Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to sign Stuff and production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoar hitch hamp and today we're asking
Speaker 1: the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Speaker 1: Is it actually possible to digitize your mind and who
Speaker 1: you are and have it run on a robot or
Speaker 1: a hard drive. Would it be a way for you
Speaker 1: to lift forever or maybe a way to copy yourself.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to three experts about this, a mathematician who
Speaker 1: focuses on emerging technologies, a neuroscientist who studies brain connections,
Speaker 1: and a philosopher who's grappled with the question should we
Speaker 1: upload our brains? So don't pull the plug and get
Speaker 1: ready to live inside our electronic mind as we answer
Speaker 1: the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: Everyone, So today we're talking to three people, a mathematician,
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist, and a philosopher. And they're not going to
Speaker 1: walk into a bar, but if each spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about this idea of uploading your brain.
Speaker 1: We'll start with the mathematician, Professor Ole Hackstrom. Here's what
Speaker 1: he does. Well, thank you doctor Hagstrom for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you glad to be here. So most of my
Speaker 3: every year has been as a mathematician, but since about
Speaker 3: twenty ten I've gradually become more interested in questions about
Speaker 3: emerging technologists and global risk.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us where you work.
Speaker 3: I'm at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to start with the concept of mind uploading.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what it is for those of
Speaker 1: us that I have never heard of it before.
Speaker 3: So the idea of mind uploading, which is like a
Speaker 3: hypothetic future technology, is that if you make a simulation
Speaker 3: of the human brain, and you make it refined enough
Speaker 3: and accurate enough, it will be as good as the
Speaker 3: real thing. And the hope is that if it's good enough,
Speaker 3: we can use this technology to migrate over to machines.
Speaker 3: Our flash and blood bodies have all kinds of defects
Speaker 3: after one hundred years, so so we tend to disintegrate
Speaker 3: and die. And at least some people hope that uploading
Speaker 3: technology could need to much longer and perhaps in effect
Speaker 3: unbounded life.
Speaker 1: Wow, do you know anything about the origins of this idea.
Speaker 1: When it started, when people started thinking about it.
Speaker 3: It started in science fiction. Twentieth century science fiction writer
Speaker 3: Stanislav lam certainly wrote about it, and another person who
Speaker 3: helped popularize this concept was a philosopher, Derek Parfitt, who
Speaker 3: thought very hard about a similar concept, which is called teleportation.
Speaker 1: Like you're faxing yourself to another planet exactly, all right,
Speaker 1: that's the basic idea. Do somehow simulate our brains in
Speaker 1: a computer to escape our soft, perishable bodies. The next
Speaker 1: question is, of course, how would this work? What are
Speaker 1: the possible technologies that people have thought about doing this?
Speaker 1: Mind uploading?
Speaker 3: I should emphasize that this is not something we can
Speaker 3: expect in the next decade or so. I think that
Speaker 3: this is probably at least two or three decades away,
Speaker 3: and maybe even further. There are several steps involved in uploading. First,
Speaker 3: you need to scan the brain in extreme detail, and
Speaker 3: the main concept there is that somehow you freeze the
Speaker 3: brain and you cut it up in thin, thin, thin slices,
Speaker 3: and then you scan.
Speaker 1: Each slice whoa.
Speaker 3: And then you have to somehow organize all the information
Speaker 3: you have gotten out of this and use that on
Speaker 3: the machine. That is then meant to run your mind.
Speaker 3: That would be an example of so called destructive uploading,
Speaker 3: which requires that your brain is destroyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems you really have to commit to.
Speaker 3: It absolutely, and many people might hesitate about that.
Speaker 1: So that's option one. Freeze your brain, slice it really thin,
Speaker 1: scan each slice, and then reconstruct the three D structure
Speaker 1: of your brain, all the neurons and how they're connected
Speaker 1: to each other. Of course the problem with that is
Speaker 1: that you have to freeze your brain and slice it.
Speaker 1: Fortunately there's option number two.
Speaker 3: But the more ambitious concept if you're worry about having
Speaker 3: your brain destroyed, is the idea of non destructive uploading.
