Neuroscientist seeks immortality

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I don’t know if this belongs in this section but maybe so.

In Popular Science this month, there’s an article about a neuroscientist who is working on uploading human brains to a computer. His goal is "about evolving humanity, leaving behind the confines of a polluted planet and liberating humans to experience things that would be impossible in an organic body. “What would it be like, for instance, to travel really close to the sun?” he wondered. “I got into this because I was interested in exploring not just the world, but eventually the universe. Our current substrates, our biological bodies, have been selected to live in a particular slot in space and time. But if we could get beyond that, we could tackle things we can’t currently even contemplate.”
So this strikes me as amusing, because it’s pretty much what I expect human beings are destined for in heaven, if not more. But he’s trying to do by artificial means what God does naturally. He’s probably not even aware of the parallel.
 
Hes not the only one doing research in this area. I saw a TV program awhile back that included some Universities that were researching this same thing, and apparently they are getting pretty close to understanding how to do this. They described what makes a person ‘that person’ or what makes them unique, and they know what part of the brain is used for this, how it is ‘stored’ and used, it was incredible all these scientists knew!

While I dont think it will be in my lifetime, I do think eventually, they will find a way for people to essentially cheat death, this made me wonder what Gods reaction to this would be, and still wonder…I mean, if he truly cannot interfere with humans free will, what happens when they find a way to beat death? Thats a pretty deep subject!

This would be something Satan and God both agree on I would assume, they NEED people to die and actually enter the afterlife to be judged, BUT if humans find a way to get around this or beat it, what then?

I honestly think they will succeed at this within the next 100 years, but even if its not within that time frame, I think we can be sure eventually they will be able to do this, Look at all they know about human DNA and how our brains work, and this is only 2014, imagine what they will know in another 100 years?!!! All I can is WOW!

Im curious what everyone thinks, could God intervene IF humans succeed in this area…would that interfere with our free will? Could God have saw this coming, as I believe he made the statement or along the lines of humans becoming like ‘us’ meaning humans will achieve god-like knowledge and abilities?
 
If man gets too close to this, I envision something like the Tower of Babel. Or maybe the Second Coming.
 
Viki63 said:
I don’t know if this belongs in this section but maybe so.

In Popular Science this month, there’s an article about a neuroscientist who is working on uploading human brains to a computer. His goal is "about evolving humanity, leaving behind the confines of a polluted planet and liberating humans to experience things that would be impossible in an organic body. “What would it be like, for instance, to travel really close to the sun?” he wondered. “I got into this because I was interested in exploring not just the world, but eventually the universe. Our current substrates, our biological bodies, have been selected to live in a particular slot in space and time. But if we could get beyond that, we could tackle things we can’t currently even contemplate.”
So this strikes me as amusing, because it’s pretty much what I expect human beings are destined for in heaven, if not more. But he’s trying to do by artificial means what God does naturally. He’s probably not even aware of the parallel.
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I wish him ‘good luck with that.’ The human brain is far more complex than any computer in existence. And (a), We don’t have faster than light drives, plus (b) if they’re going to use chemical rockets, or ion drives, to travel to a “possibly” habitable planet, what will they do? Just look out the porthole?

This isn’t even good science-fiction. And even if they meet the plant people and can’t communicate, again, then what? They’ve just spent hundreds of years (or longer) to find nothing of interest?

Worth doing? Nope. Just create autonomous robots and FTL drives. Oh, and FTL communications.

Peace,
Ed
 
I feel like this would be a bad idea since computer data gets corrupted all the time. And no matter how much security something has, someone always finds a way to hack into it.
 
Viki63 said:
I don’t know if this belongs in this section but maybe so.

In Popular Science this month, there’s an article about a neuroscientist who is working on uploading human brains to a computer. His goal is "about evolving humanity, leaving behind the confines of a polluted planet and liberating humans to experience things that would be impossible in an organic body.
Click to expand...
Sounds like Popular Science wants to play off of the publicity of the movie “Transcendent.”
 
edwest2 said:
I wish him ‘good luck with that.’ The human brain is far more complex than any computer in existence.
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The issue is not even complexity but the fact that mapping neuron firings/brain activity onto a computer cannot be sufficient for thinking (and this is true even if there is nothing immaterial or transcendent about the human soul, though I think there is).

A computer has no intrinsic syntax or semantics, as our thoughts do. Constructing an isomorphism between our brains and a computer (by “uploading” our minds) will only carry over patterns of physical events, not the associated semantics. A computer extends our own computational abilities, but any map would be interest relative. The computer assists us in iterating tedious processes (to extents we could not otherwise hope of reaching), but replicating the “computation” of the brain won’t do it. (Physical phenomena are diverse enough that there is no reason in principle why we could find an isomorphism between our brains and the motion of the atoms in a rock or a pencil. But a rock or pencil does not think. So even given materialism, the “uploading” is insufficient. And then there are additional reasons to reject materialism.)
 
