A digital computer simulation model of an analog system such as the brain is an approximation that introduces random quantization errors and distortion. However, the biological neurons also suffer from randomness and limited precision, for example due to background noise. The errors of the discrete model can be made smaller than the randomness of the biological brain by choosing a sufficiently high variable resolution and sample rate, and sufficiently accurate models of non-linearities. The computational power and computer memory must however be sufficient to run such large simulations, preferably in real time.
When modelling and simulating the brain of a specific individual, a brain map or connectivity database showing the connections between the neurons must be extracted from an anatomic model of the brain. For whole brain simulation, this network map should show the connectivity of the whole nervous system , including the spinal cord , sensory receptors , and muscle cells. Destructive scanning of a small sample of tissue from a mouse brain including synaptic details is possible as of However, if short-term memory and working memory include prolonged or repeated firing of neurons, as well as intra-neural dynamic processes, the electrical and chemical signal state of the synapses and neurons may be hard to extract.
The uploaded mind may then perceive a memory loss of the events and mental processes immediately before the time of brain scanning. A full brain map has been estimated to occupy less than 2 x 10 16 bytes 20, TB and would store the addresses of the connected neurons, the synapse type and the synapse "weight" for each of the brains' 10 15 synapses. A possible method for mind uploading is serial sectioning, in which the brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen and then scanned and analyzed layer by layer, which for frozen samples at nano-scale requires a cryo- ultramicrotome , thus capturing the structure of the neurons and their interconnections.
While this would be a very slow and labor-intensive process, research is currently underway to automate the collection and microscopy of serial sections. There are uncertainties with this approach using current microscopy techniques. If it is possible to replicate neuron function from its visible structure alone, then the resolution afforded by a scanning electron microscope would suffice for such a technique.
It may be possible to extend the techniques of serial sectioning and to capture the internal molecular makeup of neurons, through the use of sophisticated immunohistochemistry staining methods that could then be read via confocal laser scanning microscopy. However, as the physiological genesis of 'mind' is not currently known, this method may not be able to access all of the necessary biochemical information to recreate a human brain with sufficient fidelity.
It may be possible to create functional 3D maps of the brain activity, using advanced neuroimaging technology, such as functional MRI fMRI, for mapping change in blood flow , magnetoencephalography MEG, for mapping of electrical currents , or combinations of multiple methods, to build a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive and non-destructive methods.
Today, fMRI is often combined with MEG for creating functional maps of human cortex during more complex cognitive tasks, as the methods complement each other. Even though current imaging technology lacks the spatial resolution needed to gather the information needed for such a scan, important recent and future developments are predicted to substantially improve both spatial and temporal resolutions of existing technologies.
Mind uploading
There is ongoing work in the field of brain simulation, including partial and whole simulations of some animals. For example, the C. Underlying the concept of "mind uploading" more accurately "mind transferring" is the broad philosophy that consciousness lies within the brain's information processing and is in essence an emergent feature that arises from large neural network high-level patterns of organization, and that the same patterns of organization can be realized in other processing devices.
Mind uploading also relies on the idea that the human mind the "self" and the long-term memory , just like non-human minds, is represented by the current neural network paths and the weights of the brain synapses rather than by a dualistic and mystic soul and spirit. The mind or "soul" can be defined as the information state of the brain, and is immaterial only in the same sense as the information content of a data file or the state of a computer software currently residing in the work-space memory of the computer.
Data specifying the information state of the neural network can be captured and copied as a "computer file" from the brain and re-implemented into a different physical form. The other computer may perhaps have different hardware architecture but emulates the hardware of the first computer. These issues have a long history. In Thomas Reid wrote: A considerable portion of transhumanists and singularitarians place great hope into the belief that they may become immortal, by creating one or many non-biological functional copies of their brains, thereby leaving their "biological shell".
However, the philosopher and transhumanist Susan Schneider claims that at best, uploading would create a copy of the original person's mind. According to her views, "uploading" would probably result in the death of the original person's brain, while only outside observers can maintain the illusion of the original person still being alive. For it is implausible to think that one's consciousness would leave one's brain and travel to a remote location; ordinary physical objects do not behave this way.
Ordinary objects rocks, tables, etc. At best, a copy of the original mind is created. Others have argued against such conclusions. For example, Buddhist transhumanist James Hughes has pointed out that this consideration only goes so far: Without the transference of consciousness, true mind-upload or perpetual immortality cannot be practically achieved.