Speaker 3: So that requires figuring out how to do this scanning
Speaker 3: thing with out destroying the brain. That would be to
Speaker 3: have nano robots somehow, maybe through the blood stream, enter
Speaker 3: the brain and photograph and otherwise record what is going
Speaker 3: on there in the brain.
Speaker 1: WHOA, I thought you were going to say something like fMRI,
Speaker 1: like some kind of magnetic scanner somehow reads yourselves. Is
Speaker 1: that a possibility?
Speaker 3: I don't know. If that were doable, then that sounds
Speaker 3: less invasive.
Speaker 1: So then idia would be nano robots who'd go into
Speaker 1: your blood stream. It would get into your brain. And
Speaker 1: then how do they record all your neurons.
Speaker 3: That's something that has to be figured out, but some
Speaker 3: sort of electromagnetic recording device, and then maybe they can
Speaker 3: transfer this information the radio link or.
Speaker 1: Something that's uption number two nanobots. We'll talk about other
Speaker 1: ways to scan or capture who you are later in
Speaker 1: the program, but for now, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Once you scan your brain, what's thanks? Okay. And then
Speaker 1: once you scan your brain, you presumably have a picture
Speaker 1: of how all your neurons are connected to each other.
Speaker 3: Right, a kind of three D picture. But the key
Speaker 3: feature is that it's going to contain all the information
Speaker 3: about connectedness between synapses and so on and so forth,
Speaker 3: enough to reconstruct the whole brain state. And then yeah,
Speaker 3: the brain processes, the thinking and so on started on
Speaker 3: the computer.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Okay. So, now, once you have a bottel of
Speaker 1: your brain, then you would create a new brain, or
Speaker 1: you would stimulate one in the computer.
Speaker 3: The idea would be to run this on a computer,
Speaker 3: and if this simulation is faithful enough, some people hope
Speaker 3: that this would actually be as good as having a
Speaker 3: new brain. Wow, in a sense, even better. If you
Speaker 3: are the kind of person who valuesness, maybe getting your
Speaker 3: robot body as a replacemant for your present and highly imperfect,
Speaker 3: presumably flesh and blood body. Or alternatively, if you want
Speaker 3: to live in maybe other environments than the physical environment
Speaker 3: that you maybe not maybe you could migrate to virtual
Speaker 3: worlds on some really big computer that can host maybe
Speaker 3: emulations of you and your loved ones and fans and
Speaker 3: everybody who wants to join, could maybe live in a
Speaker 3: society on this machine. It's the kind of technology that
Speaker 3: we don't know if it's doable, but we also don't
Speaker 3: have like physical limits that show that it's impossible, so
Speaker 3: it may be worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's uploading your brain and simulating it
Speaker 1: in a computer, and you can imagine there are several
Speaker 1: reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you're near
Speaker 1: the end of your life and this could be a
Speaker 1: way for you to live longer, maybe even forever. But
Speaker 1: according to doctor Hagstrom, there are other things you could
Speaker 1: do with this technology, starting with cloning yourself.
Speaker 3: In a sense, a more radical thing you might do
Speaker 3: is that once you have this emulation running on the machine,
Speaker 3: it's an easy thing to copy it, so you can
Speaker 3: have several emulations of yourself running on the machine.
Speaker 1: WHOA, You could clone yourself basically.
Speaker 3: Yes, And it's a much more precise thing than just
Speaker 3: genetic cloning, because if you would, through genetics create clowns
Speaker 3: on yourself, well, that would be persons who would share
Speaker 3: your g you know, but not your upbringing and education
Speaker 3: and so on. So they might be very different people,
Speaker 3: just like identical twins typically somewhat different people. But in
Speaker 3: this case you get a pair of ultra identical twins,
Speaker 3: much much more identical than the identical twins we have now.
Speaker 3: And each one of these simulations would feel like they argue,
Speaker 3: So this would give rise to maybe even legal questions
Speaker 3: about who has ownership to your possessions and if you're married,
Speaker 3: who gets yourselves?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure my spouse can handle more than
Speaker 1: one of me. She already gets frustrated enough with one
Speaker 1: of me.
