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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and how the Tech Area. It's time for a tech

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Speaker 1: Stuff Classic episode. This episode originally published back on July

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Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. It is titled Who Wants to Live Forever?

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Speaker 1: It's really about digital immortality, and the great Josh Clark

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Speaker 1: of Stuff you Should Know joins the show on this episode.

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Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy. I have a feeling the title of

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Speaker 1: this episode will be who Wants to Live Forever? Because

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Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Queen. Yeah, who wants to

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Speaker 1: Live Forever? That came from the soundtrack to the hit

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Speaker 1: film Highlander. Oh cult classic? Did Queen do the whole

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Speaker 1: sound check? They did Highlander? And Flash Gordon? They did.

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Speaker 1: I did not know Highlander and I saw Highlander the

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Speaker 1: other day and I was like, does not hold up? No,

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Speaker 1: the movie is one of those that I wish we

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Speaker 1: could just wipe from history and redo because the concept

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Speaker 1: is amazing. Yeah, but that's not what we're gonna talk about.

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Speaker 1: Although there are immortals in Highlander, Yeah, yeah, there are, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that's the that's the connection, right, I guess so,

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Speaker 1: or Queen your love of Queen in Queen doing the

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Speaker 1: Highlanders sound chracktality. Yeah, it's ultimately it all goes back

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Speaker 1: to uh tesla. No, we're gonna be talking about digital immortality,

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Speaker 1: this concept of using technology to extend our lifespans indefinitely. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: to immortality, Yeah, to the point where essentially until the

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Speaker 1: sun burns out right and the great heat death of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Yeah, I mean yeah, because you could in theory,

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Speaker 1: if you were had digital immortality, there's nothing stopping you

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Speaker 1: from hopping on a spaceship and high tailing it somewhere else,

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Speaker 1: you know, or being transmitted it near the speed of light. Yep. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you could be beamed from one point to another and

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Speaker 1: sure if you I wonder what that experience would be like. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe that it's that's the future of space travel. Physical

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Speaker 1: space travel is as digital beings rather than maybe that's

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Speaker 1: the while we keep banging up against is the physical limitations,

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Speaker 1: and then that will finally unbridle us and allow us

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Speaker 1: to really do like interstellar travel, intergalactic travel, though presumably

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Speaker 1: you would have to have something you're beaming into Well

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Speaker 1: you're just purely digital, then you have to have something

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Speaker 1: to house that information. I mean, I guess you could

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Speaker 1: just be literally just information beaming around, but I don't

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Speaker 1: know how. I wonder what that experience would be, like

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Speaker 1: I wondered to be like going to sleep. Think about

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Speaker 1: a laser. The laser doesn't have any sort of infrastructure,

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Speaker 1: just beaming and you're transmitting light information in one place

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Speaker 1: to another at the speed of light. Right. Well, what

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Speaker 1: if we figured out a way to digitize ourselves, as

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about um, and we were able to beam

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Speaker 1: ourselves in much the same way that a laser beams light. Right,

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Speaker 1: But the question is then, because if we are digitizing ourselves,

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Speaker 1: we're usually talking about that with the the understanding that

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Speaker 1: that digital information rests on top of some physical architecture. Right,

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Speaker 1: just as software needs hardware to run off of, Right,

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Speaker 1: you need like fiber optics. Now, yeah, I'm saying, what

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Speaker 1: if you remove that, we figure out a way to

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Speaker 1: remove it, then there's no Leyeah. If you can get

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Speaker 1: to a point where we become pure information and there

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Speaker 1: is no need for physical infrastructure beneath that, then we're golden.

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Speaker 1: There's no limit. Then I guess we would need some

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Speaker 1: sort of receptacle to beam into even on the end,

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Speaker 1: even if we don't have something connecting the two points.

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Speaker 1: That's what I was kind of if you're just gonna

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Speaker 1: send someone ahead, like, all right, Bill, it's your job

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Speaker 1: to set up all these these EPU talent. Bill, do

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Speaker 1: not let us down. Make sure they're all plugged in,

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Speaker 1: and please use one of those uninterrupted power supplies because

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Speaker 1: if if there's a blackout, we don't want you know,

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Speaker 1: we lost Lucy, and then make it over. Please don't

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Speaker 1: smoke while you're setting them up, Bill, because we could

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Speaker 1: smell it last time. It's dunk up the whole place

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Speaker 1: right right. So to get down to what we're actually

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Speaker 1: talking about, you probably picked up on this. The idea

