WEBVTT - Ep18 "Could you upload your brain to live forever?" 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:09.160 How would we know if we're living in a simulation, 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.360 And what does that have to do with having a 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.680 dream that you're a butterfly or John Lennon or Renee 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:21.040 des Cartes or freezing yourself in a vat of liquid nitrogen? 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.040 And how will we solve the problem that human bodies 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:31.159 can't do space travel? Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.800 David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.280 and I've spent my career studying the intersection between how 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.720 the brain works and how we experience life. And what 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.360 I'm going to talk about today is the possibility of 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.840 living forever. What does that have to do with the brain? 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.479 Would we want to live forever? And how could we 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:58.840 get there? Humans have been obsessed with the idea of 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:04.200 immortality for ages. As far back as documented history goes, 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.360 there are stories of humans trying everything to unlock the 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:14.520 secret to eternal life. In Arthurian literature, the Holy Grail 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.119 was said to have miraculous healing powers and it would 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.400 grant anyone who drank from it eternal youthfulness, and the 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:27.520 ancient Egyptians they would painstakingly prepare the physical body for 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.280 the journey to the afterlife, and they believed you were 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.520 reborn again and again. And China's first emperor launched an 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.480 obsessive search for the elixir of life, and that obsession 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.440 continues and cultures all over the world today. While leaving 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.880 a legacy is the only thing close to immortality by 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.920 today's standards, Woodie Allen wanted the real thing. He said, 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.800 I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:59.320 want to achieve immortality through not dying. He said, I 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:01.600 don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.000 I want to live on in my apartment. So what 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:10.720 are our options for achieving eternal life? Well, the first 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.240 option has to do with medical innovations, such that we 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.240 keep repairing things that go wrong with the body. And 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:22.600 in fact, it's rumored that life insurance companies assume in 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:27.080 their actuarial tables that children born now are going to 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.200 live to one hundred and fourteen years old. And this 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:35.359 is based just on extrapolating medical innovation curves. In other words, 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:39.280 you take the pace of medical progress and you guess 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:41.840 what things are going to look like in a century 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.440 from now. But the fact is there are barriers to 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:50.480 physical immortality, like aging and disease, and then of course 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.600 there are accidents that can happen, like you fall off 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.120 a cliff, where you get in a car accident, or 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.880 a tornado gets you, or a volcano explodes, and on 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.600 and on. So although we can continue to make improvements 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:09.240 in medical science to expand the average lifespan, there's no 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:12.919 real guarantee that your lifespan is going to be any 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.720 better now. There's a second approach that some people have taken, 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.560 and that's about making a throw to the future, when 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:22.760 people will know things like. 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:24.119 How to repair bodies. 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.240 The issue is that we just don't know how to 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.080 cure lots of problems now, but it's not impossible that 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.760 two hundred years from now a lot of this stuff 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.800 will be obvious. In two hundred years, we'll look back 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.280 at our textbooks and we'll think, my gosh, how did 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:41.760 we not know that? How did we not know that 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:43.760 we can just reach in and tweak some things on 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.640 the telomeres and cure cancer easily with a few zapps 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:52.560 and essentially make ourselves live much longer, maybe forever. The 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:54.960 problem is that this is in the future and not 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.720 right now. And therefore we don't get any of the 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:02.200 benefits of that. So the idea is, perhaps you could 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:07.640 by pausing yourself now and rebooting yourself in that future. 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.760 And that's the approach of a company called Alcore. Alcore 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.240 is based in Arizona, and they have these giant silver 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:20.600 tanks called doers that are filled with liquid nitrogen and 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.520 they're kept at a temperature of negative one hundred and 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:27.719 ninety six degrees celsius. So when you're expiring on your 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:32.040 hospital bed, this company gets contacted either by your family 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.680 or because you're wearing a special bracelet, and as soon 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.880 as your heart stops, a team from Alcore rushes to 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:43.400 your bedside and starts the deep freezing process. Then they 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.080 transport your body to Arizona where they put it in 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.520 the giant vat with the liquid nitrogen. And you actually 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.880 have two choices here. You can freeze your entire body, 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.400 or if you can't afford that, you can just have 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.839 your head removed and just have your head frozen. Because 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.799 while it's great to have your whole body, the real 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.279 representation of who you are is theoretically just kept in 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.440 the brain. Or suffice it to say, that's the densest 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:12.240 representation of who you are. 