[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...just curious

[Robert Bradbury]

On 4/17/06, Anne-Marie Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> >All talk about mind-uploading and copying is no more real than
> >Astrology and Religion, it may one day occur or it may not. Am I not
> >understanding this properly?
>

You understand it almost completely properly.  The primary difference is
that with copying you can do it today (at least in its simple form).  Lets
say I have a computer with 160GB hard drive (true).  On said hard drive is
almost all of most of the work I've done over the last 15 years.  I install
a second 160GB hard drive and create a copy of the first (something I'm in
the process of doing).  I remove said 160GB hard drive and walk onto a plane
with it and fly to Moscow, install it in a PC there and boot it up.  Voila,
a second functional copy of "Robert's work".  This isn't that "unusual".
>From ~1992-1997 I devoted a significant amount of time to maintaining
multiple copies of "Robert's work".  One copy on my home PC in Seattle, one
copy on my laptop, a copy or two in Moscow.  Keeping them in sync with each
other was non-trivial and perhaps 10-15% of it has been lost for various
reasons but most of it is still shouting, "But I'm not dead yet...".  But
Robert's mind contains a bit more information than Robert's work.

Problem #1) Can I store "Robert's mind?"  The information in the human mind
will not fit onto a 160GB disk drive, but neither is it a PB (10^15 bytes).
The entire Library of Congress contains perhaps 1/50th of a PB. See [1] for
some good comparisons.  We should easily have TB disk drives by 2010
(perhaps even for laptops) and PB disk drives by 2020 -- so long -- as
increases in storage density continue at 2x/year (this is significantly more
conservative than [1]).  So there shouldn't be any problem storing all of
Robert's mind on media we are capable of manufacturing.

Problem #2) How do I get a copy of Robert's mind?  This is a bit trickier.
Ray discusses it somewhat in TSIN on pages 157-166 and 198-203 (wondering if
this is online in Amazon's "In the book"?)  The best related discussion on
the web is Merkle's Molecular Repair of the Brain paper discussing Cryonics
reanimation [2]. [Bear in mind that [2] is now over a decade old and
predates the Nanomedicine book series -- we now have a much better
understanding of what is required and how to do it.]  Suffice to say that
probably moderately higher resolution scanning techniques (parallel highly
resolution NMR or AFM or STED microscopy, etc. will be required).  But I
could "read" the molecular contents of your (frozen) brain *today* with
several different microscopy methods -- they would simply require a very
long time to read the entire contents.  Nanorobots or highly parallel bulk
microscopy methods would be required to shorten the time required to
something "reasonable".

Problem #3) How does one reactivate a copy of Robert's mind?  This is a
little trickier than plugging the disk drive into another computer but the
principles are the same.  The question is whether you want a "soft"
substrate copy or a "hard" substrate copy.  If "soft" is ok you copy the
information into a computer and/or computer program which is able to
reconstruct Robert's mind and execute it.  This is similar to what your
computer does when you restore it from a "hibernated" state -- you can
restore from hibernation on any machine which is similar to the machine on
which you entered the hibernation state *or* which can simulate that machine
[3].  The requirement here is for computational capacity equivalent to the
level of the human brain and/or the ability to reconstruct that information
into a functioning brain equivalent.  Not here yet for either criteria but
can clearly be foreseen (by most people who are educated in the technology
paths).  If you want a "hard" substrate copy you use the information to
reconstruct an exact precise atomic copy of "Robert's brain" (and therefore
his mind) and return it to an operational state presumably by sticking the
brain into a body which allows it to operate normally.  Now before you
grumble that "precise" atomic copies are impossible you should think about
what DNA polymerase does each time the cells in your body divide.
Generalizing this to the level of reassembling a precise atomic brain copy
probably requires robust general purpose molecular assembly methods, i.e.
robust nanotechnology, probably 20-40 years away. But before the grumbling
starts again you have to acknowledge that every living thing you see around
you is the product of "moderately" precise molecular assembly.

> I understand the high probabilities of the Singularity but I'm just not
> convinced that their is enough information to base a belief system on it.
>

It is difficult.  That is why it is important to ask tough questions and
educate yourself as to whether or not people are telling you what may really
be true or whether they are just making wild-ass guesses.

