[extropy-chat] Cryonics and uploading--reversible

[Eric Messick]

>This business of destructive uploads just isn't going to play in the market 
>(for anyone besides Hans), and, in my estimation, the technology to do 
>reversible uploading of this kind isn't any harder technically than a 
>destructive upload.
>
>Keith Henson

I always figured the data structure representing the uploaded brain
could be used to continuously update the synaptic connectivity in the
biological brain.  You end up with the biological brain remembering
the stream of consciousness of the upload in the computer.  Of course,
you continuously update in the other direction too.

The key to figuring this out is that you can have multiple streams of
consciousness running on top of the same set of data structures.  Just
sum the changes to the data structures due to each of the streams.

The data structures represent the neural connectivity of the brain and
the details of the synaptic strengths.

Consciousness is in the ephemeral electrical activity that sits on top
of those data structures.

Splitting and recombining those streams is easy, as long as the copies
of the data structures don't get too far out of sync.  If you separate
two copies of a brain for too long, the merge process could get
difficult.

So, does this unify "pattern" and "thread"?

-eric