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Speaker 1: of digital immortality largely revolves around this concept of somehow

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Speaker 1: transferring human consciousness and experience into a digital format. Usually

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Speaker 1: the way we describe it as uploading your brain into

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Speaker 1: a computer. That's kind of the easiest way to explain it,

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Speaker 1: and there are a lot of really smart people who

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Speaker 1: have been talking about this possibility beyond saying it's hypothetical,

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Speaker 1: saying it will be possible or it will happen. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people strut around like they're just cock of

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Speaker 1: the walk, saying it's going to happen, and some sometimes

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Speaker 1: they even put like DAYTI on things like this, Oh

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Speaker 1: yeh know the guy we got to talk about to

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Speaker 1: be at least Ray Kurts Watch Kurtzwile Uh famous for

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Speaker 1: his futurism predictions, including the idea that we will reach

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Speaker 1: what is called the singularity. There's the point at which

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Speaker 1: technology is evolving so quickly that there is no meaningful

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Speaker 1: way to describe the present because it's changing that fast

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Speaker 1: and in the way I always think about singularities. Usually

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Speaker 1: it's also the moment where UM one of two things

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Speaker 1: has just happened. Either UM in AI has awakened and

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Speaker 1: become conscious right and therefore we it is now the

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Speaker 1: master of the universe as far as we're concerned, or

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Speaker 1: we it's the moment we merge biology merges with technology

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Speaker 1: at a point where we're able to UM remove ourselves

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Speaker 1: from the limitations of evolution and chart our own course

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Speaker 1: from that point on. Yeah, that's that's pretty accurate. I

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Speaker 1: would argue that there's also, uh, there's the possibility of

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Speaker 1: developing UM technology that allows us to genetically alter ourselves

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Speaker 1: without having to directly incorporate like computers or electronics into

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Speaker 1: our systems. That also can be It's transhumanism, is what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about here. We're like right there. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: on a kind of happening, like very crudely, but it's

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Speaker 1: we're like right there. As far as that last definition, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're there. Well, even with the incorporation of technology, we're

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Speaker 1: getting there. You look at things like cochlear implants, and

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Speaker 1: while this is this technology is specifically meant to give

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Speaker 1: people who have either lost or never developed a particular

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Speaker 1: uh sense or maybe some other form of neurological process,

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Speaker 1: uh you know right now, it's meant to address that.

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Speaker 1: In the future, it could be meant to augment, not

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Speaker 1: just to to repair down image or to address a

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Speaker 1: loss of something. Right, Like, the defining characteristic of trans

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Speaker 1: humanism is that, um, you don't want a blade prosthetic

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Speaker 1: leg because the one you were born with was removed.

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Speaker 1: You want to blade prosthetic leg because you want to

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Speaker 1: be able to run faster. Right, It's not to it's

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Speaker 1: not to make up for a loss, it's to further.

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Speaker 1: It's to go to the next step exactly. So, uh, this,

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Speaker 1: this singularity idea is very closely related to digital immortality,

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Speaker 1: and largely because of Ray Kurtzwild, because, as it turns out,

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Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say Ray Kurtzwild has an

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Speaker 1: issue with the concept of mortality. Yeah. I was wondering, like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that much about Kurtzwild. I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: slightly familiar, but you clearly know a lot more about

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Speaker 1: him than I do. And I was wondering if he

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Speaker 1: is a like a fretful fannie, Like, does he constantly

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Speaker 1: worry about misstepping and dying, you know, people dying really weird,

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Speaker 1: random mundane ways every day. Yeah, and I wonder if

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Speaker 1: he just lives in literal mortal fear of that. Well,

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Speaker 1: he he is certainly taking great precautions to extend his

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Speaker 1: life because he does believe firmly that we will reach

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Speaker 1: this point in which technology will allow us to extend

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Speaker 1: our lifespans indefinitely within his lifetime if he takes care

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Speaker 1: of himself. So he he is determined, he doesn't. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you would kind of feel like a like a dufus

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Speaker 1: if you, you know, if you were capable of feeling

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Speaker 1: if you died the day before they invented digital immortality. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's the like the last guy to die in a war,

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Speaker 1: right after like right before the ceasefires. Right, Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: a there's a great um. Have you ever seen there's

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Speaker 1: a British sketch comedy show called that Mitchell and Webb.