Another potential consequence of mind uploading is that the decision to "upload" may then create a mindless symbol manipulator instead of a conscious mind see philosophical zombie. Are we to assume that an upload is conscious if it verbally insists that it is conscious? The mystery of consciousness precludes a definitive answer to this question. Regardless, some scientists strongly believe consciousness is the consequence of computational processes which are substrate-neutral.
On the contrary, numerous scientists believe consciousness may be the result of some form of quantum computation dependent on substrate see quantum mind. In light of uncertainty on whether to regard uploads as conscious, Sandberg proposes a cautious approach: Principle of assuming the most PAM: Assume that any emulated system could have the same mental properties as the original system and treat it correspondingly.
It is argued that if a computational copy of one's mind did exist, it would be impossible for one to verify this. This task is uncomputable due to the undecidability of equivalence , thus there cannot exist a computational procedure in the mind that is capable of recognizing an emulation of itself. The process of developing emulation technology raises ethical issues related to animal welfare and artificial consciousness.
Sometimes the animals would just need to be euthanized in order to extract, slice, and scan their brains, but sometimes behavioral and in vivo measures would be required, which might cause pain to living animals. In addition, the resulting animal emulations themselves might suffer, depending on one's views about consciousness.
However, some experiments might require a fully functioning and suffering animal emulation. Animals might also suffer by accident due to flaws and lack of insight into what parts of their brains are suffering. Brain emulations could be erased by computer viruses or malware, without need to destroy the underlying hardware. This may make assassination easier than for physical humans. The attacker might take the computing power for its own use. Many questions arise regarding the legal personhood of emulations. If a person makes an emulated copy of themselves and then dies, does the emulation inherit their property and official positions?
Could the emulation ask to "pull the plug" when its biological version was terminally ill or in a coma? Would it help to treat emulations as adolescents for a few years so that the biological creator would maintain temporary control? Would criminal emulations receive the death penalty, or would they be given forced data modification as a form of "rehabilitation"?
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Could an upload have marriage and child-care rights? If simulated minds would come true and if they were assigned rights of their own, it may be difficult to ensure the protection of "digital human rights". For example, social science researchers might be tempted to secretly expose simulated minds, or whole isolated societies of simulated minds, to controlled experiments in which many copies of the same minds are exposed serially or simultaneously to different test conditions. Emulations could create a number of conditions that might increase risk of war, including inequality, changes of power dynamics, a possible technological arms race to build emulations first, first-strike advantages , strong loyalty and willingness to "die" among emulations, and triggers for racist, xenophobic, and religious prejudice.
It is possible that humans would react violently against growing power of emulations, especially if they depress human wages. Emulations may not trust each other, and even well-intentioned defensive measures might be interpreted as offense. There are very few feasible technologies that humans have refrained from developing. The neuroscience and computer-hardware technologies that may make brain emulation possible are widely desired for other reasons, and logically their development will continue into the future.
Assuming that emulation technology will arrive, a question becomes whether we should accelerate or slow its advance.
Emulation research would also speed up neuroscience as a whole, which might accelerate medical advances, cognitive enhancement, lie detectors, and capability for psychological manipulation. Ray Kurzweil , director of engineering at Google , claims to know and foresee that people will be able to "upload" their entire brains to computers and become "digitally immortal" by Kurzweil made this claim for many years, e. In , Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics circles and elsewhere on the net.
That site has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites including MindUploading. Koene , who also moderates a mailing list on the topic.
These advocates see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save countless lives. Many transhumanists look forward to the development and deployment of mind uploading technology, with transhumanists such as Nick Bostrom predicting that it will become possible within the 21st century due to technological trends such as Moore's law. Physics of the Impossible , based on his book Physics of the Impossible. Episode four, titled "How to Teleport", mentions that mind uploading via techniques such as quantum entanglement and whole brain emulation using an advanced MRI machine may enable people to be transported to vast distances at near light-speed.
The book Beyond Humanity: Cox, is about the eventual and, to the authors, almost inevitable evolution of computers into sentient beings, but also deals with human mind transfer. Richard Doyle 's Wetwares: Experiments in PostVital Living deals extensively with uploading from the perspective of distributed embodiment, arguing for example that humans are currently part of the " artificial life phenotype ".
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Doyle's vision reverses the polarity on uploading, with artificial life forms such as uploads actively seeking out biological embodiment as part of their reproductive strategy. Miller, a professor of neuroscience at Columbia and a co-director of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, raised doubts about the practicality of mind uploading. His major argument is that reconstructing neurons and their connections is in itself a formidable task, but it is far from being sufficient. Operation of the brain depends on the dynamics of electrical and biochemical signal exchange between neurons; therefore, capturing them in a single "frozen" state may prove insufficient.
