[ExI] Philosopher claims - Consciousness can't be uploaded

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 8:29 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 12:59 AM Keith Henson via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > If it is possible to upload a brain, the same tools should allow the
> > reverse.
>
> Not necessarily.  It is quite possible to be able to read a state from
> neurons - measuring the electrical and chemical state - without being
> able to recreate that state.
>

While true that it may be technically impossible (for a given technology
level) it's shouldn't be logically or physically impossible to do so, given
what is currently known about physics.

For example, the universal application of physical laws implies that if a
physical arrangement can be occur once, it is possible for it to occur
again.

According to current cosmological theories, your exact state as you exist
on earth has occurred not only once, but has occurred an infinite number of
times across an infinite cosmos. It is even possible to (roughly) calculate
how near your closest such doppelganger should be.

This paper estimates 10^10^29 meters:
https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf

So while we lack the ability to read, or write biological neurons today,
this limitation should be overcome with a sufficient technology level.

Jason



> It's like the difference between the skill of literacy, and having the
> knowledge and ability to manufacture pens or pencils - or knowing that
> the letters are created by depositing pigment on surfaces.  (For
> instance and slightly analogous, one may have learned to read from
> pictures.  While one might know how pictures are taken, not having
> personally inspected the things that pictures are taken from, one has
> not had a way to reverse engineer the process of creating letters.)
>
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