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Speaker 1: Look you've told me about it though, Yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: a two comedians, uh, David Mitchell and Robert Webb who

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Speaker 1: do this series, And one of the ones they they

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Speaker 1: have is it's just supposed to be off the cuff

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Speaker 1: conversation between the two, so it's not in the context

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Speaker 1: of a sketch so basically like what we're doing, kind

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Speaker 1: of what we're doing now, except it's obviously scripted and

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Speaker 1: ours is not. But in that case, they have a

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Speaker 1: conversation where David Mitchell is very upset with the thought

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Speaker 1: that his generation is going to be the last generation

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Speaker 1: to die, and he is spiteful of the of the

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Speaker 1: next generation. He's mad at them for being able to

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Speaker 1: live forever while he has to die. Webb is like,

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Speaker 1: you could just be happy for them. There's no same

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Speaker 1: sort of thing I think with Kurt Swile is that

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Speaker 1: he's um taking great pains to take care of himself.

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Speaker 1: He's advocate for a healthy diet and exercise, which is fantastic.

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Speaker 1: He takes something like a hundred and fifty dietary supplements.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to have to correct you. And this is

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Speaker 1: from the article that you wrote. Yeah two, or if

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Speaker 1: the advice she is constantly taking pill you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So that's uh. And and there there are plenty of

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Speaker 1: studies that have suggested that unless you are suffering a

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Speaker 1: deficiency of some sort, these supplements are not actually helpful. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like um, vitamin A. I believe vitamin

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Speaker 1: a UH is known to help you see better. Pretty sure,

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Speaker 1: it's vitamin a UM. And it's been shown that if

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Speaker 1: you're especially like night vision is a little deficient, that

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Speaker 1: if you eat some carrots your night vision will improve.

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Speaker 1: So carrots do help you, But if it's already up

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Speaker 1: to whatever your baseline night vision level is, you can't

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Speaker 1: all the carrots in the world and it's not going

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Speaker 1: to help it. As a matter of fact, you will

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Speaker 1: turn rage. My wife turned a little orange because she

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Speaker 1: like carrots so much when she was a kid. So

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Speaker 1: but she couldn't see any better beyond her baseline night

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Speaker 1: vision level. And so I think it's the same thing

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Speaker 1: as what you're saying. The same thing with vitamin C. Right,

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Speaker 1: once you hit a certain level of vitamin C, anything

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Speaker 1: beyond that you're such as just going to pee away.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, vitamins can become toxic. Much of anything

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Speaker 1: is is toxic to the human body because it seeks homeostasis. Right,

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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if kurts, Well, surely he's smart enough

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Speaker 1: to know, like, maybe I should cut this one out,

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Speaker 1: or maybe I'm taking too much of this. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: also possible that the reported number of supplements that he

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Speaker 1: takes has been you know, exaggerated, as it's been reported

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Speaker 1: over and over again. I am personally a little skeptical

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Speaker 1: that he takes that many, But at any rate, the

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Speaker 1: whole point is that he wants to make certain to

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Speaker 1: live long enough to see the day when his prediction

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Speaker 1: comes true, that that we will have the technological ability

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Speaker 1: to port a person's mind into some kind of electronic construct.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of this classic episode of

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Speaker 1: tech stuff after this quick break. I have, just while

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Speaker 1: you were speaking, pulled out my calculator and Ray Kurtzwell

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Speaker 1: takes a pill every five point seven six minutes a day,

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Speaker 1: assuming he stays up all twenty four hours in a day,

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Speaker 1: assuming again that that number is in fact accurate, that

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Speaker 1: the number of supplements. Not that I completely trust your math.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about some of the concepts

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Speaker 1: here about how this could in theory happen. Now, obviously,

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Speaker 1: we are not at the point where we can create

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Speaker 1: any kind of hardware and or software that would allow

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Speaker 1: us to uh to migrate and intelligence from our meaty brains, right,

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Speaker 1: And that's a huge problem what you just said, We're

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Speaker 1: we are dealing in something called software hardware when what

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Speaker 1: the substrate that our our brains and consciousness exists on

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Speaker 1: is what you would term wetware. Yeah, by all logical material. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and where it's not necessarily analogous to a computer. Even

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Speaker 1: though people tend to think of the brain is such,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that it is the same thing. That's

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Speaker 1: absolutely correct. I mean, let's let's take memory for an example.

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Speaker 1: Memory is a great way to illustrate the difference between

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Speaker 1: a computer system and the brain. All right, So in

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Speaker 1: a computer system, you end up designating a certain space

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Speaker 1: on some medium like on magnetic tape or in certain

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Speaker 1: you know, it all depends on whatever the form is

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Speaker 1: that you're saving it too, But at any rate, it

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Speaker 1: all ends up being zeros and ones, and it is unaltered.