Speaker 3: So it's quite a far out scenario, and it's not
Speaker 3: easy to figure out how we would organize a society
Speaker 3: where we have easy access to this uploading technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, once you're in the cloud, you could copy yourself,
Speaker 1: and your copies could live in different robots or in
Speaker 1: different virtual worlds, although this opens up some logistical problems.
Speaker 3: And I give one other example of a legal issue
Speaker 3: that might arise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please, namely if.
Speaker 3: At this future time we still value the idea of
Speaker 3: democracy and every person has one vote, and an argument
Speaker 3: should be made that emulated minds should have the same
Speaker 3: rights as democratic citizens as biological minds, because they are
Speaker 3: as capable as us, and they have the same canceled
Speaker 3: feelings and so forth, so they should really have the
Speaker 3: whole package of human rights. But if there's an election
Speaker 3: coming up and you really root for this candidate rather
Speaker 3: than the other candidate, what is going to prevent you
Speaker 3: then from making a thousand emulated copies on you and
Speaker 3: the collective of you will get one thousand votes in
Speaker 3: this election. How would you construct a system of democracy
Speaker 3: which can function in a world with emulated minds without
Speaker 3: having these manipulations of the system.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Yeah, that would probably blow the minds
Speaker 1: of our current politicians, who can't even handle voting by mail.
Speaker 3: Right, we can do it and Sweden, but I hear
Speaker 3: you have some problems in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yes, democracy will get kind of sticky once people start
Speaker 1: uploading and copying their brains. I mean, just think about
Speaker 1: how many votes you have to count.
Speaker 3: When coppying is cheap. I don't know what will happen
Speaker 3: to the world population. I can imagine that we might
Speaker 3: quickly go from the billions to the trillions or quadrillions
Speaker 3: of people.
Speaker 1: Do you think it'll be cheaper to run a person
Speaker 1: on a computer than to have them be alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One reason for thinking so is that we have
Speaker 3: this very rapid development in computer efficiency, which doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be about to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Although on the plus that you wouldn't need healthcare
Speaker 1: only tech support. Hey, today's IT technicians could be tomorrow's doctors.
Speaker 1: Another interesting application of uploading your brain is space travel.
Speaker 3: There is really strong reason to replace these bodies that
Speaker 3: we now have that are extremely ill suited for space
Speaker 3: travel by robotic bodies, and uploading technology could achieve that
Speaker 3: could be a case sep in conquering the galaxy and
Speaker 3: other galaxies.
Speaker 1: This could be one of the positives of uploading your brain.
Speaker 1: If we could colonize space with our emulations of brains.
Speaker 3: Yes, potentially the biggest positives.
Speaker 1: Yes, we could upload our brains and explore the cosmos.
Speaker 1: Your mind could live inside a spacecraft and be powered
Speaker 1: for thousands of years by a solar or nuclear battery,
Speaker 1: and you could travel and get to distant stars and
Speaker 1: explore the other side of the galaxy, or visit this
Speaker 1: super massive black hole at the center of it. Or
Speaker 1: you could even imagine traveling to the edge of the universe.
Speaker 1: All right, The last question I asked doctor Hagstrom was
Speaker 1: what would it mean if we could do this? What
Speaker 1: do you think it says that uploading your mind is possible?
Speaker 1: What does it say about us as humans?
Speaker 3: Perhaps if this is true, then it gives reason for
Speaker 3: us to be a bit more humble in realizing that
Speaker 3: our present kind of existence is not as uniquely tied
Speaker 3: to our present bodies as we thought it was.
Speaker 1: The idea that we can be copied. She tells that
Speaker 1: we're replaceable.
Speaker 3: I guess, which is certainly worrying thought. And I think
Speaker 3: that it's something we should ask ourselves very carefully before
Speaker 3: we launch this technology, because if we don't think about
Speaker 3: these questions carefully and arrive at the solution of how
Speaker 3: to design in the society with uploaded minds that makes
Speaker 3: us happy and satisfied, we might end up with something
Speaker 3: that we would then deeply regret.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a pretty good overview of what the technology is,
Speaker 1: how it might work, and what we could use it for.
