Android: Would you mind being one?

[Whitney]

Development in access to technology may be uneven, but there's never been a situation where something that only the rich had didn't eventually be able to be accessed by the poor. Sure the division's still there, but the poor people will get a higher standard of living too. Just not as high as the rich. But eventually, the poor will get that standard of living and the rich will get even higher. So I don't think it's all that bad.

Unless we figure out how to live on other planets...there isn't enough room for everyone to live forever.  So, it's can't trickle down to the poor.

[AlP]

While I think it would be cool to be able to live until I was ready to die; not sure that forever sounds that great though eventually you'd see everything there is to see and done everything there is to do to the point that everything is boring.

Yeah I agree about not wanting to live forever. Without some kind of milestone, one can procrastinate indefinitely. Death is a meaningful milestone. It's also something to measure value against. For example, how important is eating cake compared to dieing? Not very important. If we live forever, why not just eat cake all day =).

I also don't think it would be very practical to have immortal humans who can also reproduce...where would they all live?  It wouldn't be very practical to make immortal humans who could not reproduce because then if something did kill a lot of them; there would be no way to repopulate.  So, I really don't see how this could work.

Well you could potentially pack a lot of people into data centers. They wouldn't need to have physical bodies all the time. I'm thinking you would rent one when you wanted to exist outside of a computer =). Also, if you have too many people, you could suspend some of them until conditions change or do some kind of time sharing.

They could reproduce by simply cloning themselves. You could fork a person into two initially identical people. You could also back them up regularly so that only a limited amount of their time can die.

Assuming any of this is possible...and it probably is since we already do put artificial parts in humans...we'll just be faced with another situation where the super rich get to be the ones that get the cool technology while the rest of us are ignored.  At least now we can know the overly powerful dictators will eventually die; leaving the possibility for their replacement by someone more kind.

That's a good point.

[Kylyssa]

Why the hurry?  There's no need to perform an instantaneous transfer from an organic body to an inorganic one.  Begin with brain augmentation with inorganics and, as the organic bits of the brain die over hundreds of years, slowly replace them with inorganic bits.  All of this would take place on a microscopic scale, a few cells at a time over long periods of time.  Then there would be no sudden duplication and annihilation, only a shift in what your old cells are being replaced (or not replaced, as the case may be) with.  

So, would I do that - yep.

[Renegnicat]

Kylyssa, you rock.


...but I rock harder.  

[ragarth]

Kylyssa's thoughts are the same as my own, like it or not the brain is not equatable to the serial processing our computers do. The brain is not clocked, it isn't serial, it's asynchronous and neural. This means that, given the size of the neural net, completely disparate signals can take place within the brain, multiple neurons can fire with varying clock rates, and not every portion need be active or inactive at all times. We are the gestalt products of group action within our brains, and therefore the brain can be replaced piecemeal without killing or copying ourselves.

This also means that the startrek transporter analogies are not accurate either. People earlier commented that they see no problems with being copied, that every moment we're alive we are destroyed and replaced with a copy, but this denies the facts of neurophysiology. At any given time multiple neurons are firing, each out of sync with each other, and this group movement is the best answer we have right now for the medium of consciousness. Even if you invoke the stuttered nature of inter-neuron communication, the fact that not all neurons exist in the same state at the same time does not change the fluidity of the group movement.

A better analogy would be that of a river. You can take a cup of water from it and the river still exists, you can pour water into it, and the river is still the same river. You cannot perceive gaps in the flow of the river, it's continuous because every molecule in it does not travel at the same speed or exist in the same linear position. The river exists as a group effect of its individual atoms, just like the mind exists as a group effect of all the impulses within the brain.

[Renegnicat]

Ragarth, I noted this in another thread, but it seems that Stanford Scientists have created a chip with an architecture that functions in exactly the same way that brain matter does, and were even able to program the brain's sine wave structure into it.

More info, here:
NeuroGrid Chip

[ragarth]

Ragarth, I noted this in another thread, but it seems that Stanford Scientists have created a chip with an architecture that functions in exactly the same way that brain matter does, and were even able to program the brain's sine wave structure into it.

More info, here:
NeuroGrid Chip

Thanks for the link, I'm always interested in reading these things. I actually believe I read a paper on this particular project, a large scale neural net project that began showing self-activation, correct? Or is that another one?

[Renegnicat]

Hmm... I'm not sure, but I don't think so. From what I understand of the Neurogrid chip, it's not a neural net. Basically, a neural net is a collection of interconnected micro-computers, but the architecture is still that of a single on-off switch.(vastly simplified remark, this.)

The neurogrid, on the other hand, I believe is a completely different fork from the von Neumann architecture. But it's not self aware yet. XD The current neurogrid chip replicates the amount of neurons found in a worms brain. By 2010, we'll be able to manufacture a neurogrid that can replicate a mouse's brain.

This is why I think we'll have androids in the next 15-30 years. Because the environment of brain matter has allready been replicated in this chips. It's just a matter of scale.

I'll probably buy a real-doll or something and implant it in her.  

[AlP]

I worked as a research assistant on a project where we were designing asynchronous CPUs, i.e. CPUs without a clock. It wasn't intended as a way of getting closer to the way the brain works. We were actually looking into whether they might be more efficient and use less power that way. It didn't =).

I'm not sure why a brain being asynchronous would prevent it from being copied? It's more complicated than simply copying a collection of bits from point A to point B but conceptually at least I think you can look at the state of a brain at a particular instant in time. I think at the scale of the brain quantum oddities don't need to be taken into account. Meaning, it's not the case that you are stuck with only being able to say there is an n% chance of the brain being in this state and an m% chance it's like this. And I bet you don't need to do it particle by particle. Once you know precisely how the nerves and neurons and other bits and pieces work (see how much I know about neuroscience!), you can probably use a simpler model for the "current state of the brain".