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Speaker 1: If you call up a file and you know you

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Speaker 1: haven't done anything to it since the last time you

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Speaker 1: looked at it's going to be exactly the same there,

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Speaker 1: unless there's some sort of corruption in the file or

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Speaker 1: you have made changes to it and then saved it again.

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Speaker 1: You're not you know, it's gonna be the same experience

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Speaker 1: every time. Human memory totally different a memory is, and

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Speaker 1: we only sort of understand memory. Uh, we don't have

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Speaker 1: a full grasp on how memory works. But based upon

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Speaker 1: what we do know, when you experience something, your brain

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Speaker 1: creates a certain neural pathway in response to the stimuli

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Speaker 1: you are experiencing. So, for example, right here in this

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Speaker 1: room my brain is your hair. The heat in this room,

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Speaker 1: the light in this room, little things, and I'm not

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Speaker 1: noticing everything that's hair look pretty good, isn't it again?

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Speaker 1: Start contrast with all the rest of the experiences is

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Speaker 1: amazing hair. So the these these pathways are forming in

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Speaker 1: my brain later on, assuming that I have converted this

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Speaker 1: particular experience to long term memory, which is a pretty

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Speaker 1: big assumption. Honestly, I can't remember what a podcast that

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Speaker 1: about two weeks ago. Yeah, I think my hair is

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Speaker 1: going to make it into your long term memory. But

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Speaker 1: the more you say it, the more likely it's gonna

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Speaker 1: happen when when I think back on it, my brain

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Speaker 1: will reconstruct that same pathway. So the memory is essentially

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Speaker 1: representative and the physical relationship between the various synapses that

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Speaker 1: light up when I have this experience. Right, So there

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Speaker 1: is a physical pathway that is retraced when you recall yeah, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: But it's not like your memory of how great my

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Speaker 1: hair looks is sitting in one little spot of your

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Speaker 1: brain like it would be on a computer's magnetic tape.

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Speaker 1: It's distributed, and it's faulty because when I remember the

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Speaker 1: process of remembering, sometimes that that pathway doesn't form exactly

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Speaker 1: the way it did, and sometimes it adds new stuff exactly,

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Speaker 1: I might fill in some gaps. Like imagine if you

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Speaker 1: opened a power point presentation that you've made and uh,

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Speaker 1: there are a few slides missing, but then there's some

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Speaker 1: new stuff and maybe it was a little bit better

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Speaker 1: than before. But you haven't done anything. I don't remember

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Speaker 1: this transition it all right, we'll go with it. Just

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Speaker 1: the very active retrieving it from your computer's memory and

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Speaker 1: opening it again changes it. Right. That doesn't happen in

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Speaker 1: a computer, but it doesn't in human memories, right, right, exactly.

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Speaker 1: That is exactly what I'm saying. And the reason why

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Speaker 1: I say it is that that's a problem because if

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Speaker 1: we are ever to move from wetware in center brains

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Speaker 1: to hardware and software in the digital realm, unless we

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Speaker 1: factor that in somehow, like we create an algorithm that

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Speaker 1: mimics the experience of remembering something, the experience is going

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Speaker 1: to be fundamentally different. The experience of remembering will be

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Speaker 1: totally different. I mean, one of the reasons why I

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Speaker 1: very much argue against eyewitness testimony for things, especially for

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Speaker 1: crimes that might have happened a long time in the past,

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Speaker 1: is that our memories are faulty. Now, if we were

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Speaker 1: in this other experience where we had moved to hardware

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Speaker 1: and software and our memories were more analogous to computer memory,

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Speaker 1: that would not be an issue. I witness that would

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Speaker 1: be so. But that's a that'sn't just one illustration of

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Speaker 1: how this is a tricky thing. It is tricky, and

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Speaker 1: you say that, you know, comparatively speaking, it sounded like

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Speaker 1: your take on it was that human memory is faulty

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Speaker 1: compared to computer memory. I I would positive that there's

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Speaker 1: also another way to look at it, that um, human

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Speaker 1: memory is much more robust and rich than computer memory,

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Speaker 1: because think about it, when you say, smell something for

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Speaker 1: the first time, and then you smell it again and again,

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Speaker 1: that that memory of what something smells like is going

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Speaker 1: to become more detailed. There's going to be more to it,

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Speaker 1: it will become more refined, and it will be totally

