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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/10/2025 04:17, Keith Henson
wrote:<span style="white-space: pre-wrap">
</span></div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAPiwVB4V-1o3Vi9rErKDd_YhiZ5O0s6TT7HMxV6rwdU+JcTwcQ@mail.gmail.com">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">
Full molecular nanotechnology that is up to mapping out the brain
should be able to implant memory. I don't say it will be easy, but
with only modest life extension, I can wait. One way uploading (which
Hans Moravec proposed) seems like buying a car without a test drive.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, I'd rather wait too, and hopefully, with luck and care, will
be able to, but some people don't have that luxury. Cryonics may be
a solution, but it may be a one-way trip as well.<br>
<br>
Perhaps implanting memory into a biological brain will be a matter
of tweaking synaptic weighting, which should be doable given
non-destructive scanning technology, but it probably will also
involve changing neural connections, which is rather different. Not
impossible, granted, but the main thing that occurs to me is that an
uploaded mind could rapidly develop beyond the ability of any
biological brain to contain. For example, if I was uploaded today,
one of the first things I'd want to change (after taking a
subjective year or so to get acclimatised) would be to expand my
working memory and to improve my ability to make sense of maths and
statistics. Given that these current limitations are probably a
result of my brain structure, we'd be talking about major
refurbishment to transfer those changes back to my biological brain.
Then there's things like extra sensory modalities, improved visual
imagery, and all the other things that would be doable in an
uploaded mind, but not in biology.<br>
I imagine that being squeezed back into your original brain would be
more like a lobotomy than anything else.<br>
<br>
Constructing a new brain from scratch seems to be the best solution,
and as I said, that would probably not be biological anyway. Given
uploading tech., and the level of technological acceleration that
implies, biology will probably be last-year's tech. by then.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAPiwVB4V-1o3Vi9rErKDd_YhiZ5O0s6TT7HMxV6rwdU+JcTwcQ@mail.gmail.com">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">The chapter following the Clinic Seed goes into an urban setting where
the inactive bodies are stored under the buildings they lived in.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Ok, but why do that when the technology exists to create bodies on
demand? The only reasons I can think of are psychological, and with
the probable time-difference between virtual and meat-space, people
would probably get beyond that within minutes or seconds. It would
be like keeping an old and decrepit empty house that you only
briefly visit every decade or so, that no-one else can use, when
there are much better hotels available. Even the fittest 17-year-old
bio body is going to seem clunky, clumsy, stiff and exhausting after
10 minutes as an upload. And a 40-year-old body? Forget it, there
are much better ways for masochists to get their jollies.<br>
<br>
The thing that interests me here is not so much the end-result but
the path to it. Medical interventions as a front-end would be a good
strategy, but I can't see the story of Zaba?, was it? being typical.
And I can't see any government letting an AI system as powerful as
that have free reign to do whatever people want it to do, re.
medical things and uploading. I reckon a messy interim period is
inevitable, and something like Neil Asher's 'quiet war' would be the
very best we can hope for, where the AIs take over without much
turmoil and death. Probably unlikely, though.<br>
<br>
The important question might well be: "What can we do to prepare to
survive the interim period (assuming anyone can), in the next 6
months to 6 years?" Beyond 6 years, I reckon it's completely
pointless to speculate.<br>
<br>
Adrian was right to say the singularity won't be tomorrow. It might
be the day after, though.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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