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:14.119 You just need the head. 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.040 Now, as a side note, you might wonder how much 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.599 this costs. Well, you don't actually have to pay anything upfront. Instead, 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.400 you can modify your life insurance payment to make its 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:28.200 payout to the company. So this allows you the possibility 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.520 of living a second chapter. Now, if you're unfamiliar with 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.919 this slice of the world, it will blow your mind. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.560 I visited al Core and met the then CEO, Max 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.200 More for my television show The Brain, and I got 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.960 to tour around the facility and it's quite striking. There 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:48.000 are these giant silver vats of liquid nitrogen and they 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.520 currently have two hundred and eight people stored in there, 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:56.320 and the company has over fourteen hundred people who are 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.640 signed up for the service, but they haven't died yet 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:02.040 and they will eventually end up in these vats. Now, 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:07.400 although scientists don't currently know how to unfreeze and revivify 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.200 a body, the idea is that some generation in the 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.840 future will figure that out. Maybe that's a century from now, 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.159 or maybe that's a millennium. And then the idea is 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:22.920 that the frozen person will awaken into a new world. 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:28.080 So people who sign up for the service operate on hope. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:32.520 They're making a deep football throw into the future, hoping 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.120 someone will be there to catch it, and some people 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:40.680 choose to cryo preserve their pets. Also, the idea is 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:44.559 that if you awaken to a completely new reality, that's 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.320 likely to be disorienting, and if you have a familiar, 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.320 fuzzy face by your side, that could be really nice 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:55.280 and reassuring. Also, it turns out that Alcore allows you 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.520 to have a small memory box to go along with 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.680 your frozen body. And the reason I mentioned this is 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:05.000 because sometimes people ask me to inscribe one of my 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.400 books to them. But I recently got a really interesting 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.240 request from a man who had just signed up for Alcore. 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.760 He said he'd been moved by my book to the 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.240 Brain and wanted to keep that in his memory box 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.280 that goes along with the frozen body, so he'd have 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.520 it in his new world when he gets rebooted. So 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.760 he asked me to sign my book for his revivification 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.120 in a century or two. In other words, I would 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.880 sign the book to him for his re entry into 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:38.560 the world sometime in the future. Now I've had a 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:42.480 lot of cool requests to sign books for special occasions, 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.680 but signing for someone who is possibly coming back in 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.440 a couple of centuries. That was a new one for me. 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.680 So here's what I wrote, Dear Steve, welcome back. I'm 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:59.040 so curious what secrets the world has divulged now. Presumably 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.480 the text books have been thoroughly rewritten, and the current 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.920 understanding of science would intimidate and thrill a twenty first 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.520 century mind. Presumably I am long gone and all that 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.440 remains of me are fading echoes of my genetic code. 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:21.560 But this book remains. It memorializes what we knew in 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:25.760 the early part of the millennium. Like all snapshots of science, 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:30.720 some notions will stale, while others will prove more durable. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:35.920 Whatever the case, these pages form a bridge. They allow 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:40.400 me to talk with you as though we still live contemporaneously. 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:45.800 They allow two brains to span an unknowably wide chasm 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:46.360 of time. 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:48.800 Enjoy the future, David. 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:55.960 So that's the method of freezing yourself until biology is 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.440 better understood. It's a hail Mary throw, and you don't 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.680 know for sure that anyone's going to catch the ball. 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:05.679 For all you know, society will have collapsed, and maybe 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:10.040 your body is going to get cannibalized, or legislatively, something 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:12.840 might happen in the future where all these frozen bodies 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.680 don't get unfrozen, or we are long blown up in 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:19.400 a nuclear war and there's nobody there to unfreeze you. 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:22.640 But people who sign up for this figure that at 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.720 least they have a non zero chance of something happening here, 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.360 of getting to live a second chapter, and that's better 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:34.360 than having one hundred percent certainty that you're going to die. 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:39.679 But fundamentally, there's a problem that's probably intractable, which is 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.760 that we are made of biological pieces and parts, and 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.760 those things are going to wear down. Even if we're 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:52.200 able to successfully unfreeze people, the ticking clock of aging 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.280 will keep ticking, and we're always going to be racing 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.920 against entropy. As the poet William Butler Yeates said, things 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.959 fall apart, the center cannot hold, and this is what 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.120 aging and death is. And that brings us to a 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.880 question of how we might solve this for the long term, 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:15.280 forever by just extracting the part of us that matters 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:21.640 our consciousness. So could it be possible someday to upload 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:26.000 our consciousness out of our brains and onto a different 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:30.120 substrate like silicon and run it, and would that still 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:30.440 be you. 