IJCH - Inside JaiChai's Head (meaning: My warped, personal opinions and musings)
From the Author:
Salutations.
I am JaiChai.
And if I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before, I'm delighted to make your acquaintance now.
Quantum Physics and Uploading Consciousness - Surrounded by Controversial Issues...
There's a growing scientific community that believes biology and consciousness are quantum events.
Bird navigation, photosynthesis, the sense of "solidity" (the Wolfgang Pauli Principle), and even how the atoms of H2O stay together are believed to have quantum characteristics.
In many ways our lives behave like quantum events.
I wrote about how decision making has a Hadamard gate (a quantum physics gate) that collapses all possibilities into one reality for each person:
At the crux of (and impetus for) the Upload/Life Extension movement is the belief that consciousness and even what we call "Life" may well boil down to bits of information within a quantum multiverse.
The idea of uploading consciousness onto some server in the cloud and "living forever" in a utopian (or hellish) digital world - complete with all sensations - may appeal to some and repulse/anger others.
And as the notion of uploading consciousness gains more and more attention, not only has it sparked many scientific and ethical debates, it has also attracted some hard science pundits and at least one viable startup (Nectome).
Putting the arguments over what "consciousness" really is and whether immortality renders us "less than human" aside, my biggest questions center around authenticity, awareness, and wisdom.
If I physically die, will the sum total of my knowledge be good enough to create another, real "me" in the digital world?
Would I even know I was in some kind of "Matrix"?
Data is to information as facts are to wisdom.
In other words, even if all the minute details of my life could be transferred to my new, improved (?), JaiChai 2.0, would I still have the wisdom I gained by experiencing each of those details - within the context of my level of comprehension at the time?
These are great conundrums for me and where the term "If I only knew then what I know now" really bears some significance.
I'm sure the above questions, plus more, will pop into your head as you read this article.
Enjoy.
Asimov - Universal Consciousness (God) as a Computer
Like many of us, I grew up reading Isaac Asimov. His stories are fascinating and always made me go "Hmmm...?"
"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990).
It was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
"The Last Question" chronicles human evolution all the way to the end of time and portrays the surviving, ultimate universal consciousness (God) as being the final iteration of Multivac (called AC), an omnipotent, but solitary (lonely) computer entity.
The ending of this story is truly epic!
Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil is an American author, inventor and futurist.
Raymond Kurzweil has become well known for his predictions about artificial intelligence and the human species, mainly concerning the technological singularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil is one of my intellectual heroes. His inventions, predictions, and contributions to modern life are too many to discuss in this short article.
And from the hundreds of other significant projects in his life, his big goal is to "see" his late father again.
He has spent years gathering everything he can about his late father in hopes of recreating a digital version of his father's consciousness in the cloud.
The Black Mirror
Black Mirror is a British science fiction anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker, with Brooker and Annabel Jones serving as the programme showrunners. It examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies.
Episodes are standalone, usually set in an alternative present or the near future, often with a dark and satirical tone, though some are more experimental and lighter.
I am seriously addicted to this TV series. The plots and special effects are awesome.
And the majority of the episodes deal with uploading consciousness and the accompanying issues surrounding the digital vs. real life challenges that face all who choose to upload their consciousness.
The Black Mirror is a binge watch worthy candidate for everyone.
Nectome - A Startup that Aims to Archive Your Consciousness...
Ted Talk - Nectome and Connectomes Nectome Mission Statement:
Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favorite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family.
If memories can truly be preserved by a sufficiently good brain banking technique, we believe that within the century it could become feasible to digitize your preserved brain and use that information to recreate your mind.
How close are we to this possibility? Currently, we can preserve the connectomes of animal brains and are working on extending our techniques to human brains in a research context.
This is an important first step towards the development of a verified memory preservation protocol, as the connectome plays a vital role in memory storage.
Robert McIntyre, Nectome Co-founder
Robert comes from a background of artificial intelligence at MIT, where he studied under Marvin Minsky and Patrick Winston.
After completing an award winning master’s thesis on embodied cognition, he turned his sights to the problem of cognitive science.
He realized that it would be incredibly hard to fully scan all the information in a human brain, especially the connectome, but he did realize that locking all the structures of the brain in place for long term storage might be possible, by marrying ideas from two schools of thought- some from the field of cryobiology, and others from the field of connectomics in neuroscience.
After getting up to speed with the state of the art, he developed with others a novel way to preserve brains, and won a prize in 2016. Soon after, he started Nectome with Michael to further this research and help realize the potential created by a robust brain preservation technology.
Michael McCanna, Nectome Co-founder
At MIT, Michael was always interested in learning how to build thinking machines: he sought to understand at every level, from the physics of how transistors worked, to how to arrange transistors to create a computer processor, to how to design software that transformed that processed silicon into a machine able to do increasingly complex things.
Afterwards, he worked on the first core libraries for what would later become Amazon Alexa, in the process building a system that understood words from sounds. Seeking the startup experience, he worked at Zulip, then at Dropbox when Zulip was acquired.
At Nectome, he’s excited to be more directly contributing back to the field of teaching silicon machines how to think like human brains.
Nectome's "exquisite preservation" process promises to keep brain tissue in the best state possible for future decryption.
The startup has already raised $1 million in funding so far, including the $120,000 from Y Combinator.
It won a $960,000 federal grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health for “whole-brain nanoscale preservation and imaging.”
About 30% of the grant money is used by the MIT laboratory of Edward Boyden, a well-known neuroscientist who wants to combine McIntyre’s preservation procedure with a MIT's expansion microscopy.
Nectome currently has a Waiting List of 25 individuals who have each reserved a slot with $10,000. If they change their minds, the money is refunded 100%.
The Big BUT!
This all sounds very promising, BUT there's a big catch:
In order for Nectome's technology to work properly, the customer must be euthanized.
Deterioration is rapid when the brain dies, so the high-tech embalming must begin before cell death occurs.
The process resembles the legal, doctor assisted suicides in California; that is, the special preservation mixture for brain tissue is pumped into the customer's body via the large carotid arteries.
The Co-Founders firmly state that their product is 100% Fatal (meaning: You Can Not "Undo").
Get more details about Nectome at: https://nectome.com/
Parting Shot -
By JaiChai
Really Appreciate You Stopping By.
Truly hope to see you again!
About the Author
Believing that school was too boring, he dropped out of High School early; only to earn an AA, BS and MBA in less than 4 years much later in life – while working full-time as a Navy/Marine Corps Medic.
In spite of a fear of heights and deep water, he performed high altitude, free-fall parachute jumps and hazardous diving ops in deep, open ocean water.
After 24 years of active duty, he retired in Asia.
Since then, he's been a full-time, single papa and actively pursuing his varied passions (Writing, Disruptive Technology, Computer Science and Cryptocurrency - plus more hobbies too boring or bizarre for most folk).
He lives on an island paradise with his teenage daughter, long term girlfriend and three dogs.
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