are matter in different locations. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Data is a description, it is a communication it is not a physical property. It is a fantasy. It is your will. It is inseparable from the fantasizer. Becoming data is exactly the same as becoming a fairy tale. You cannot jump into a book or television because the books is just words and TV is just a box with lights. You invented those fairy tales. Your’e already there.
Wanting to transform into a life form that lasts longer is a noble goal in my opinion, but just because computers last longer doesn’t mean it is a desirable existence. Just by the virtue that you have the desire to last means that you have a desirable existence. A computer is just another type of particle cloud and there is no reason it is better than yours.
Work to keep your cloud swirling or don’t, but before you make the decision consider what I’ve written here.