In addition, the nature of these signals may require modeling down to the molecular level and beyond. Therefore, while not rejecting the idea in principle, Miller believes that the complexity of the "absolute" duplication of an individual mind is insurmountable for the nearest hundreds of years. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Mind transfer disambiguation. International Journal of Machine Consciousness. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University.
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Retrieved 5 April The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain. I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. Closer Than You Think". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.
Retrieved 31 July MRI rides the wave". The New York Times. Scientists who are generally skeptical of the multiverse hypothesis include: In his New York Times opinion piece, "A Brief History of the Multiverse", author and cosmologist Paul Davies offered a variety of arguments that multiverse theories are non-scientific: For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit.
As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith.
George Ellis , writing in August , provided a criticism of the multiverse, and pointed out that it is not a traditional scientific theory.
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He accepts that the multiverse is thought to exist far beyond the cosmological horizon. He emphasized that it is theorized to be so far away that it is unlikely any evidence will ever be found. Ellis also explained that some theorists do not believe the lack of empirical testability falsifiability is a major concern, but he is opposed to that line of thinking:. Many physicists who talk about the multiverse, especially advocates of the string landscape , do not care much about parallel universes per se.
For them, objections to the multiverse as a concept are unimportant. Their theories live or die based on internal consistency and, one hopes, eventual laboratory testing. Ellis says that scientists have proposed the idea of the multiverse as a way of explaining the nature of existence. He points out that it ultimately leaves those questions unresolved because it is a metaphysical issue that cannot be resolved by empirical science. He argues that observational testing is at the core of science and should not be abandoned: As skeptical as I am, I think the contemplation of the multiverse is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the nature of science and on the ultimate nature of existence: In looking at this concept, we need an open mind, though not too open.
It is a delicate path to tread. Parallel universes may or may not exist; the case is unproved. We are going to have to live with that uncertainty. Nothing is wrong with scientifically based philosophical speculation, which is what multiverse proposals are. But we should name it for what it is. Max Tegmark and Brian Greene have devised classification schemes for the various theoretical types of multiverses and universes that they might comprise.
Cosmologist Max Tegmark has provided a taxonomy of universes beyond the familiar observable universe. The four levels of Tegmark's classification are arranged such that subsequent levels can be understood to encompass and expand upon previous levels. They are briefly described below. A prediction of chaotic inflation is the existence of an infinite ergodic universe, which, being infinite, must contain Hubble volumes realizing all initial conditions. Accordingly, an infinite universe will contain an infinite number of Hubble volumes, all having the same physical laws and physical constants.
In regard to configurations such as the distribution of matter , almost all will differ from our Hubble volume. However, because there are infinitely many, far beyond the cosmological horizon , there will eventually be Hubble volumes with similar, and even identical, configurations. Tegmark estimates that an identical volume to ours should be about 10 10 meters away from us. Given infinite space, there would, in fact, be an infinite number of Hubble volumes identical to ours in the universe.
In the chaotic inflation theory, which is a variant of the cosmic inflation theory, the multiverse or space as a whole is stretching and will continue doing so forever, [60] but some regions of space stop stretching and form distinct bubbles like gas pockets in a loaf of rising bread. Such bubbles are embryonic level I multiverses. Different bubbles may experience different spontaneous symmetry breaking , which results in different properties, such as different physical constants.
In brief, one aspect of quantum mechanics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations, each with a different probability. According to the MWI, each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe. Suppose a six-sided die is thrown and that the result of the throw corresponds to a quantum mechanics observable. All six possible ways the die can fall correspond to six different universes.
In effect, all the different "worlds" created by "splits" in a Level III multiverse with the same physical constants can be found in some Hubble volume in a Level I multiverse. In Level I they live elsewhere in good old three-dimensional space. Similarly, all Level II bubble universes with different physical constants can, in effect, be found as "worlds" created by "splits" at the moment of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a Level III multiverse.
Related to the many-worlds idea are Richard Feynman 's multiple histories interpretation and H. Dieter Zeh 's many-minds interpretation. The ultimate mathematical universe hypothesis is Tegmark's own hypothesis. This level considers all universes to be equally real which can be described by different mathematical structures.