Speaker 1: The next question is can it actually be done. We'll
Speaker 1: dig into the nitty gritty details of scanning your brain
Speaker 1: with a neuroscientist, and then later we'll talk to an
Speaker 1: expert about whether an uploaded you would still be you
Speaker 1: stay with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're talking about uploading your brain to a computer, and
Speaker 1: so far we've learned what that means and what you
Speaker 1: could do with it. Next, we're going to talk to
Speaker 1: Professor Dwayne Godwin, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest University, about
Speaker 1: whether he thinks any of this is actually possible. Doctor
Speaker 1: Godwin and I wrote a book together called Out of
Speaker 1: Your Mind, in which we explore this and other fascinating
Speaker 1: questions about the brain. Here's what he said, what's the
Speaker 1: current state of the art in terms of scanning your brain?
Speaker 1: What kind of information into what resolution can we do that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So, one of the ways that we can do it
Speaker 4: on the structural side is something called ultra high field MRI.
Speaker 4: There's this giant magnet that's alternating a magnetic field, and
Speaker 4: it's able to compose a functional image as well as
Speaker 4: the structural image of the brain. And it's able to
Speaker 4: do that at a pretty high resolutions. It can resolve
Speaker 4: the living brain at submillimeter detail, so less than a millimeter,
Speaker 4: but not at the level of synapses are on the
Speaker 4: level of microns and nanometers. That's the level at which
Speaker 4: synapses and synaptic protein are operating.
Speaker 1: I see you're not getting the details of like this
Speaker 1: neuron is sending a signal to that neuron. Right, that's
Speaker 1: too small.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's too small.
Speaker 1: Do you think that can get better over time? Like?
Speaker 1: Are people trying to make that micro level fMRI?
Speaker 4: Yeah, everything gets better all the time. I guess the
Speaker 4: question is is the current state capable of doing what
Speaker 4: you posed in your initial question? And I would say no,
Speaker 4: at the moment, it's incapable of doing that. But can
Speaker 4: you imagine that some day in the future there would
Speaker 4: be you know, sufficiently strong magnets or ways to capture
Speaker 4: that information. Yeah, sure, you could imagine that. It's just
Speaker 4: that it's not here yet.
Speaker 1: All right. That sounds promising. There's also the option of
Speaker 1: slicing your brain. Would that work to capture who you are.
Speaker 4: So there are methods where you can look at that
Speaker 4: level of detail. Unfortunately, those methods require that you die.
Speaker 4: We don't yet have wadys of looking at it without
Speaker 4: taking chunks of your brain out, essentially pickling them and
Speaker 4: then slicing them into very very thin sections of brain
Speaker 4: that we then aim an electron beam at in order
Speaker 4: to look at the proteins that are in those very
Speaker 4: fine level synapses. So yeah, it's in principle possible for
Speaker 4: you to capture that level of detail from a human brain.
Speaker 4: We do it from animal brains all the time. But
Speaker 4: what you're getting is the instant after you had actually died.
Speaker 4: So I don't think you want to be necessarily preserved
Speaker 4: in that state, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would not be my preferred way to scan
Speaker 1: my brain. And the problem here is also that you'd
Speaker 1: be scanning a not so fresh brain. Yes, Like the
Speaker 1: process would have to be like I die and then
Speaker 1: my brain is sliced. It has to be sliced right
Speaker 1: away before it spoils.
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, it would take many hours most likely before
Speaker 4: I could be placed into a state where my body
Speaker 4: could be preserved in order to be able to make
Speaker 4: those fine sections of tissue. And even then it would
Speaker 4: be after my brain had been deprived of oxygen for
Speaker 4: a while. Things might not be looking so good inside
Speaker 4: my old brain. So bringing me back might bring me
Speaker 4: back to the moment of my demise, and I might
Speaker 4: not be in such good shape.
Speaker 1: Then you might be missing parts of the brain, like
Speaker 1: it might be a corrupted scan of your brain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, all right.