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:32.240 So here's the idea. 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.680 Maybe the hardware of the brain, all these cells, that's 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:39.600 not the important part. But instead it's the software of 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.880 the brain that matters. In other words, the algorithms that 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:46.840 are running. Maybe that's what makes a mind. Maybe it's 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.760 the patterns by which these spikes, these zeros and ones 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:51.600 are running. 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:53.800 And if we could extract those. 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.679 Massive patterns and reproduce them on something different, maybe that 0:10:58.720 --> 0:10:59.760 would be you. 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.120 This idea is called computational equivalents. 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.320 The idea is that the eighty six billion cells of 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.320 the brain are just running algorithms that have been sussed 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:15.880 out by mother nature over billions of years. But fundamentally, 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.720 it's just code that's being run. And so the idea 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.400 of computational equivalents is that it doesn't matter if you 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:28.280 reproduce this system out of legos or tinker toys or 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:33.520 ball bearings or silicon. If the system runs the same program, 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:35.920 you will get the same consciousness. 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:37.280 You will get you. 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.920 Now, we don't know if the theory of computational equivalents 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:45.240 is correct, but if it is, it implies that we 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:50.600 could shift ourselves off the degrading biological substrate of our bodies, 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:55.720 and with powerful enough computers simulating all these neural interactions, 0:11:55.760 --> 0:12:02.040 we could upload our consciousness and exist digitally, circumventing the 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:07.040 inevitability of demise. That would be the single biggest leap 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.320 in the history of our species, launching us into an 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:14.960 era of transhumanism. Just imagine what it could look like 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.440 to leave your body behind and wake up in a 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.800 simulated world. Your simulated existence could look like anything you wanted. 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:28.679 Programmers could make any virtual world for you. If you've 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:30.719 ever wanted to fly. 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.120 Or breathe underwater, or inhabit an alien planet, you just 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.560 sign a contract for it, You pay, and that becomes 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.800 your new existence. It's your simulation and your reality is 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.280 up to you. And as a side note, we could 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:50.400 in theory run virtual brains as fast or slow as 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:54.520 we wanted, so in seconds of computing time, you could 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:57.960 have thousands of years of experience. In fact, even if 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.800 the cosmos were coming to an end tomorrow, the programmers 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:04.559 could simulate a billion more years for you. 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:05.200 In that time. 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.760 So all that sounds great, but there are some technical 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:17.359 and theoretical hurdles. The first one is the enormous difficulty 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.760 of figuring out the secrets of the brain. And this 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.400 is a problem that can't be underestimated. 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:24.880 As much as. 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.720 We've discovered about how the brain works, we are a 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:31.560 long way off from understanding the big picture. It's a 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:47.120 very tough problem. You've heard me mentioned before on this 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.880 podcast that the brain is the most complex device we 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.640 have ever discovered. It has almost one hundred billion neurons. 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.160 Each of those is as complicated as the city of 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:02.440 New York, and you've got detailed connections between them that 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:06.720 number in the hundreds of trillions. So figuring out the 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:09.880 algorithms running in the system, or even just scratching the 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.840 surface of those is something that still, for the most. 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.120 Part, has completely eluded us. 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.800 Consider this experiment that a couple of my colleagues did 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.120 in twenty seventeen. They asked, what would happen if we 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:29.440 used our best neuroscience approaches to understand a simple microprocessor, 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:31.840 just a computer chip. So if the brain is really 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.280 like a giant, complex computer chip, let's see how far 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.240 we can get by analyzing this very simple one. So 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.680 they picked an Atari microprocessor from nineteen eighty one that 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.800 ran donkey Kong. And it turns out that after measuring 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.440 all the input and output signals from the chip and 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.720 applying the type of analyses that we have in neuroscience, 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:57.920 they couldn't say much of anything about the function of 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:00.520 the chip. I mean, note that they all already knew 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.040 what the chip accomplished, and they know how chips work. 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:06.760 But when you're looking at a ton of zeros and 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:11.760 ones streaming in and streaming out, it's really difficult to say, Okay, 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.000 here's the algorithms that the chip is implementing. As the 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.480 researchers put it in that paper quote. In the case 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.000 of the processor, we know its function and structure, and 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.160 our results stayed well short of what we would call 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.560 a satisfying understanding. So figuring out what the brain is 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.360 implementing may turn out to be really hard. 