Cheating Death Part II: Uploading Your Brain
Transhumanism is the name, uploading your brain to a computer is the game. Neuroscientists, biologists and futurists met at the World Transhumanist Association’s ninth annual meeting last week to discuss the viability of a shocking acceleration in human evolution: fusing man and machine.
Ideas include wrapping the brain in plastic, slicing it with lasers and diamond blades and then using an advanced camera to take images of the tissue. This method is being used currently in mice, but this rapidly growing movement foresees it being developed to transfer human memories and emotions onto microchips.
Immortality isn’t a question of ‘if’ to people like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Star Trek’s William Shatner, it’s ‘when.’ By donating sums of up to $4 million Peter hopes that ‘when’ is sooner than later.
This type of research doesn’t come without controversy. The ethics of immortality and the artificial intelligence required to undertake such a notion have been under attack since their inception. Social concerns involve the question of where all of us would live if no one ever dies and the divide between rich and poor (such as in the movie Gattaca).
Environmental ethicist Bill McKibben is outraged at the idea of the trivialization of human identity. What becomes meaningfully if life has no obstacles? What if we give birth to monsters that enslave the human race?
Eighty year old co-founder of the MIT artificial intelligence lab Marvin Minsky told New Scientist, “Ordinary citizens wouldn’t know what to do with eternal life… Only scientists who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans.”
As to regulating the development of new technologies, Minsky thinks that researchers should have the freedom to pursue science for the sake of human advancement. To do that they need to have the freedom to form different values.
Ray Kurzweil, the futurist author of The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near told the audience, “People sometimes say, ‘Are we going to allow transhumanism and artificial intelligence to occur?’ Well, I don’t recall when we voted that there would be an Internet.”
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Connie T. said
am October 17 2007 @ 7:32 pm
I must say, when I read up on transhumanism, it immediately brought to mind the idea of Nietsche’s übermensch, and that is somewhat disturbing given the historical misappropriation of the term…on a lighter note it also made me think of vampires, who are immortal but pay a high price for that immortality, hahahhaa! Well, it kinda applies…
I can understand the human drive to defy mortality, but I don’t agree with it, for many of the reasons stated in your blog, and for the simplest reason of all: it just feels wrong. And I mean that purely in a visceral sense, its got nothing to do with some manmade religious notion.
This human obsession with death amazes me. Boiled down to the simplest of terms, scientists spend years researching how to defy it (not to mention loads of money), while religious folk assuage their fears of death by putting faith into the unknown (while collecting money? LOL).
What it comes down to is that people, both scientific and religious, are simply afraid of what happens, or doesn’t happen, after death. But does that justify turning the natural order completely on top of its head? Just because I can do something, doesn’t mean that I should do it.
My last 2 cents: there’s nothing wrong with death, its as natural as birth.
p.s. dude, those guys in the vid kinda freaked me out!
Jerad Kaliher said
am October 17 2007 @ 11:12 pm
@Connie T., what they are trying to do is very similar to the physical idea of the übermensch, in terms that his protagonist in Thus Spoke Zarathustra would come to: “man is something which ought to be overcome.” Although Nietzsche’s idea was focused more on the creation of new values, especially overcoming what he called “a slave mentality” (his concept of Christianity).
It is a little strange to try to portray mortality in this way. Sure, it even seems as if they fear death and want to live on because of that fear. I agree that on a moral level it does kind of give me the willies.
Yet at the end of the day I consider myself to be a rationalist. I love the idea that people are striving to overcome death, or at minimum preserving life for as long as possible.
So many people say that it will be the end to problems. I say BS. That’s when the problems compound and begin to get interesting. That’s when we can get in a spaceship and take a trip for 300+ years at light speed and actually meet another civilization.
I’m not going to lie – I’m afraid of death. None of us have any idea of what is in store for us. Bottom line is I wouldn’t mind opening my eyes one more time thousands of years from now to see what on earth is going on. I’m fascinated, curious and willing to wage the risks.
And oh yeah, your right – those guys in the video are really creepy.
Mr. DeVille, I’m ready for my closeup. « Singularity Central said
am October 18 2007 @ 4:27 pm
[...] Mr. DeVille , I’m ready for my closeup. Posted on October 18, 2007 by nuke001 Cheating Death Part II: Uploading Your Brain [...]
lordmanilastone said
am October 23 2007 @ 7:04 am
the intelligent people seem to be venturing into something that was once unfathomable, it reminds me of the babylon tower when people wanted to reach up to the sky, God saw it as a futile venture and so he created diverse languages to confuse the people and to spoil the avaricious plan, well….
Jerad Kaliher said
am October 23 2007 @ 9:38 pm
@lordmanilastone, if science is rebuilding the Tower of Babel by pushing the limits of humanity into the future – then may God Himself strike me dead.
Do you think He might be strayed from his genocidal path with the power of reason? Something tells me I doubt it.
As Ben Franklin once said, “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”