Speaker 1: So you can't do any of this right now. But
Speaker 1: as doctor Godwood mention, these are technical problems. You could
Speaker 1: imagine that in the future we could come up with
Speaker 1: better fMRI technology or figure right away to perfectly slice
Speaker 1: your brain without any of it going bad. The next
Speaker 1: question I had for him was would it be enough?
Speaker 1: Would a scan of your brain be sufficient to recreate
Speaker 1: who you are? Well, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the challenges here. Like, let's say I get an fMRI
Speaker 1: down to where I can detect neurons and how they're
Speaker 1: connected to each other, basically the snapshot of the web
Speaker 1: of the network in my brain of neurons. Is that
Speaker 1: enough you think to recreate me in a computer?
Speaker 4: Well, let's think about it this way. By an analogy.
Speaker 4: Let's say you wanted to know how your computer worked.
Speaker 3: Okay, what if.
Speaker 4: You could take the very best photograph and the very
Speaker 4: best scan of the structure of your computer right now, Okay,
Speaker 4: down to the level of individual connections and logic gates
Speaker 4: like the circuit. Yeah, like the circuit. Would you be
Speaker 4: able to tell whether your computer was on social media
Speaker 4: or running Microsoft Word versus some other thing that it
Speaker 4: might be doing. So that there's kind of a difference
Speaker 4: here between getting a good picture of the hardware of
Speaker 4: the brain and the ability to understand what the brain
Speaker 4: is doing at any given moment.
Speaker 1: What doctor Godwin is saying here is even if we
Speaker 1: could scan your brain down to the molecular level, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we understand how the brain works. Let's say
Speaker 1: I'm able to perfectly scan your brain and detect every
Speaker 1: neuron connection it's in abs Wait, I have all this
Speaker 1: information about my brain, and let's say it's pretty intact.
Speaker 1: Could I get a computer to run it?
Speaker 4: You know, it's always a mistake to say something can't
Speaker 4: be done. The best I can say right now is
Speaker 4: that we're not in a position to do that right now.
Speaker 4: But with some of the new computer architectures and chip architectures.
Speaker 4: You know, there are these things called neuromorphic chips. I
Speaker 4: think we could probably run simulations at some point in
Speaker 4: the future that will almost perfectly emulate a lot of
Speaker 4: the different states.
Speaker 3: Of your brain.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, looking who knows ten one
Speaker 4: hundred years into the future, when AI is actually able
Speaker 4: to help us, not only mimic the brain, but all
Speaker 4: so help us and tell us the things that need
Speaker 4: to be done to improve resolution and computation, then yeah,
Speaker 4: I could see these things happening in the future.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say that it was
Speaker 1: not possible because we don't know all the processes that
Speaker 1: are happening at the synapse level and the neurons. We
Speaker 1: don't know yet how to create a simulation of the brain.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's correct that we don't yet know
Speaker 4: how to do that, But I think your question was
Speaker 4: broader about will we ever be able to do that.
Speaker 4: I'm an optimist about these things. I think there could
Speaker 4: be at some point in the future a powerful enough computer,
Speaker 4: enough computational power, enough understanding of how these different elements
Speaker 4: within the brain, the different connections are made, and how
Speaker 4: information flows from one part of the brain to the
Speaker 4: other that, yeah, you could run some sort of simulation
Speaker 4: that is very much like you, but we're aways from that.
Speaker 1: What doctor Godwin is saying here is that right now
Speaker 1: we just don't yet fully understand how the brain works.
Speaker 1: But if doctor Godwin said, with more signs, we could
Speaker 1: know all of this in the future. Until then, I
Speaker 1: asked doctor Godwin about an alternate scenario, one in which
Speaker 1: you maybe don't have to scan all of your brain,
Speaker 1: and that is using AI or artificial intelligence. Okay, next question,
Speaker 1: do you think you could train an AI to be.
Speaker 4: You could do you train an AI to think like you? Well,
Speaker 4: I think that you could certainly train an AI to
Speaker 4: follow you around, follow your movements, listen to your voice,
Speaker 4: see what you see. Maybe you've written several books, you know,
Speaker 4: the AI could train on that and make an astment
Speaker 4: of what it would be like to have an AI
Speaker 4: Woge or an AI Dwyane.
