[ExI] Concerning mind uploading (Arthur Breitman)

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 5:00 AM,  Arthur Breitman
<arthur.breitman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 5:17 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi, J?r?me.
>>
>> I've heard quite a few people express the same doubts about uploading.  I
>> think there's a fundamental misunderstanding about what life as an upload
>> would presumably be like.  Nobody is proposing that an upload would be a
>> 'disembodied mind', with no inputs or outputs, a purely mental existence.
>>
> That being said, it's interesting to ponder what a disembodied brain would
> feel. I can't imagine there ever being the technology to do something as
> complex as brain simulation without the technology to do the comparatively
> trivial task of simulating an external world. This is just an idle thought
> exercise, and shouldn't be taken as more than mere rambl^W speculation on my
> part.

I have been thinking about this since Drexler came up with
nanotechnology in the late 1970s.  In this section of "the clinic
seed" a young girl, Zaba, has been shot through the spine and is being
repaired by an AI medical director at a remote clinic in Africa.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This time the nanomachines didn't infiltrate her brain just to shut it
down, though they did that and reversed the mild damage from shock and
low blood flow.   The nanomachines mapped out all her neural circuits
and cell connections.  Shortly before her parents entered the clinic
the next day they tentatively restored consciousness, partly in her
brain--which was far below the temperature needed to run on its
own--and partly in the haze of nanomachines that were also simulating
input in place of her eyes and ears.

"What happened to me?  Where am I?  Where is my body?" Zaba asked as
she became conscious.  She was calm because the nanomachines were
acting as tranquilizers.  Suskulan was listening to an interface to
her mostly simulated motor cortex.

To give Zaba orientation Suskulan imposed on her visual cortex a wire
frame image of the human form he usually presented then explained:

"You were shot, you are in the clinic Suskulan at the tata, and your
body is under the clinic being repaired.

"The clinic recently gained new powers to speak to spirits while their
bodies are being healed.

"The healing will take some time, even I do not know exactly how many
days," he added,  "You were badly injured."

"My mother and father," Zaba started and then stopped.

"They brought you to me yesterday and are very concerned.  Your mother
is holding the hand of an image of your body in the clinic.  Suskulan
switched her vision to one in the clinic looking at the repair table
and Zaba’s parents.   “I can extend my power and let you use it to
talk to them as if you were speaking through a telephone."

snip

Zaba had never used a telephone, the tata being well out of range of a
cell tower but she knew what they were like.  Suskulan's wire frame
image handed Zaba a cell phone image.  She reached out with her wire
frame body and took it from him.

snip

Her biological memory was being mechanically updated in her very cold
brain and her consciousness was running in a swarm of fast nano
computers.  Suskulan could have let her experience run even faster but
he didn't want Zaba to get too far out of synch with her family and
the rest of the tata.

Mechanically constructed memory is a very efficient way to learn.

snip

A few hours before her parents were to come on the last day, Zaba
warmed up her body under Suskulan's guidance.  Her consciousness was
continuous as the reactivated brain cells took over from the slowed
down swarm of nano computers that had been simulating them.   The
support and information umbilical connections withdrew and the holes
in her skin closed seamlessly as Zaba started breathing for the first
time in 9 days.

She sat up and coughed a few times.  Her physical body was different
from what she had experienced for the past subjective 90 days.
Better?  Worse?  She could not decide.  Zaba was delighted that there
was no sign she had been shot.  She walked around the huge underground
space, which had become familiar to her in the past 3 months as she
shifted her virtual viewpoint among clouds of utility fog.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> I can think of at least a few data points which hint at what a disembodied
> mind would feel.

> - Every night, our body is paralyzed and under a certain threshold, we do
> not feel our body. Yet, in our dreams, we're generally not disembodied, we
> have limbs, we move around.
> - Amputees widely report feeling phantoms limbs.
> - Isolation tanks produce visual and aural hallucinations. The brain seems
> to cope with the lack of stimuli by making up some.
> - Dissociative drugs like the anesthetic ketamine produce similar effects.
>
> Based on that, I tend to believe a brain in a box without any input or
> output would merely hallucinate its own environment. It wouldn't be hell,
> probably just a crazy dissociative dream.

Maybe.  I suspect a brain without input/output would be like a person
in solitary confinement.  Probably be considered cruel and unusual
punishment.  A substantial part of the population goes insane under
such circumstances.

Keith