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Speaker 1: different from that first sent memory that you created of

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Speaker 1: whatever it was you smelled. And so I would pose

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Speaker 1: it again. Sorry to use that word twice, but it

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Speaker 1: makes me sound pretty smart when I does um that

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Speaker 1: that additional adding new material, adding new stuff to it

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Speaker 1: when you recall things or when you experience something. The

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Speaker 1: ability to make your memory more robust and more rich

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Speaker 1: and and to be able to refine it just through recall,

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Speaker 1: to me, is superior to just straight Here's the information

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Speaker 1: that a computer will give you, and it should be

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Speaker 1: exactly what you have before. And also with memories, we

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Speaker 1: can associate stuff that previously was not connected in our brains,

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Speaker 1: whereas with computers, the way you do that as through

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Speaker 1: meta data. You tag stuff. Right, You're like, okay, well

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Speaker 1: let's tag this piece of information with all the metadata

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Speaker 1: we can think of that that that describes what this

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Speaker 1: information is really about. And then if I want to

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Speaker 1: associate things, I have to look for similar tags like

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Speaker 1: but but in my brain it doesn't automatically, and it

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Speaker 1: does it in ways that you cannot necessarily anticipate, which

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Speaker 1: can lead to things like innovation, creativity. Yes, precisely, and

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Speaker 1: you also kind of hinted at something that's the big

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Speaker 1: problem they seeing the idea of uploading ourselves onto the

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Speaker 1: internet strick It is that with with memory, we can

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Speaker 1: figure out memory will will eventually figure out how human

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Speaker 1: memory works exactly. And that's what There's a philosopher called

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Speaker 1: David Chalmers. That's what he's pointed out as the easy

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Speaker 1: problem of consciousness. We understand, we're going to understand how

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Speaker 1: the mind functions. Sometime down the road, we will figure

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Speaker 1: that out. There's a hard problem is what what Chalmers

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Speaker 1: has also pointed out in figuring out how phenomenal experience,

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Speaker 1: our experience of reality is produced from those processes. That

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Speaker 1: that is the big issue that is facing us trying

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Speaker 1: to upload ourselves onto the Internet. It's like when you

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Speaker 1: talked about meta. The computer is not writing meta itself.

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Speaker 1: It might be able to simulate memory retrieval in its

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Speaker 1: own way, but it's not writing its own tags. It's

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Speaker 1: not making these connections. It takes a human consciousness to

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Speaker 1: do that. And not only do we not know how

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Speaker 1: to make a computer simulate that, we don't even know

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Speaker 1: how we do that. We may never know. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of philosophers out there like we may never figure

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Speaker 1: out the hard problem of consciousness. We've got more to

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Speaker 1: say in this classic episode of tech stuff after these

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Speaker 1: quick messages. Neuroscientists would say that clearly the mind which

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Speaker 1: is what we could probably you know, use as an

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Speaker 1: umbrella term for things like consciousness and experience, like intelligence

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Speaker 1: and the kind of stuff that that emerges from the

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Speaker 1: physical construct of the brain, because you can you can

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Speaker 1: observe changes to the mind when someone suffers an illness

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Speaker 1: or injury that damages the brain. And therefore it stands

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Speaker 1: to reason that the mind in fact, is a product

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Speaker 1: of the brain. So if you could figure out how

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Speaker 1: to simulate a brain to a significant level of sophistication,

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Speaker 1: hypothetically you could have intelligence emerge naturally from that simulation, hypothetically,

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Speaker 1: hypothe because we can't do it yet. The best we

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Speaker 1: can do right now is to simulate a few thousand neurons.

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Speaker 1: But there are you know, we're talking about billions of

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Speaker 1: neurons and synapsis in the human brain. Yeah, from what

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Speaker 1: I saw, the low but average estimate is something like

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Speaker 1: eight six billion normal human brain. I'm sorry, not synapthis neurons, neuron,

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Speaker 1: it's trillions of synantha, right, So it's it's incredibly complicated,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, there's some people who suggest that it

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Speaker 1: may be to truly simulate a human brain, you may

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Speaker 1: have to go down to the molecular level, at which

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Speaker 1: point the computational requirements for simulating that brain are going

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Speaker 1: to be so vast as to be impractical or impossible

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Speaker 1: to achieve. Well, you mentioned the Blue Brain Project in

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Speaker 1: this article that you wrote, um, and I was just

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Speaker 1: kind of skimming their website and they mentioned that in

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Speaker 1: their simulations it requires about a laptops worth of computing power.