Speaker 1: Okay, how about this sci fi scenario. What if I
Speaker 1: create an AI that is conscious, that is like thinking
Speaker 1: and is sentient, but it's sort of like a blank
Speaker 1: version of a human, And then I can go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I make a copy of this and train it on Whoorge,
Speaker 1: so that it's basically like a sentient being trained to
Speaker 1: be like Orge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's not a bad approach. And I wrote a
Speaker 4: blog post some years ago where I was saying, well,
Speaker 4: maybe this is a path because you know, there are
Speaker 4: probably some aspects of how the brain works that are
Speaker 4: common to almost everyone. So for example, walking walking is
Speaker 4: a thing that people with two legs all do, and
Speaker 4: that program is probably pretty consistent from one person to another.
Speaker 4: So you could see stringing together a number of those
Speaker 4: different things and then say, Okay, let's put that in
Speaker 4: an android brain or body, and then let's just focus
Speaker 4: on the thing that makes four hay or hay interesting.
Speaker 1: Meaning maybe you don't need to upload your whole brain, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't need to scan every single synapse and
Speaker 1: you're run in your brain just the parts that really
Speaker 1: make me who I am, so that we can then
Speaker 1: program that or put that into a generic, hopefully better
Speaker 1: looking and smarter, perversion of meat.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not an unreasonable idea, right, So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it might be that you don't need to upload your
Speaker 4: whole brain.
Speaker 1: You might only need to upload or train an AI
Speaker 1: on the parts that make you uniquely you. Okay, now
Speaker 1: let's say that we could one day scan your brain
Speaker 1: and run a pretty good simulation of it in a computer.
Speaker 1: What's that program technically be alive? And more important, would
Speaker 1: it actually be you? In other words, would any of
Speaker 1: this actually work? When we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: tackle this question, and fair warning, it's going to get
Speaker 1: very philosophical. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome back. All right, we're talking about uploading your brain
Speaker 1: to a computer, and so far we've learned what it is,
Speaker 1: it could be useful, and whether a brain scientist thinks
Speaker 1: it's possible. Next, we're going to answer the question would
Speaker 1: this actually work. Let's say we could scan your brain
Speaker 1: down to the synapse and maybe even the molecular level,
Speaker 1: and let's say we could get a computer to somehow
Speaker 1: simulate your brain. Well, there are two very big questions
Speaker 1: about what happens next, and these questions are mainly philosophical.
Speaker 1: So to take us through this, I reached out to
Speaker 1: Professor Qualtiero Piccinini. Well, thank you, doctor Piccinini for joining.
Speaker 2: Us, Thank you for having me. I'm a philosophy professor
Speaker 2: at University of Missouri. So I researched mostly philosophy of
Speaker 2: mind and the mind sciences.
Speaker 1: Okay, the first question we're going to tackle here is
Speaker 1: whether the brain that you simulate in the computer has consciousness. Okay,
Speaker 1: what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Means that it has a subjective experience, you know, like
Speaker 2: real emotions that it feels, or visual or auditory perceptions
Speaker 2: that it actually perceives, or thoughts that it can access
Speaker 2: and tell you what they are from the inside, as
Speaker 2: opposed to just you know, uttering the words. Sometimes philosophers
Speaker 2: call this phenomenal consciousness or what it's like to be you.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Consciousness is a very tricky subject, one that we could
Speaker 1: spend the whole episode talking about, but it's basically the
Speaker 1: difference between the feeling that you have that you're a
Speaker 1: person and you have thoughts and emotions and a certain
Speaker 1: self awareness, and a pre programmed machine that only reacts
Speaker 1: to things yourself. Doctor Piccinini puts.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, what I'm saying is a simulation of a brain,
Speaker 2: would that experience anything or would it just be crunching
Speaker 2: some numbers? And then at the end it gives you
Speaker 2: an output that sounds like things that you would have
Speaker 2: said or behaves that you would have exhibited with your body.
Speaker 2: But behind that there's no actual subjective feelings or thoughts.
Speaker 1: But I guess, if it's simulating a brain, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: have internal states and wouldn't it have representations of feelings
Speaker 1: If it's going to simulate how we process information.