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:35.240 So can we copy the brain? 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:39.480 Well, we're nowhere close to copying the human brain because 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:43.600 the detailed structure of it is so enormous. It's probably 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.760 a zetabyte of data, which is maybe around a tenth 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.320 of the computational capacity of our planet right now. But 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:55.680 this is fundamentally just a technology challenge, and the way 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.200 that things are going we will probably get there at 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.120 some point. It may not happen in our lifetime, but 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.640 it's essentially guaranteed to happen in the future as our 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.239 computational power increases. 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:09.160 Okay, but this brings us. 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.040 To a tougher hurdle, which might be a theoretical one, 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.320 which is, there may be physics happening in the brain 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.920 that don't make it as easy as copy pasting a 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:21.840 giant document. 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:24.040 For example, the. 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.800 Brain might be exploiting quantum mechanical effects, and if so, 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.560 that means we can't pretend the brain is just a 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:36.000 big clockwork machine. Quantum mechanics is the science of the 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:40.000 very small. It explains the behavior of subatomic particles and 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:42.360 how they interact with each other and with light. The 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.600 thing is that it's extraordinarily counterintuitive, and it's not really 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:50.800 anything like classical physics, and we have no idea how 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:51.520 to build a. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.240 Quantum system the size of the brain. 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:58.080 Now I'll just mention there are many scientists like Roger Penrose, 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.200 who recently won the Nobel Prize, who suggest that there 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.800 might be quantum mechanical effects in the brain, And there 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:06.919 are many more scientists on the other side of the 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.000 debate who say they think there aren't quantum mechanics in 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.040 the brain, but I just want to note that we. 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:13.240 Don't actually know. 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.919 Some people make fun of the quantum mechanics approach and 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.359 they say something like, well, quantum mechanics is mysterious and 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:22.960 the brain is mysterious, so maybe they're the same thing. 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:24.159 Ha ha, Okay. 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.879 Skepticism is always warranted until something is demonstrated to be true. 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.719 But science doesn't rule things in er out in advance 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.200 of having enough data, So when it comes to quantum mechanics, 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:38.919 we don't actually know yet. Part of the problem that 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.800 people have excepting quantum mechanics is that it's poorly understood 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.240 and it's relatively new for us humans. But remember that 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:50.240 for mother Nature, quantum mechanics has been around from the beginning. 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:52.719 And one thing that's clear is that if there's something 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:56.720 mother Nature can take advantage of, she will. So maybe 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:58.919 quantum mechanics has nothing at all to do with the 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.239 brain or everything to do with the brain, but we 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.160 can't rule it out yet. And if it turns out 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.760 that the brain is not so straightforward but requires quantum 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.840 effects or whatever we discover next century like super hyper 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.080 quantum x effects, then this path of learning how to 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:16.960 reproduce the. 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:18.959 Brain might take much longer. 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.160 Maybe we'll need quantum computers or something we haven't even 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.919 thought of yet. And I want to mention a third 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:29.800 technical hurdle to successfully uploading our consciousness, which is that 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.840 the simulated brain has to be able to modify its 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.480 own structure. This is what's known as brain plasticity. In 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.080 some of my other episodes have been about this. The 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.840 activity that runs through a brain modifies the brain. 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:46.480 It changes the brain. 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.240 That's why you have memory, for example, because everything you 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:54.280 experience is actually changing the physical structure of your brain, 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:58.400 so that activity runs through it differently. Next time, when 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.760 you learn that the name of this part podcast is 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:05.120 inner cosmos, that physically changes the structure of your brain 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.560 so that when someone asks you, hey, what was the 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.760 name of that podcast, your brain can retrieve that information. 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.440 So we need to simulate not only the detailed structure 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.960 of the brain to run the software, but we also 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:23.040 need to understand the physics of the ongoing interactions and 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:26.159 how it changes. For example, in the brain, you have 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.040 the activity of transcription factors that travel to the nucleus 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.280 and change gene expression. You have dynamic changes in the 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.680 location and strength of the synapses, the connections between neurons, 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:43.520 and so on. And unless your simulated experiences change the 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:48.840 structure of your simulated brain, you could inform new memories. 