>Could someone give me an opinion on what they think could halt the
> >Singularity from occurring?
>

Start with the obvious things.  (a) A relatively big asteroid hitting the
Earth; (b) a very widespread plague (Influenza H5N1, SARs, etc.) (HIV is
*already* effectively slowing things down a little.); (c) global
thermonuclear war; (d) a nearby supernova in our galaxy; (e) some Matrioshka
Brain deciding we stand in the way of its future development and taking our
solar system (galactic eminent domain); (f) the overlord who assembled the
solar system as an experiment in the development of intelligence deciding
that we have yielded all the information of any interest and discontinuing
it; (g) the entity "owning" the resources which this simulation is consuming
deciding it has better use for those resources.

Unless some disaster wipes out humanity *completely* or *every* human being
decides to prevent it from happening (i.e. chooses no future development and
eventual death) then The Singularity *will* happen.  The real questions are
things like (a) whether there will be significant setbacks along the way;
(b) how much control do we really have over the rate of change; and (c) what
are the *real* limits?  If humanity collectively acts to slow down the rate
of technological change then The Singularity *will* happen (i.e. you end up
with the same developments) but you end up with them happening over a
sufficiently long period of time that it doesn't *seem* like *THE*
Singularity.  Remember the basis for "THE* Singularity is the change is
occurring faster than the rate at which humans can adapt.  If tomorrow we
suddenly started reanimating cryonics suspendees there would be a *lot* of
people who would have significant problems with that.

The difference with copying and uploading is that I can tell you reasonably
precisely *how* to do it (and not violate any laws of physics or invent any
new ones).  Astrology cannot explain how it works and Religions cannot
explain what "god" is or how s/he/it works.  Astrology and Religions ask you
simply to believe and have faith.  Copying and uploading are simple (cough)
engineering problems that you yourself could contribute to moving from the
envisioned reality into the actual reality.

>Do you feel that we will have clear signs that we are approaching the
> >Singularity or do you feel that won't notice it and it will happen
> gradually?
>

Many people, ranging from those on the list to perhaps very young people [5]
may be able to adapt to a medium-to-rapid Singularity.  But there are many
others who will not be able to adapt to even a slow Singularity -- the more
extreme consequences *significantly* change our current reality and a lot of
people are *not* prepared to deal with that.

We already have "clear signs" if you look for them in things like Moore's
Law, nanotechnology developments, etc.  The question is whether the rate of
change can be managed to save the greatest number of people?  If it is too
slow you will lose people (we are losing 60+ million a year now).  If it is
too rapid you may lose "humanity" entirely (presumably replaced by some
mega-Borg AI).  This is perhaps the ultimate "Goldilocks problem" -- how
does one get the temperature, i.e. the rate of change, "just right".

Robert

1. http://www.mercola.com/2003/feb/22/petabyte.htm
2. http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html
3. Some people have a hard time with simulations.  Interestingly they don't
have as much of a hard time with voice or visual impersonators (in fact the
more people  are convinced of its "originality" the better the impersonator
is).  Back in the 1960's and 1970's there were two popular computer lines
made by Digital Equipment Corp. -- the PDP-10 and the PDP-11.  The first is
a 36 bit machine and the second a 16 bit machine.  Wildly different
architectures, instruction sets, etc.  Kind of like the difference between
an elephant and a Chihuahua.  Well the company I worked for had a need for
running PDP-10 programs and all it had available was a PDP-11/70 (which
wasn't doing all that much).  So Forrest Howard  and I had to write a
simulator for the PDP-10 which ran *on* the PDP-11.  A lesson in problems
one really shouldn't try to solve...  But we managed it.  The simulator ran
rather slowly (perhaps 10-50 times slower) but it *did* run.  (It recompiled
DEC's PDP-11 Fortran compiler successfully over a couple of weeks [4].)  So
I have real life  personal experience that simulations function *exactly* as
the "real thing".  So at least in *my* mind one really can make a Chihuahua
function as a replacement for an elephant (though this analogy may be a bit
stretched...).
4. The DEC PDP-11 Fortran compiler was written in Bliss-11.  The only
Bliss-11 compilers which existed ran only on PDP-10's.  An alternative might
have been write a Bliss-11 compiler which ran on the PDP-11 but that was
viewed as being a much larger problem than writing the simulator.  (Both the
Bliss-11 and DEC Fortran compilers were highly optimizing compilers the
writing of which had consumed more than a few person years.)
5. The news today was citing the studies being done in San Diego where Sony
is putting small robots into pre-schools and/or nursery schools and the kids
readily "adopt" the robot as something more than a toy but less than a
person.
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