Speaker 2: Yes, it would have representations of feelings. That a representation
Speaker 2: of a feeling is not necessarily a feeling, just like
Speaker 2: a representation of a fire doesn't necessarily burn anything, or
Speaker 2: representation of wind doesn't blow anything I see, or a
Speaker 2: representation of volcano doesn't have any real hot lava. It's
Speaker 2: a representation and it's dynamical, it evolves, you know. It
Speaker 2: tells you when the volcano is erupting, and when the
Speaker 2: lava is coming out, and how many things it burns
Speaker 2: on its path. But then it's still just a representation
Speaker 2: of all these things. It doesn't destroy anything.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. What doctor Paccinini is saying is that
Speaker 1: it's an open question whether or not a simulation of
Speaker 1: a brain in a computer can be conscious. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of theories about what is needed to have consciousness,
Speaker 1: and some of them say a computer program can have consciousness,
Speaker 1: and some of them say a computer can't. As you
Speaker 1: put it, a simulation of a volcano is not a volcano.
Speaker 1: It all hinges on the question of whether consciousness requires
Speaker 1: you to have a body or not.
Speaker 2: A few of these theories do posit that the right
Speaker 2: kind of information processing is sufficient for consciousness, but a
Speaker 2: lot of them do not, and in fact positive the opposite,
Speaker 2: that something more is needed. A certain kind of physical
Speaker 2: process or a certain kind of living system has to
Speaker 2: be there.
Speaker 1: I see there is something about that computation being in
Speaker 1: a biological system that maybe makes it true consciousness.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've seen more people defending the idea that it
Speaker 2: takes more than just computation to generate a real mind.
Speaker 2: And for example, there's a very distinguished psychologist, a neuroscientist
Speaker 2: by the name of Anil Seth, and he has an
Speaker 2: article coming out now in an important journal defending the
Speaker 2: idea that you have to be alive to be conscious.
Speaker 2: So conscious requires a biological system. I don't necessarily agree
Speaker 2: that it has to be biological. I'm not totally convinced,
Speaker 2: but one point that I agree with is that it
Speaker 2: takes more than just computation or information processing.
Speaker 1: Now, there's a lot of debate between philosophers and neuroscientists
Speaker 1: about this, But doctor Piccinini says, there's a growing sense
Speaker 1: that your brain uploaded to a computer wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: a conscious being simply because it doesn't have a body.
Speaker 1: That maybe there's something about having a physical body that's
Speaker 1: essential to having consciousness. I wonder what you're saying is
Speaker 1: that we say, somehow need the need to be alive
Speaker 1: as a functioning biological system in order to have the
Speaker 1: experience that we know of as the human experience.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what Aniel Seth says, that we have to
Speaker 2: be alive. I don't know if we have to be alive,
Speaker 2: but like for us to even be able to process
Speaker 2: information in the right kind of way, all these other
Speaker 2: background conditions have to be in place, and they seem
Speaker 2: to be part of what makes the system be able
Speaker 2: to have experiences, conscious experiences, conscious thoughts.
Speaker 1: Meaning if I lived inside of a computer in a bus,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be the same experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe there wouldn't be any experience at all.
Speaker 2: It would just be dead sort of states or unconscious
Speaker 2: states of information.
Speaker 1: So even if you uploaded your brain to a computer,
Speaker 1: it might not work. It wouldn't exist in the same
Speaker 1: way that you exist right now. And this brings us
Speaker 1: to the second big philosophical question, which is would that
Speaker 1: uploaded you still be you.
Speaker 2: Normally, we can make a simulation of whatever system we choose,
Speaker 2: and we have the original target system, and we're simulating,
Speaker 2: like say the weather, and then we have a simulation
Speaker 2: of the weather, but the weather is still there. That was,
Speaker 2: you know, We're just trying to simulate it over there,
Speaker 2: and the simulation is a different system. So why would
Speaker 2: anybody think that if we build a simulation of your brain,
Speaker 2: then somehow you enter the simulation instead of staying there
Speaker 2: where you are in your brain. I see, But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not you, that's a copy.