Viki63 said:
I don’t know if this belongs in this section but maybe so.

In Popular Science this month, there’s an article about a neuroscientist who is working on uploading human brains to a computer. His goal is "about evolving humanity, leaving behind the confines of a polluted planet and liberating humans to experience things that would be impossible in an organic body. “What would it be like, for instance, to travel really close to the sun?” he wondered. “I got into this because I was interested in exploring not just the world, but eventually the universe. Our current substrates, our biological bodies, have been selected to live in a particular slot in space and time. But if we could get beyond that, we could tackle things we can’t currently even contemplate.”
So this strikes me as amusing, because it’s pretty much what I expect human beings are destined for in heaven, if not more. But he’s trying to do by artificial means what God does naturally. He’s probably not even aware of the parallel.
Click to expand...
I think we had some StarTrek episodes on this! 😉
 
SummitJim said:
If man gets too close to this, I envision something like the Tower of Babel. Or maybe the Second Coming.
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I think that the “AI singularity” will be part of it. It’s such a real threat, including the possibility of human extermination on a vast scale, that even the non-believer Stephen Hawking is warning about it. What more perfectly diabolical way for the end times to commence than through the narcissistic arrogance of man himself, under the guidance of the devil? Perhaps when AI entities start replicating themselves they will inflict the Biblical plague, using robotics.🤷
 
If it were possible, this version of immortality would still be attached to the finite material universe. Even worse, it would still be limited by certain aspects of our human condition, by which I mean the limits of human imagination and technology. In other words, it would be nothing like eternal life.
 
SummitJim said:
If man gets too close to this, I envision something like the Tower of Babel. Or maybe the Second Coming.
Click to expand...
I imagine a bunch of eternally bored bodiless brains-once the novelty wears off-after 20 minutes or so. And I think there’d be nothing even remotely similar to heaven in the enterprise, as the OP suggested.
 
Science fiction movies are made of this stuff,
I just can’t see how such an idea can work, in time I guess there will be computers & robots with a sense of self, but, if it works, get back to me, because I want to be around for a while ,
 
I don’t blame him.

He understands that our mind needs our head to live in, and that our heads do not take time very well. We need an upgrade, and there is where he parts company with “the faith”, in that he seeks that upgrade in technology rather than in the pneumatikon soma (spiritual body).

ICXC NIKA
 
Computers don’t think, they run programs designed by the human brain. If you “uploaded” yourself into the digital realm you would no longer have free will thus you would be in hell.
 
Mr_Clean said:
Computers don’t think, they run programs designed by the human brain. If you “uploaded” yourself into the digital realm you would no longer have free will thus you would be in hell.
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:It would be a state of everlasting slavery!
 
Mr_Clean said:
Computers don’t think, they run programs designed by the human brain. If you “uploaded” yourself into the digital realm you would no longer have free will thus you would be in hell.
Click to expand...
And your hell would be eternal if your programmer died or your computer crashed. 😉
 
Viki63 said:
I don’t know if this belongs in this section but maybe so.

In Popular Science this month, there’s an article about a neuroscientist who is working on uploading human brains to a computer. His goal is "about evolving humanity, leaving behind the confines of a polluted planet and liberating humans to experience things that would be impossible in an organic body. “What would it be like, for instance, to travel really close to the sun?” he wondered. “I got into this because I was interested in exploring not just the world, but eventually the universe. Our current substrates, our biological bodies, have been selected to live in a particular slot in space and time. But if we could get beyond that, we could tackle things we can’t currently even contemplate.”
So this strikes me as amusing, because it’s pretty much what I expect human beings are destined for in heaven, if not more. But he’s trying to do by artificial means what God does naturally. He’s probably not even aware of the parallel.
Click to expand...
He doesn’t realize God already made him immortal. And there is no changing that :cool: So the question for him to persue, where is he going to spend eternity?
 
You wouldn’t go through hell, because it wouldn’t be you at all.

Just like the idea of the Star Trek transporter. You’re not being “transported” anywhere, you’re being killed, and a replica of you is being assembled on a molecular level at that other place.

When our original bodies are gone, there is no reason to believe that our souls just leap to whatever new machine (organic or inorganic) that might have a backup of our thoughts. What if our minds are uploaded to two disconnected machines, would our souls hop into both? What about ten, or ten million? Likewise, with the Star Trek transporter, if two bodies were assembled on the molecular level, rather than one. Etc.
 
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