[ExI] Mind Uploading: is it still me?

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 25/12/2025 11:23, Keith Henson wrote:
> I have argued for 20 years that a technology able to upload a person
> should be able to reverse the process.  For marketing, if nothing
> else.

On 25/12/2025 11:23, John K Clark wrote:
> There's no reasonthat shouldn't be possible because both uploading and downloading rely 
> on the same fundamental technology, the ability to place atoms where 
> you want them to go.

For 'marketing' purposes (or PR purposes, at least), I can see the 
logic. However, I doubt that a full mastery of nanotech will be 
necessary to do uploading, I'd think that something less than that would 
be used first. The ability to scan and record the relevant data from a 
brain, then arrange the data in a pre-prepared computing substrate of 
some kind, which would then run the mind, seems to me to be sufficient 
for the first uploads. That technology is still in the future, but is 
still much less than what would be required to do the reverse, and 
'download' a mind into a biological brain (which might well require 
nanotech., or at least something more advanced than the initial 
uploading tech.).

So I think that the first uploads would not be reversible, and would 
apply to people who are not in a position to be fussy, or not really 
interested in a 'test-drive' (i.e. dead or dying people who want to 
upload). Later on, the technology could well allow downloading, but as 
John says, it seems unlikely that anyone would want to, unless the 
quality of uploaded life was much worse than we anticipate (and even if 
so, that would surely be a temporary situation).

One thing that occurs to me is that a snapshot of the relevant brain 
data could be kept, and repeated attempts made to create a functioning 
upload from it, until it works properly. This would be a step beyond 
cryonic preservation, but still short of an upload (I'd certainly want 
some very robust and reliable backup arrangements made, though, that 
were at least as safe as the data residing in a cryopreserved biological 
brain. Although aldehyde-stabilised cryopreservation sounds the most 
robust, it can't be turned into multiple backups, so turning your data 
into digital form as soon as possible might be the safest option, even 
if the data has to then wait around for a few decades or centuries 
before being used to create an upload. The crucial question then 
becomes: What data, exactly, is needed? Get that wrong, and you're 
permanently dead, no matter what).

-- 
Ben

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