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Speaker 1: They didn't say what kind of RAM or hard drive

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Speaker 1: for storage or anything it had. They just used a

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Speaker 1: laptops words, you can kind of let your imagination from

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Speaker 1: on with it, but that that was required just for

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Speaker 1: one individual neuron to power. Yea, so we're talking about

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Speaker 1: U billion laptops, which is that's you know, should be

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Speaker 1: great news for the exactly any hardware manufacturers out there. Um,

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Speaker 1: there are actually quite a few different uh projects out

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Speaker 1: there that are attempting to simulate brains for one reason

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Speaker 1: or another, not necessarily so that we can pourt consciousness

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Speaker 1: to them, but also to just study things like, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, how our brains work, how we might be

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Speaker 1: able to treat brain damage or illnesses that that damage

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Speaker 1: the brain, that how how certain medications might react to

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Speaker 1: our brains. Building these very common plex simulation so some

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Speaker 1: of them. M I. T has a course on the

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Speaker 1: emergent science of connect tomics. I've seen that lately too.

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Speaker 1: It sounds so full of bs, but apparently it's it's

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Speaker 1: a real deal, and and once you look into it

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Speaker 1: it makes total sense. Just the terrible name. Connectomics is

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Speaker 1: all about the connections that happen within the brain and yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does. Connectomics sounds like it's some sort of weird

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Speaker 1: economics course or like maybe an l Around Hubbard book. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like dineticsnets part two connectomics. Yeah. So that's an example.

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Speaker 1: There's the US Brain project, there's an EU Brain project,

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Speaker 1: there's the Google project. Yes, and there's the Google Brain project.

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Speaker 1: They hired Ray Kurtzwile. Yeah, he's their chief engineer, director

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Speaker 1: of engineering. Yeah, for for specifically for the Google Brain project.

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Speaker 1: They mean, clearly Google has just put their cars in

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Speaker 1: the table. They're like, we're putting some serious resources behind

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Speaker 1: figuring out how to get people on to digital consciousness. Right.

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Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to think about this kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, armchair computer scientists neuroscientists sort of approach, but

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Speaker 1: they're really putting actual money towards research and development on

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Speaker 1: this stuff, including hiring another guy named Jeff Hinton, who

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Speaker 1: is a British computer scientist who who specializes in neural networks.

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Speaker 1: So they're looking at using neural networks for lots of stuff,

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Speaker 1: not just to simulate a human brain. I mean that

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Speaker 1: might be part of it too, but neural networks can

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Speaker 1: be really useful for processing different types of information. For

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Speaker 1: all sorts of applications, right, true. And also I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you think about it, just figuring out some of

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Speaker 1: the efficiencies that the human brain is evolved to include

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Speaker 1: as far as networking goes, if you could just even

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Speaker 1: get some insight or inspiration from that, that could help tremendously. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: There's some other great things I can mention. There's um

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Speaker 1: Ted Burger, who is a professor at the University of

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Speaker 1: Southern California's Center for neuro Engineering, who built a prosthetic

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Speaker 1: of the hippocampus. Now, the hippocampus is, uh, hippocampuses is large. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's largely associated with the formation of memories, also with

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Speaker 1: incorporation of emotion. But memory is a big part of

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Speaker 1: what hippocampus is involved in. So I think it also

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Speaker 1: um takes in century information, determines what region it should

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Speaker 1: be transmitted to, if it should go into long term

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Speaker 1: memory or that kind of stuff. It's kind of like

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Speaker 1: a big engineer in this case. And so in two

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Speaker 1: thousand eleven came up with a proof of concept hippocampll

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Speaker 1: prosthesis and tested it in live rats. In two thousand

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Speaker 1: twelve tested it in non human primates and supposedly sometime

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Speaker 1: this year they're going to test it in people. Man,

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Speaker 1: that is amazing. So like, if you have some sort

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Speaker 1: of damage to your hipocampus and you're no longer able

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Speaker 1: to form memories, than this would be the thing for you.

427
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: Kind of yeah. I mean, this could end up being

428
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:13,679
Speaker 1: depending upon the nature of of the the problem. I mean,

429
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 1: it could potentially be a treatment for things like Alzheimer's.

