[ExI] Essential Upload Data (was: Subject: Boltzmann brains)

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 5:22 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> *> Because a body is much simpler than a brain, that too can be easily
> emulated - more easily than a brain, *
>

You wouldn't even need to emulate everything in the brain because most of
what a neuron does is routine metabolic activity needed just to stay alive
that is no different from that a skin or kidney cell does.


> > So, accepting that we'll want to emulate a body as well as a brain, do
> we actually need a real body to record and upload? I doubt it. It follows
> from the fact that a body is simpler, that we will be able to easily create
> a virtual body from existing data about human bodies,
>

Not to mention the fact that the entire personal genome of the patient
would also be recorded.


> > *so no need to preserve an actual body*
>

Science can find no difference between an atom of carbon in your body and
an atom of carbon in mine, the only difference between you and me is how
those atoms are arranged. So if you could preserve that arrangement
information there would be no need to even preserve the brain, but our
current technology isn't good enough to be able to do that, so at least for
the time being we still need the liquid nitrogen.

 > *change or damage or remove even a tiny bit of your brain, and you have
a different person, or at least a different personality.*

Not if the removed part of your brain is replaced with something identical,
and that is actually what is happening every day of our lives, atoms are
constantly shifting in and out of our brains and bodies; my brain is made
of last years mashed potatoes.



>
> *> Ergo, the brain is vastly more important than the body to get exactly
> right (and thus, to preserve).*
>

Yes.

* > I'm pretty confident that a generic body model would be quite
> sufficient for the purposes of an upload, especially as you could modify it
> yourself afterward, to your own requirements (just in case you decided that
> your appendectomy scar or missing toe was somehow essential to your
> personality).*
>

Good point.

John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200505/bb11e524/attachment.htm>