[ExI] The Parallel Man

[Ben Zaiboc]

Dennis May <dennislmay at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm sure this has been discussed before but I would
> like to hear what others have to say about the
> idea of gradually adding more and more artificial
> capacity?to the human brain with the idea that
> when the biological part fails the artificial takes
> takes its place - along with new physical form.
> The external capacity can learn to emulate the
> biological in portions it does not have actual
> access to.
> ?
> This would seem to be a closer to near term
> possibility than some other paths.? I would
> prefer the artificial capacity be largely outside
> the human body to allow ease of continual 
> upgrade.? The brain interface is the most important
> aspect and may require implants versus external
> readers/writers depending on the technology.
> It would be nice if it could be all done externally
> to keep it non-medical.


You picked the very thoughts from my brain!

This is my preferred uploading scenario, if it can be made a reality, and I think it would appeal to a wider set of people than the upload scenarios that put the willies up the crypto-dualists, like destructive scanning.

The main benefit would be continuity, and the possibility of being in charge of your own uploading process, taking it as quickly or slowly as you like, and with the chance of correcting or reversing parts of the process.  

One possibility that I've noted in the past is to be able to temporarily suppress neural activity in the biological brain, to assess how well the parallel synthetic part is functioning.  If all is well, the subject will notice no difference, and won't even be able to tell which strand/s of hardware their consciousness is running in.  This would give people additional confidence in the whole project, and may even change some people's minds about the philosophical aspects of uploading.

Crucially, it's an experiment that a sceptic could perform, with confidence that they could just disconnect and continue as normal, at any time.  They could find out 'what it's like to be an upload', in a completely reversible way.

Regarding the neural interfaces needed, they'd have to be extensive, and it's difficult to see how to do this without invasive procedures and overcoming a lot of difficult problems.  However:

An idea occurred to me a few days ago, and I'm still mulling it over, but I might as well air it here.  After reading this:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/12926
("Can Magnetism Help Us Control the Brain, Remotely?"),

I had an idea.  If there was a way to produce a unique 'address' for each neuron in the brain (e.g. an ion channel that would only open when a specific signal was received), you'd have a way to precisely target and fire any individual neuron, using a broadcast signal that wouldn't need to be tightly-focused.  I'm wondering if there's a way to introduce a gene that's guaranteed to be unique in each cell, or creates a unique ion channel.  Something that effectively gives a cell a GUID, with the ability to be fired by a specific coded signal.  With nanotech, it would probably be easy, but could we do it with the techniques we have atm?  I think maybe we could, with a bit of ingenuity.

Maybe this could then be extended to make a neuron produce a remotely-detectable signal as well, so you could have a two-way neural interface, with no extra machinery inside the brain except some new ion channels.

Speculation, yes, but it's something I've never heard suggested before, it sounds plausible and it would neatly tie in with the idea of a 'parallel man' system.

Thoughts?

Ben Zaiboc