Speaker 1: Meaning like, there's this fantasy that I would close my eyes,
Speaker 1: I would feel like I'm going through a tunnel and
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm in a computer. That's the fantasy, yeah, But
Speaker 1: in reality, it's like I'll close my eyes and I'll
Speaker 1: open them again, and then now suddenly there's something that's
Speaker 1: like me on the computer.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1: But for the thing in the computer, they would have
Speaker 1: the experience of going to the tunnel, wouldn't they.
Speaker 2: Well, they wouldn't exist before, so maybe they would have
Speaker 2: a memory, you know, like a false memory of that.
Speaker 1: Oh false a maoun.
Speaker 2: This gets so tricky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, this kind of blows the whole idea wide open.
Speaker 1: What doctor Paccinini is saying is that the whole concept
Speaker 1: of uploading your mind is not possible, and that's because
Speaker 1: your mind is not like a file that can be transferred.
Speaker 1: What you'd really be doing is making a copy of
Speaker 1: your mind and then uploading that. But you would still
Speaker 1: stay where you are. You wouldn't leave your body, which
Speaker 1: begs the question what's the point then?
Speaker 2: And maybe, you know, maybe some people would like to
Speaker 2: have a copy of them made it, and that's fine,
Speaker 2: but let's not confuse that with you surviving in that way.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a way for you to survive.
Speaker 2: That's just the way to make a copy of you.
Speaker 1: I think you're arguing that the words uploading your mind
Speaker 1: are just false because it's really more like you're uploading
Speaker 1: a copy of your mind. Yes, all right, but here's
Speaker 1: a twist, doct Cappuccinini things there is a way for
Speaker 1: you to upload your brain and have it actually be
Speaker 1: you that gets uploaded. And this is a scenario that
Speaker 1: I had never heard before.
Speaker 2: And the other idea is replacing parts of your brain
Speaker 2: with some microchips a little bit at a time, and
Speaker 2: so nothing of your brain is left anymore and it's
Speaker 2: all microchips instead. So in the case the brain replacement,
Speaker 2: it's actual a little more plausible that if you really
Speaker 2: replace one part of your brain at a time, eventually
Speaker 2: you sort of become all made out of artificial components,
Speaker 2: because it's there's this one you, you know, there's one
Speaker 2: system all along.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you do it's slow enough, like a
Speaker 1: ship of pieces, then you could transfer. Yeah, okay, this
Speaker 1: is a scenario where you gradually replace your brain one
Speaker 1: part at a time, little by little, you would change
Speaker 1: out parts of your brain with computer chips and computer parts.
Speaker 1: In that case, you could stay you the whole time,
Speaker 1: and the being that ends up in the computer would
Speaker 1: technically be a continuation of the you you are right now. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have to say this, but
Speaker 1: the technology to do any of this is pretty far
Speaker 1: out in the future, if it's even possible at all.
Speaker 1: But it's important to think about the philosophical questions because
Speaker 1: it might help us figure out if it's worth doing.
Speaker 2: So, don't fall for it. And if anybody says, oh,
Speaker 2: give us a million dollars and we'll freeze your brain
Speaker 2: and then we'll upload your mind into a computer someday,
Speaker 2: it's a scam. You wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. No,
Speaker 2: I'll give a million dollars a charity before I do that. Wait,
Speaker 2: before I do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, spend them on a real person, not a
Speaker 1: fake version of you. Right, all right, here's what we
Speaker 1: learned today. A lot of smart people thinking about the
Speaker 1: idea of uploading your brain. And technically there's nothing so
Speaker 1: far that says that this is not physically possible. You
Speaker 1: could imagine the science and the technology one day being
Speaker 1: advanced enough to do it. But the bigger question is
Speaker 1: is it worth it? Would it actually be you that's uploaded,
Speaker 1: and with that uploaded version actually be alive and conscious.
Speaker 1: The answer seems to be probably not, in which case
Speaker 1: maybe the better question to ask is can we upgrade
Speaker 1: our brains?
Speaker 2: That seems to.
Speaker 1: Be something we more desperately need these days. Thanks for
Speaker 1: downloading us into your podcast player. I'll see you next week.
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