Saturday 2 March 2024

Transhumanism And Pineapple Hedgehogs

Listening to a scientist talking about uploading our brains to Computers, i thought that i had better run this post by an IT expert to iron out any errors but to be honest, it kinda got away from me after the very first sentence which was: 'Imagine if you can, brain scanning technology and observing how
each individual neuron talks to other neurons'.

Nope, can't even begin to imagine it but we were getting free sandwiches at the end so i thought i had better hang around and make some sort of effort to understand it so mentally shook myself down, opened my mind and poised my notebook on my lap ready to understand how great it would be if  we can record all the neuron information to create a simulation of someone’s brain on a computer to transition a person from their biological body to synthetic hardware.
I guess it would be great...i suppose. Bugger i missed that but he used the word 'Transhumanism' which sounds something star trekky so i had better write that down, the geeks would lap that up.
Apparently if we could upload our minds to computers we could theoretically live forever and our brains would work better, faster and more efficiently than our biological ones but my biological brain has worked out that those people are bringing out plates wrapped in silver foil and laying them on the tables.
Oooh, that one is holding one of those hedgehogs with cheese and pineapple chunks, i do like a cheese and pineapple hedgehog...damn, i missed the first two of the three assumptions but it was something like the idea that if the person created in the process is really 'you'.
Now some bloke in a white lab coat is explaining how the human brain has around 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells, with an estimated one million billion neural connections and at the moment the most complex living thing they have managed to draw a diagram of is a fruit fly larva, which has about 3,000 neurons and 500,000 neural connections and took 3 years.
Some way to go then...i know a few people who probably have the brain power of a fruit fly larvae so they should move onto them, ah now he has quoted Rene 'i think therefore i am' Descartes so the idea is philosophical rather than actual, oh he poo-pooed it and said that it's the conscious mind they are interested in rather than the biological matter which is mostly fat and water anyway. Some more than others buster.
The computer, so he said, would replicate your brain’s structure and thereby replicate your conscious mind and then its a massive leap to 'let's assume we could do that' but we all know what 'assume' does, it makes you look a complete ass and delays the moment you get to the pineapple and cheese chunks so let's hurry this up and assume you've finished.
Damn, he has just put more slides on the screen and this one says is the morning 'you' the same person who went to bed the night before? What sort of a question is that? Would be a bloody confusing family breakfast table if someone who looked like Brain Blessed sat down with my cornflakes in the morning.
Good new is he said he would explain why this is important, bad news is he is explaining it with algebra so if the original biological you also survives the uploading process, along with your consciousness, there would be two people, resulting in two of 'you, a biological form (B) and one in an uploaded form (C) so we have (A) literally split into two separate people (B ≠ C) and be identical with both at the same time but you can only have either A = B or A = C.
Jesus H Christ on a pogo-stick, what is this guy crapping on about, you would have two people but you can't because A = B, and the upload would merely be a mental copy and not 'you' which makes it unlikely that 'you' would exist.
So in short, you science guys have only got as far as drawing the brains of a fruit fly larvae, you assume that we can do it and if we did then it wouldn't be 'you' anyway so why have i spent an hour sat here listening to this so i'm going to nick off to the buffet table while you do the Q&A bit.
My question would be is there any cheese sandwiches and is there a limit on the amount of cheese and pineapple chunks because i've missed lunch for this.

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