430
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: Um Whether or not that turns out to be the case,

431
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:21,959
Speaker 1: we'll still have to wait and see, but it is

432
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:25,040
Speaker 1: very promising. Have you ever heard of Henry Mollison. I

433
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: have not. He is like one of the one of

434
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: the more facing, one of the more famous patients, or

435
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: to save time, you could just say one of the

436
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: more faithents um in as far as memory studies go,

437
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: because he had some he had I believe epilepsy, and

438
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: some old timey doctor gave him some brain surgery and

439
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: messed up his his hippocampus and the guy was unable

440
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: to form new memories from that point on. He could

441
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: remember everything up to that point under the surgery. Then

442
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: after that it was almost like his brain freshed every

443
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: I think something like thirty seconds and he was just

444
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: lived in an institution and was fortunately taken care of

445
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: by a few doctors that like really studied him, but

446
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: also like really kept him from the public limelight. His

447
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: name wasn't published in the life he died, but he

448
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: yielded a lot of information about how memories are formed

449
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 1: thanks to the hippocampus. But it sounds like he would

450
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 1: have been a great candidate for that. Yeah, I'm reminded

451
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:32,880
Speaker 1: of and I have to trust other people's uh details

452
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:35,560
Speaker 1: of this, because I have no memory of it. I

453
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:39,159
Speaker 1: uh had There was a time where I had a

454
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: kidney stone. It was so bad that I had to

455
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,439
Speaker 1: go to the hospital and they treat me with a

456
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: very powerful pain killer that just knocked your hipocampus out

457
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 1: of convintion. I couldn't remember things. I had no short

458
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: term memory. Well, it makes sense. Like also, when you're

459
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: drinking um, your hippocampal function is is messed with your

460
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: You are not forming new memories, and you require the

461
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 1: hippocampus do this. So if you're doing something, if you're

462
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: on drugs, if you have some sort of structural damage,

463
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: if you have been drinking, like that's why you're you're

464
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,159
Speaker 1: not forming new memories. That accounts for a blackout, that

465
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: accounts for amnesia. Your hippocampus is just not functioning properly exactly. Uh.

466
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: There's another expert I want to mention, Ender's Sandberg of

467
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. I'm a

468
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: huge fan of that institute. Yeah, yeah, one of my

469
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: favorite people in the world works. There's names Nick Bostroma. Yeah,

470
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: that guy I know of, Nick Bostrom. So Sandberg had said,

471
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: this is a quote. The point of brain emulation is

472
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: to recreate the function of the original brain. So this

473
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: is talking about actually creating a copy of a of

474
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 1: a person's brain, not just the concept in general, but

475
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: in the specific case of this person's brain, we're going

476
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: to recreate it. If run, it will be able to

477
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: think and act as the original brain. We are now

478
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: able to take small brain tissue samples and map them

479
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: in three D. These are at exquisite resolution, but the

480
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: blocks are just a few microns across. We can run

481
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 1: simulations of the size of a mouse brain on supercomputers,

482
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: but we do not have the total connectivity yet. As

483
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: methods improve, I expect to see automatic conversion of scanned

484
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: tissue into models that can be run. The different parts exist,

485
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: but so far there is no pipeline from brains to emulations.

486
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: Now he thinks that it may be very difficult to

487
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: ever simulate memory in a computer the way that humans do,

488
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: for the very reasons we mentioned earlier. Um He also

489
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: points out that there is a problem with this particular approach,

490
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: as the scanning essentially damages or destroys the brain tissue

491
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: because there's not a non invasive way. It's all over again.

492
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: You gotta pretty much crack the nogg and open and

493
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: mush around in the gray stuff to find out, you know,

494
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: to really scan it and get that resolution. This this

495
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: scanning would either kill you or you need a freshly

496
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: dead person, in which case there's no longer consciousness right

497
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: right exactly. Problem, So you can make you can make

498
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: a copy of a dead brain, which, as you point out,

499
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: not really that useful, or you could make a copy

500
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: of a living brain, but in the process you kill

501
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: the living brain. You are left with the copy. Now,

502
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: theoretically this copy would think and react in a way

503
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: that would be exactly the way the original person thought

504
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: and reacted. But the original person is still dead. So Josh,

505
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 1: if you had this done, there would be a Josh

506
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: computer Josh Bought two thousand and Josh Bought would think

507
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: like you, would have quips like you with even better hair,

508
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: with even better hair than you, and feel somewhat smug

509
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: about it. Meanwhile, Josh Clark, the human being would be

510
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: no more. And this comes to another big problem in

511
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: the concept of digital immortality, which is continuity. Sure, so

512
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: continuity being the continuous experience of you as Josh Clark,

513
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: whether you are in your meat body or poured it