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.880 You'd have no sense of the passage of time. Your 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:57.840 consciousness would be frozen at whatever point it was uploaded 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.439 into the simulation. Under those circums stances, would there be 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.800 any point to immortality? Okay, So let's imagine that two 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.240 hundred years go by and we managed to surmount all 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:10.560 those technical hurdles. 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:12.440 We have enough storage. 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.119 Capacity, we figure out any quantum effects, We make it 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.280 so that the simulation self modifies based on its experience. 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.480 So great, we're there, and in this future world, uploading 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:27.360 our consciousness would be possible. Now what would that mean 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.160 for the human species? Well, among other things, it would 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.119 open up the possibility of getting to other solar systems. 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.320 There are at least one hundred billion other galaxies in 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.120 our cosmos, each of which contain one hundred billion stars. 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:47.520 We've already spotted thousands of exoplanets orbiting those stars. There 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.800 are planets that are like Earth in some way, and 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:52.800 some of those have conditions quite. 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:53.200 Like the Earth. 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:57.200 But The impossibility lies in the fact that our current 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:03.320 fleshy bodies will ever get to those exoplanets, because there's 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:05.400 just no real way that we're going to be able 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:09.280 to travel those kind of distances in space and in time. 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.800 But uploading would allow us. 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:16.760 To transfer our minds into bodies that are built for 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:21.000 space travel, and that way we could travel between stars 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:27.600 in between galaxies with a human mind and a titanium body. Also, 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:32.359 note that with a simulated mind, you could pause the simulation, 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:35.679 you could shoot it out into space and reboot it 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:38.880 a thousand years later when it arrives at a planet, 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:42.120 So it would seem to your consciousness that you were 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.359 on Earth, you had a launch, and then you instantly 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.960 found yourself on a new planet. In other words, if 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.960 you could upload your brain into silicon, this would be 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:56.720 equivalent to the physics dream of finding a wormhole that 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.159 lets you get from one part of the universe to 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:05.920 another in a subjective instant. Okay, so we've established that 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.520 if the algorithms are the important part of what makes 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:13.560 you who you are, rather than the biological physical stuff, 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:17.200 then it's a possibility will someday be able to copy 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.920 our brains and upload them onto Silica and run them there. 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:25.000 But there's an important question here, is it really you? 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:28.160 I was thinking about this the other day because Paul 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:33.200 McCartney announced an upcoming song with vocals by John Lennon 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:37.640 thanks to AI that brings Lennon's voice back to life. 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:41.680 But even though John Lennon is out there singing new 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:46.240 songs now and everyone's talking about his immortality, he doesn't 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:50.200 get to enjoy it. John Lennon doesn't know that he's 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:53.439 been brought back. It's just zeros and ones running on 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.359 a computer. John Lennon doesn't get anything out of that. 0:22:58.400 --> 0:22:59.520 So even if there's. 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:03.719 A suit for a complete simulation of you, is it 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.560 really you? Or is it just zeros and ones? Well, 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:11.359 I think this could be argued either way. For example, 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.399 every night when you go to sleep, it's like you 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:18.600 are turning off, and then the consciousness that awakens on 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:22.320 your pillow in the morning inherits all of your memories 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:25.439 and we say, yeah, I'm the same person who climbed 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:27.959 into this bed last night. I turned off, and then 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.720 I turn on again and it's me and I'm getting 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.800 back to business. So maybe the process of transferring from 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:39.000 your physical body to a computer is just like that 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:42.439 where you open your eyes in the simulated world and 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:44.119 you think, cool, here I am. 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:45.640 Let's get back to business. 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.520 But there's another way to look at this too, which 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:52.399 is that possibly when some company scans your brain and 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:56.120 then uploads you into the computer, that's not you at all. 0:23:56.280 --> 0:24:02.080 That's just a computer program that's running. That program happens 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:06.160 to feel confident that it's you. It has all your 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:10.000 memories and beliefs, and thinks that it was just there 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:14.160 standing outside the computer in your body, but its existence 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.160 inside the computer doesn't help you at all. Let's imagine 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:21.240 you just paid a million bucks to this immortality company 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:23.679 and they tell you, hey, it worked. You see this 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:27.360 little coordinate moving around on the screen. That's you. You're 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:31.640 living forever now. And then you leave the immortality company 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.359 and you drive home and sit on the couch and 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:36.199 your life is no different. 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:38.679