Abstract mathematics is so general that any Theory Of Everything TOE which is definable in purely formal terms independent of vague human terminology is also a mathematical structure. For instance, a TOE involving a set of different types of entities denoted by words, say and relations between them denoted by additional words is nothing but what mathematicians call a set-theoretical model, and one can generally find a formal system that it is a model of. He argues that this "implies that any conceivable parallel universe theory can be described at Level IV" and "subsumes all other ensembles, therefore brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, and there cannot be, say, a Level V.
Schmidhuber explicitly includes universe representations describable by non-halting programs whose output bits converge after finite time, although the convergence time itself may not be predictable by a halting program, due to the undecidability of the halting problem. The American theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Greene discussed nine types of multiverses: The quilted multiverse works only in an infinite universe. With an infinite amount of space, every possible event will occur an infinite number of times. However, the speed of light prevents us from being aware of these other identical areas.
The inflationary multiverse is composed of various pockets in which inflation fields collapse and form new universes. The brane multiverse version postulates that our entire universe exists on a membrane brane which floats in a higher dimension or "bulk". In this bulk, there are other membranes with their own universes.
These universes can interact with one another, and when they collide, the violence and energy produced is more than enough to give rise to a big bang. The branes float or drift near each other in the bulk, and every few trillion years, attracted by gravity or some other force we do not understand, collide and bang into each other. This repeated contact gives rise to multiple or "cyclic" big bangs. This particular hypothesis falls under the string theory umbrella as it requires extra spatial dimensions.
The cyclic multiverse has multiple branes that have collided, causing Big Bangs. The universes bounce back and pass through time until they are pulled back together and again collide, destroying the old contents and creating them anew. The landscape multiverse relies on string theory's Calabi—Yau spaces.
Quantum fluctuations drop the shapes to a lower energy level, creating a pocket with a set of laws different from that of the surrounding space. The quantum multiverse creates a new universe when a diversion in events occurs, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The holographic multiverse is derived from the theory that the surface area of a space can simulate the volume of the region.
The simulated multiverse exists on complex computer systems that simulate entire universes. The ultimate multiverse contains every mathematically possible universe under different laws of physics. A multiverse of a somewhat different kind has been envisaged within string theory and its higher-dimensional extension, M-theory. These theories require the presence of 10 or 11 spacetime dimensions respectively. This opens up the possibility that there are other branes which could support other universes. Black-hole cosmology is a cosmological model in which the observable universe is the interior of a black hole existing as one of possibly many universes inside a larger universe.
The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain how our own universe appears to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large possibly infinite number of universes, each with possibly different physical laws or different fundamental physical constants , then some of these universes even if very few would have the combination of laws and fundamental parameters that are suitable for the development of matter , astronomical structures, elemental diversity, stars, and planets that can exist long enough for life to emerge and evolve.
The weak anthropic principle could then be applied to conclude that we as conscious beings would only exist in one of those few universes that happened to be finely tuned, permitting the existence of life with developed consciousness. Thus, while the probability might be extremely small that any particular universe would have the requisite conditions for life as we understand life , those conditions do not require intelligent design as an explanation for the conditions in the Universe that promote our existence in it.
An early form of this reasoning is evident in Arthur Schopenhauer 's work "Von der Nichtigkeit und dem Leiden des Lebens", where he argues that our world must be the worst of all possible worlds, because if it were significantly worse in any respect it could not continue to exist. Proponents and critics disagree about how to apply Occam's razor. Critics argue that to postulate an almost infinite number of unobservable universes, just to explain our own universe, is contrary to Occam's razor.
For example, multiverse proponent Max Tegmark argues:. This principle can be stated more formally using the notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic information content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length of the shortest computer program that will produce that number as output. For example, consider the set of all integers. Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively, you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, whereas a single number can be hugely long.
Therefore, the whole set is actually simpler Similarly , the higher-level multiverses are simpler. Going from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the need to specify initial conditions , upgrading to Level II eliminates the need to specify physical constants , and the Level IV multiverse eliminates the need to specify anything at all A common feature of all four multiverse levels is that the simplest and arguably most elegant theory involves parallel universes by default. To deny the existence of those universes, one needs to complicate the theory by adding experimentally unsupported processes and ad hoc postulates: Our judgment therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and inelegant: Perhaps we will gradually get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its strangeness to be part of its charm.
Possible worlds are a way of explaining probability and hypothetical statements. Some philosophers, such as David Lewis , believe that all possible worlds exist and that they are just as real as the world we live in a position known as modal realism.