514
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: over to some digital format. I don't think that's that

515
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 1: big of a problem. Really think about it. Man. Every

516
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: day there we we have gaps in continuity. We go

517
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 1: to sleep and then we wake up. But you're talking

518
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: about functional continuity. There's also a physical continuity, and there's

519
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: the real problem. So functional continuity is exactly what you're

520
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: talking about. It's our our experience that we are having,

521
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 1: and it does have interruptions, whether it's when we go

522
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: to sleep or we are put under for exactly all

523
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: of that. It could end up being a break in

524
00:31:55,880 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 1: our functional continuity. We can recover from that because is

525
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 1: the physical continuity. The stuff that's in our brains is

526
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: still there, so that even though we have that reset,

527
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: we can come back and everything will be fine. If

528
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: the physical continuity is destroyed, as in the actual brain dies,

529
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: then you have a problem. Now. An interesting thing is

530
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 1: that I've looked at some neuroscientists UH and their work

531
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 1: and what they have to say about this, and it

532
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me. There's a guy named Stephen Novella.

533
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,719
Speaker 1: He's a neuroscientist works at Yale. He has a great

534
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: podcast called Skeptics Guide to the Universe UM, and he

535
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: is a critical thinker and a skeptic UH. He has

536
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,040
Speaker 1: talked a lot about this as well. He's blogged about

537
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: it and his idea or his perspective. The way he

538
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: communicates it is that as humans, we have brains that

539
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: are divided into two hemispheres. Now, through drugs or through surgery,

540
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: you can have one of those hemispheres separated from the other.

541
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: It essentially is rendered inactive. But the two hemispheres are

542
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: largely copies of each other. So even if this does happen,

543
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: you can have a relatively normal experience. You might have

544
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: find that some things are now very hard to do,

545
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: like math. If your corps colossom isn't exactly. Yeah, so

546
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: he says, but these two halves, which individually can act

547
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: as a single brain, work together, and we have you know,

548
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: even if you have the one shut down, the other

549
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 1: one can continue to work. You're still you, largely you.

550
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: So he says, what if we then extend this and

551
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: we make the assumption that yes, we have created the

552
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: hardware and software that will allow for the simulation of

553
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: a brain in some way, we connect that to a

554
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: person's brain so that it becomes an extension. It's another

555
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: part of the brain, kind of like a third hemisphere,

556
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: I guess. And and so this one is starting to

557
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: form pathways that mimic what your brain does naturally, so

558
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: over time it helps you think the way you think already.

559
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 1: It also starts to build in redundant memories, so it's

560
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: essentially backing up your memories, and gradually it's going to

561
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: act like it another hemisphere of your brain. And it

562
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,800
Speaker 1: could even be more powerful. Potentially you could do things

563
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: like include algorithms that like make it way easier for

564
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 1: you to do math. You'd be a math genius. I

565
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: would hope that if I were uploaded on the internet,

566
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:49,359
Speaker 1: my math skills would just automatically improve. I would expect that. Yeah,

567
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 1: there's certain little like base assumptions you want to make, right,

568
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: that's one of them. It would be it would be

569
00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: funny to be intially immortal, but crap at math. So

570
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:02,319
Speaker 1: I guess you get me fun of by all the

571
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 1: other digital immortals. Very likely, you know, the Kurgan is

572
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: just taunting you before cutting off your digital head. Uh So,

573
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: the his point being that over time you would be

574
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 1: relying more heavily on the AI version of your brain,

575
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 1: that even while your meat brain goes to sleep, your

576
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 1: AI brain could stay awake so that you know, you

577
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: you as you could remain active all day long because

578
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's your organic brain that's sleeping,

579
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: but your AI brain takes over, and it could get

580
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: to a point where you don't even really notice that

581
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: part of you as asleep, and you could theorectly reach

582
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: a point where your AI brain is doing the vast

583
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: majority of the work, so that the time when your

584
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: organic brain dies is a non event to you. Well,

585
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 1: I hope that you really got a lot out of

586
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: that classic episode of tech stuff. If you didn't, don't worry,

587
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:56,919
Speaker 1: Josh Clark will be back next week because this ended

588
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: up being a two parter, so we will continue are

589
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:04,520
Speaker 1: just gusion about digital immortality on that episode next week.

590
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics we should cover on

591
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The

592
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle

593
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: for the show is text stuff h s W. I'll

594
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon Y. Tech Stuff is

595
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,400
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I

596
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

597
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows