October 8, 2025 • 36 mins
Would you be the same person inside a chip? Jorge gets his head in the cloud with two scientists and a philosopher to discuss this possibility.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to sign Stuff and production
of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoar hitch hamp and today we're asking
the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Is it actually possible to digitize your mind and who
(00:22):
you are and have it run on a robot or
a hard drive. Would it be a way for you
to lift forever or maybe a way to copy yourself.
We'll talk to three experts about this, a mathematician who
focuses on emerging technologies, a neuroscientist who studies brain connections,
and a philosopher who's grappled with the question should we
(00:44):
upload our brains? So don't pull the plug and get
ready to live inside our electronic mind as we answer
the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Hey?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Everyone, So today we're talking to three people, a mathematician,
a neuroscientist, and a philosopher. And they're not going to
walk into a bar, but if each spend a lot
of time thinking about this idea of uploading your brain.
We'll start with the mathematician, Professor Ole Hackstrom. Here's what
he does. Well, thank you doctor Hagstrom for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Thank you glad to be here. So most of my
every year has been as a mathematician, but since about
twenty ten I've gradually become more interested in questions about
emerging technologists and global risk.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Can you tell us where you work.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I'm at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, we're going to start with the concept of mind uploading.
Can you tell us what it is for those of
us that I have never heard of it before.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So the idea of mind uploading, which is like a
hypothetic future technology, is that if you make a simulation
of the human brain, and you make it refined enough
and accurate enough, it will be as good as the
real thing. And the hope is that if it's good enough,
(02:16):
we can use this technology to migrate over to machines.
Our flash and blood bodies have all kinds of defects
after one hundred years, so so we tend to disintegrate
and die. And at least some people hope that uploading
technology could need to much longer and perhaps in effect
(02:36):
unbounded life.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Wow, do you know anything about the origins of this idea.
When it started, when people started thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It started in science fiction. Twentieth century science fiction writer
Stanislav lam certainly wrote about it, and another person who
helped popularize this concept was a philosopher, Derek Parfitt, who
thought very hard about a similar concept, which is called teleportation.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Like you're faxing yourself to another planet exactly, all right,
that's the basic idea. Do somehow simulate our brains in
a computer to escape our soft, perishable bodies. The next
question is, of course, how would this work? What are
the possible technologies that people have thought about doing this?
(03:27):
Mind uploading?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I should emphasize that this is not something we can
expect in the next decade or so. I think that
this is probably at least two or three decades away,
and maybe even further. There are several steps involved in uploading. First,
you need to scan the brain in extreme detail, and
the main concept there is that somehow you freeze the
(03:51):
brain and you cut it up in thin, thin, thin slices,
and then you scan.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Each slice whoa.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then you have to somehow organize all the information
you have gotten out of this and use that on
the machine. That is then meant to run your mind.
That would be an example of so called destructive uploading,
which requires that your brain is destroyed.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, it seems you really have to commit to.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
It absolutely, and many people might hesitate about that.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So that's option one. Freeze your brain, slice it really thin,
scan each slice, and then reconstruct the three D structure
of your brain, all the neurons and how they're connected
to each other. Of course the problem with that is
that you have to freeze your brain and slice it.
Fortunately there's option number two.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But the more ambitious concept if you're worry about having
your brain destroyed, is the idea of non destructive uploading.
So that requires figuring out how to do this scanning
thing with out destroying the brain. That would be to
have nano robots somehow, maybe through the blood stream, enter
the brain and photograph and otherwise record what is going
(05:11):
on there in the brain.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
WHOA, I thought you were going to say something like fMRI,
like some kind of magnetic scanner somehow reads yourselves. Is
that a possibility?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I don't know. If that were doable, then that sounds
less invasive.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So then idia would be nano robots who'd go into
your blood stream. It would get into your brain. And
then how do they record all your neurons.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
That's something that has to be figured out, but some
sort of electromagnetic recording device, and then maybe they can
transfer this information the radio link or.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Something that's uption number two nanobots. We'll talk about other
ways to scan or capture who you are later in
the program, but for now, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Once you scan your brain, what's thanks? Okay. And then
once you scan your brain, you presumably have a picture
of how all your neurons are connected to each other.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Right, a kind of three D picture. But the key
feature is that it's going to contain all the information
about connectedness between synapses and so on and so forth,
enough to reconstruct the whole brain state. And then yeah,
the brain processes, the thinking and so on started on
the computer.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Fascinating. Okay. So, now, once you have a bottel of
your brain, then you would create a new brain, or
you would stimulate one in the computer.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The idea would be to run this on a computer,
and if this simulation is faithful enough, some people hope
that this would actually be as good as having a
new brain. Wow, in a sense, even better. If you
are the kind of person who valuesness, maybe getting your
(07:01):
robot body as a replacemant for your present and highly imperfect,
presumably flesh and blood body. Or alternatively, if you want
to live in maybe other environments than the physical environment
that you maybe not maybe you could migrate to virtual
worlds on some really big computer that can host maybe
(07:24):
emulations of you and your loved ones and fans and
everybody who wants to join, could maybe live in a
society on this machine. It's the kind of technology that
we don't know if it's doable, but we also don't
have like physical limits that show that it's impossible, so
it may be worth thinking about.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
All right, So that's uploading your brain and simulating it
in a computer, and you can imagine there are several
reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you're near
the end of your life and this could be a
way for you to live longer, maybe even forever. But
according to doctor Hagstrom, there are other things you could
do with this technology, starting with cloning yourself.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
In a sense, a more radical thing you might do
is that once you have this emulation running on the machine,
it's an easy thing to copy it, so you can
have several emulations of yourself running on the machine.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
WHOA, You could clone yourself basically.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yes, And it's a much more precise thing than just
genetic cloning, because if you would, through genetics create clowns
on yourself, well, that would be persons who would share
your g you know, but not your upbringing and education
and so on. So they might be very different people,
just like identical twins typically somewhat different people. But in
(08:53):
this case you get a pair of ultra identical twins,
much much more identical than the identical twins we have now.
And each one of these simulations would feel like they argue,
So this would give rise to maybe even legal questions
about who has ownership to your possessions and if you're married,
(09:17):
who gets yourselves?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, I'm not sure my spouse can handle more than
one of me. She already gets frustrated enough with one
of me.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
So it's quite a far out scenario, and it's not
easy to figure out how we would organize a society
where we have easy access to this uploading technology.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, once you're in the cloud, you could copy yourself,
and your copies could live in different robots or in
different virtual worlds, although this opens up some logistical problems.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And I give one other example of a legal issue
that might arise.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, please, namely if.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
At this future time we still value the idea of
democracy and every person has one vote, and an argument
should be made that emulated minds should have the same
rights as democratic citizens as biological minds, because they are
as capable as us, and they have the same canceled
(10:25):
feelings and so forth, so they should really have the
whole package of human rights. But if there's an election
coming up and you really root for this candidate rather
than the other candidate, what is going to prevent you
then from making a thousand emulated copies on you and
the collective of you will get one thousand votes in
(10:47):
this election. How would you construct a system of democracy
which can function in a world with emulated minds without
having these manipulations of the system.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Oh my goodness. Yeah, that would probably blow the minds
of our current politicians, who can't even handle voting by mail.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, we can do it and Sweden, but I hear
you have some problems in the United States.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, democracy will get kind of sticky once people start
uploading and copying their brains. I mean, just think about
how many votes you have to count.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
When coppying is cheap. I don't know what will happen
to the world population. I can imagine that we might
quickly go from the billions to the trillions or quadrillions
of people.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Do you think it'll be cheaper to run a person
on a computer than to have them be alive.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah. One reason for thinking so is that we have
this very rapid development in computer efficiency, which doesn't seem
to be about to start.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah. Although on the plus that you wouldn't need healthcare
only tech support. Hey, today's IT technicians could be tomorrow's doctors.
Another interesting application of uploading your brain is space travel.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
There is really strong reason to replace these bodies that
we now have that are extremely ill suited for space
travel by robotic bodies, and uploading technology could achieve that
could be a case sep in conquering the galaxy and
other galaxies.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This could be one of the positives of uploading your brain.
If we could colonize space with our emulations of brains.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yes, potentially the biggest positives.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yes, we could upload our brains and explore the cosmos.
Your mind could live inside a spacecraft and be powered
for thousands of years by a solar or nuclear battery,
and you could travel and get to distant stars and
explore the other side of the galaxy, or visit this
super massive black hole at the center of it. Or
(13:02):
you could even imagine traveling to the edge of the universe.
All right, The last question I asked doctor Hagstrom was
what would it mean if we could do this? What
do you think it says that uploading your mind is possible?
What does it say about us as humans?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Perhaps if this is true, then it gives reason for
us to be a bit more humble in realizing that
our present kind of existence is not as uniquely tied
to our present bodies as we thought it was.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
The idea that we can be copied. She tells that
we're replaceable.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I guess, which is certainly worrying thought. And I think
that it's something we should ask ourselves very carefully before
we launch this technology, because if we don't think about
these questions carefully and arrive at the solution of how
to design in the society with uploaded minds that makes
(14:02):
us happy and satisfied, we might end up with something
that we would then deeply regret.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Okay, that's a pretty good overview of what the technology is,
how it might work, and what we could use it for.
The next question is can it actually be done. We'll
dig into the nitty gritty details of scanning your brain
with a neuroscientist, and then later we'll talk to an
expert about whether an uploaded you would still be you
(14:32):
stay with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay,
we're talking about uploading your brain to a computer, and
so far we've learned what that means and what you
could do with it. Next, we're going to talk to
(14:54):
Professor Dwayne Godwin, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest University, about
whether he thinks any of this is actually possible. Doctor
Godwin and I wrote a book together called Out of
Your Mind, in which we explore this and other fascinating
questions about the brain. Here's what he said, what's the
(15:15):
current state of the art in terms of scanning your brain?
What kind of information into what resolution can we do that?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So, one of the ways that we can do it
on the structural side is something called ultra high field MRI.
There's this giant magnet that's alternating a magnetic field, and
it's able to compose a functional image as well as
the structural image of the brain. And it's able to
do that at a pretty high resolutions. It can resolve
(15:44):
the living brain at submillimeter detail, so less than a millimeter,
but not at the level of synapses are on the
level of microns and nanometers. That's the level at which
synapses and synaptic protein are operating.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I see you're not getting the details of like this
neuron is sending a signal to that neuron. Right, that's
too small.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
That's right, that's too small.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Do you think that can get better over time? Like?
Are people trying to make that micro level fMRI?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, everything gets better all the time. I guess the
question is is the current state capable of doing what
you posed in your initial question? And I would say no,
at the moment, it's incapable of doing that. But can
you imagine that some day in the future there would
be you know, sufficiently strong magnets or ways to capture
(16:36):
that information. Yeah, sure, you could imagine that. It's just
that it's not here yet.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
All right. That sounds promising. There's also the option of
slicing your brain. Would that work to capture who you are.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So there are methods where you can look at that
level of detail. Unfortunately, those methods require that you die.
We don't yet have wadys of looking at it without
taking chunks of your brain out, essentially pickling them and
then slicing them into very very thin sections of brain
(17:11):
that we then aim an electron beam at in order
to look at the proteins that are in those very
fine level synapses. So yeah, it's in principle possible for
you to capture that level of detail from a human brain.
We do it from animal brains all the time. But
what you're getting is the instant after you had actually died.
(17:34):
So I don't think you want to be necessarily preserved
in that state, right.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, that would not be my preferred way to scan
my brain. And the problem here is also that you'd
be scanning a not so fresh brain. Yes, Like the
process would have to be like I die and then
my brain is sliced. It has to be sliced right
away before it spoils.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Basically, yeah, it would take many hours most likely before
I could be placed into a state where my body
could be preserved in order to be able to make
those fine sections of tissue. And even then it would
be after my brain had been deprived of oxygen for
a while. Things might not be looking so good inside
(18:20):
my old brain. So bringing me back might bring me
back to the moment of my demise, and I might
not be in such good shape.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Then you might be missing parts of the brain, like
it might be a corrupted scan of your brain.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Yeah, exactly, all right.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So you can't do any of this right now. But
as doctor Godwood mention, these are technical problems. You could
imagine that in the future we could come up with
better fMRI technology or figure right away to perfectly slice
your brain without any of it going bad. The next
question I had for him was would it be enough?
(18:56):
Would a scan of your brain be sufficient to recreate
who you are? Well, let's talk a little bit about
the challenges here. Like, let's say I get an fMRI
down to where I can detect neurons and how they're
connected to each other, basically the snapshot of the web
of the network in my brain of neurons. Is that
(19:17):
enough you think to recreate me in a computer?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Well, let's think about it this way. By an analogy.
Let's say you wanted to know how your computer worked.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Okay, what if.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
You could take the very best photograph and the very
best scan of the structure of your computer right now, Okay,
down to the level of individual connections and logic gates
like the circuit. Yeah, like the circuit. Would you be
able to tell whether your computer was on social media
or running Microsoft Word versus some other thing that it
(19:51):
might be doing. So that there's kind of a difference
here between getting a good picture of the hardware of
the brain and the ability to understand what the brain
is doing at any given moment.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
What doctor Godwin is saying here is even if we
could scan your brain down to the molecular level, that
doesn't mean we understand how the brain works. Let's say
I'm able to perfectly scan your brain and detect every
neuron connection it's in abs Wait, I have all this
information about my brain, and let's say it's pretty intact.
(20:24):
Could I get a computer to run it?
Speaker 4 (20:26):
You know, it's always a mistake to say something can't
be done. The best I can say right now is
that we're not in a position to do that right now.
But with some of the new computer architectures and chip architectures.
You know, there are these things called neuromorphic chips. I
think we could probably run simulations at some point in
the future that will almost perfectly emulate a lot of
(20:47):
the different states.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Of your brain.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
And I think, you know, looking who knows ten one
hundred years into the future, when AI is actually able
to help us, not only mimic the brain, but all
so help us and tell us the things that need
to be done to improve resolution and computation, then yeah,
I could see these things happening in the future.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I thought you were going to say that it was
not possible because we don't know all the processes that
are happening at the synapse level and the neurons. We
don't know yet how to create a simulation of the brain.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Well, I think that's correct that we don't yet know
how to do that, But I think your question was
broader about will we ever be able to do that.
I'm an optimist about these things. I think there could
be at some point in the future a powerful enough computer,
enough computational power, enough understanding of how these different elements
within the brain, the different connections are made, and how
(21:40):
information flows from one part of the brain to the
other that, yeah, you could run some sort of simulation
that is very much like you, but we're aways from that.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
What doctor Godwin is saying here is that right now
we just don't yet fully understand how the brain works.
But if doctor Godwin said, with more signs, we could
know all of this in the future. Until then, I
asked doctor Godwin about an alternate scenario, one in which
you maybe don't have to scan all of your brain,
(22:11):
and that is using AI or artificial intelligence. Okay, next question,
do you think you could train an AI to be.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
You could do you train an AI to think like you? Well,
I think that you could certainly train an AI to
follow you around, follow your movements, listen to your voice,
see what you see. Maybe you've written several books, you know,
the AI could train on that and make an astment
of what it would be like to have an AI
Woge or an AI Dwyane.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Okay, how about this sci fi scenario. What if I
create an AI that is conscious, that is like thinking
and is sentient, but it's sort of like a blank
version of a human, And then I can go, Okay,
I make a copy of this and train it on Whoorge,
so that it's basically like a sentient being trained to
be like Orge.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, that's not a bad approach. And I wrote a
blog post some years ago where I was saying, well,
maybe this is a path because you know, there are
probably some aspects of how the brain works that are
common to almost everyone. So for example, walking walking is
a thing that people with two legs all do, and
that program is probably pretty consistent from one person to another.
(23:24):
So you could see stringing together a number of those
different things and then say, Okay, let's put that in
an android brain or body, and then let's just focus
on the thing that makes four hay or hay interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Meaning maybe you don't need to upload your whole brain, Like,
maybe you don't need to scan every single synapse and
you're run in your brain just the parts that really
make me who I am, so that we can then
program that or put that into a generic, hopefully better
looking and smarter, perversion of meat.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
I mean, it's not an unreasonable idea, right, So yeah, yeah,
it might be that you don't need to upload your
whole brain.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
You might only need to upload or train an AI
on the parts that make you uniquely you. Okay, now
let's say that we could one day scan your brain
and run a pretty good simulation of it in a computer.
What's that program technically be alive? And more important, would
it actually be you? In other words, would any of
(24:27):
this actually work? When we come back, we're going to
tackle this question, and fair warning, it's going to get
very philosophical. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey,
(24:52):
welcome back. All right, we're talking about uploading your brain
to a computer, and so far we've learned what it is,
it could be useful, and whether a brain scientist thinks
it's possible. Next, we're going to answer the question would
this actually work. Let's say we could scan your brain
down to the synapse and maybe even the molecular level,
(25:15):
and let's say we could get a computer to somehow
simulate your brain. Well, there are two very big questions
about what happens next, and these questions are mainly philosophical.
So to take us through this, I reached out to
Professor Qualtiero Piccinini. Well, thank you, doctor Piccinini for joining.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Us, Thank you for having me. I'm a philosophy professor
at University of Missouri. So I researched mostly philosophy of
mind and the mind sciences.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Okay, the first question we're going to tackle here is
whether the brain that you simulate in the computer has consciousness. Okay,
what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Means that it has a subjective experience, you know, like
real emotions that it feels, or visual or auditory perceptions
that it actually perceives, or thoughts that it can access
and tell you what they are from the inside, as
opposed to just you know, uttering the words. Sometimes philosophers
call this phenomenal consciousness or what it's like to be you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
All right.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Consciousness is a very tricky subject, one that we could
spend the whole episode talking about, but it's basically the
difference between the feeling that you have that you're a
person and you have thoughts and emotions and a certain
self awareness, and a pre programmed machine that only reacts
to things yourself. Doctor Piccinini puts.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It, Okay, what I'm saying is a simulation of a brain,
would that experience anything or would it just be crunching
some numbers? And then at the end it gives you
an output that sounds like things that you would have
said or behaves that you would have exhibited with your body.
But behind that there's no actual subjective feelings or thoughts.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
But I guess, if it's simulating a brain, wouldn't it
have internal states and wouldn't it have representations of feelings
If it's going to simulate how we process information.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yes, it would have representations of feelings. That a representation
of a feeling is not necessarily a feeling, just like
a representation of a fire doesn't necessarily burn anything, or
representation of wind doesn't blow anything I see, or a
representation of volcano doesn't have any real hot lava. It's
(27:40):
a representation and it's dynamical, it evolves, you know. It
tells you when the volcano is erupting, and when the
lava is coming out, and how many things it burns
on its path. But then it's still just a representation
of all these things. It doesn't destroy anything.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Oh, I see. What doctor Paccinini is saying is that
it's an open question whether or not a simulation of
a brain in a computer can be conscious. There are
a lot of theories about what is needed to have consciousness,
and some of them say a computer program can have consciousness,
and some of them say a computer can't. As you
(28:16):
put it, a simulation of a volcano is not a volcano.
It all hinges on the question of whether consciousness requires
you to have a body or not.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
A few of these theories do posit that the right
kind of information processing is sufficient for consciousness, but a
lot of them do not, and in fact positive the opposite,
that something more is needed. A certain kind of physical
process or a certain kind of living system has to
be there.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I see there is something about that computation being in
a biological system that maybe makes it true consciousness.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yes, I've seen more people defending the idea that it
takes more than just computation to generate a real mind.
And for example, there's a very distinguished psychologist, a neuroscientist
by the name of Anil Seth, and he has an
article coming out now in an important journal defending the
idea that you have to be alive to be conscious.
(29:19):
So conscious requires a biological system. I don't necessarily agree
that it has to be biological. I'm not totally convinced,
but one point that I agree with is that it
takes more than just computation or information processing.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Now, there's a lot of debate between philosophers and neuroscientists
about this, But doctor Piccinini says, there's a growing sense
that your brain uploaded to a computer wouldn't really be
a conscious being simply because it doesn't have a body.
That maybe there's something about having a physical body that's
essential to having consciousness. I wonder what you're saying is
(29:59):
that we say, somehow need the need to be alive
as a functioning biological system in order to have the
experience that we know of as the human experience.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Well, that's what Aniel Seth says, that we have to
be alive. I don't know if we have to be alive,
but like for us to even be able to process
information in the right kind of way, all these other
background conditions have to be in place, and they seem
to be part of what makes the system be able
to have experiences, conscious experiences, conscious thoughts.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Meaning if I lived inside of a computer in a bus,
it wouldn't be the same experience.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, and maybe there wouldn't be any experience at all.
It would just be dead sort of states or unconscious
states of information.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So even if you uploaded your brain to a computer,
it might not work. It wouldn't exist in the same
way that you exist right now. And this brings us
to the second big philosophical question, which is would that
uploaded you still be you.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Normally, we can make a simulation of whatever system we choose,
and we have the original target system, and we're simulating,
like say the weather, and then we have a simulation
of the weather, but the weather is still there. That was,
you know, We're just trying to simulate it over there,
and the simulation is a different system. So why would
anybody think that if we build a simulation of your brain,
(31:23):
then somehow you enter the simulation instead of staying there
where you are in your brain. I see, But yeah,
that's not you, that's a copy.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Meaning like, there's this fantasy that I would close my eyes,
I would feel like I'm going through a tunnel and
suddenly I'm in a computer. That's the fantasy, yeah, But
in reality, it's like I'll close my eyes and I'll
open them again, and then now suddenly there's something that's
like me on the computer.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
But for the thing in the computer, they would have
the experience of going to the tunnel, wouldn't they.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, they wouldn't exist before, so maybe they would have
a memory, you know, like a false memory of that.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Oh false a maoun.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
This gets so tricky.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, okay, this kind of blows the whole idea wide open.
What doctor Paccinini is saying is that the whole concept
of uploading your mind is not possible, and that's because
your mind is not like a file that can be transferred.
What you'd really be doing is making a copy of
your mind and then uploading that. But you would still
(32:30):
stay where you are. You wouldn't leave your body, which
begs the question what's the point then?
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And maybe, you know, maybe some people would like to
have a copy of them made it, and that's fine,
but let's not confuse that with you surviving in that way.
You know, it's not a way for you to survive.
That's just the way to make a copy of you.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I think you're arguing that the words uploading your mind
are just false because it's really more like you're uploading
a copy of your mind. Yes, all right, but here's
a twist, doct Cappuccinini things there is a way for
you to upload your brain and have it actually be
you that gets uploaded. And this is a scenario that
I had never heard before.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And the other idea is replacing parts of your brain
with some microchips a little bit at a time, and
so nothing of your brain is left anymore and it's
all microchips instead. So in the case the brain replacement,
it's actual a little more plausible that if you really
replace one part of your brain at a time, eventually
you sort of become all made out of artificial components,
(33:37):
because it's there's this one you, you know, there's one
system all along.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I mean, if you do it's slow enough, like a
ship of pieces, then you could transfer. Yeah, okay, this
is a scenario where you gradually replace your brain one
part at a time, little by little, you would change
out parts of your brain with computer chips and computer parts.
In that case, you could stay you the whole time,
(34:04):
and the being that ends up in the computer would
technically be a continuation of the you you are right now. Now.
I don't know if I have to say this, but
the technology to do any of this is pretty far
out in the future, if it's even possible at all.
But it's important to think about the philosophical questions because
(34:24):
it might help us figure out if it's worth doing.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, don't fall for it. And if anybody says, oh,
give us a million dollars and we'll freeze your brain
and then we'll upload your mind into a computer someday,
it's a scam. You wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. No,
I'll give a million dollars a charity before I do that. Wait,
before I do that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, yeah, spend them on a real person, not a
fake version of you. Right, all right, here's what we
learned today. A lot of smart people thinking about the
idea of uploading your brain. And technically there's nothing so
far that says that this is not physically possible. You
could imagine the science and the technology one day being
(35:11):
advanced enough to do it. But the bigger question is
is it worth it? Would it actually be you that's uploaded,
and with that uploaded version actually be alive and conscious.
The answer seems to be probably not, in which case
maybe the better question to ask is can we upgrade
(35:34):
our brains?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
That seems to.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Be something we more desperately need these days. Thanks for
downloading us into your podcast player. I'll see you next week.
You've been listening to science stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
written and produced by me Or hitch Ham, edited by
Rose Seguda, Executive producer Jerry Rowland, an audio engineer and
(35:58):
mixer Casey pepperm and you can follow me on social media.
Just search for PhD Comics and the name of your
favorite platform. Be sure to subscribe to sign stuff on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,
and please tell your friends We'll be back next Wednesday
with another episode.
Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to sign Stuff and production
of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoar hitch hamp and today we're asking
the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Is it actually possible to digitize your mind and who
(00:22):
you are and have it run on a robot or
a hard drive. Would it be a way for you
to lift forever or maybe a way to copy yourself.
We'll talk to three experts about this, a mathematician who
focuses on emerging technologies, a neuroscientist who studies brain connections,
and a philosopher who's grappled with the question should we
(00:44):
upload our brains? So don't pull the plug and get
ready to live inside our electronic mind as we answer
the question can you upload your brain to a computer?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Hey?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Everyone, So today we're talking to three people, a mathematician,
a neuroscientist, and a philosopher. And they're not going to
walk into a bar, but if each spend a lot
of time thinking about this idea of uploading your brain.
We'll start with the mathematician, Professor Ole Hackstrom. Here's what
he does. Well, thank you doctor Hagstrom for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Thank you glad to be here. So most of my
every year has been as a mathematician, but since about
twenty ten I've gradually become more interested in questions about
emerging technologists and global risk.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Can you tell us where you work.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I'm at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, we're going to start with the concept of mind uploading.
Can you tell us what it is for those of
us that I have never heard of it before.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So the idea of mind uploading, which is like a
hypothetic future technology, is that if you make a simulation
of the human brain, and you make it refined enough
and accurate enough, it will be as good as the
real thing. And the hope is that if it's good enough,
(02:16):
we can use this technology to migrate over to machines.
Our flash and blood bodies have all kinds of defects
after one hundred years, so so we tend to disintegrate
and die. And at least some people hope that uploading
technology could need to much longer and perhaps in effect
(02:36):
unbounded life.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Wow, do you know anything about the origins of this idea.
When it started, when people started thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
It started in science fiction. Twentieth century science fiction writer
Stanislav lam certainly wrote about it, and another person who
helped popularize this concept was a philosopher, Derek Parfitt, who
thought very hard about a similar concept, which is called teleportation.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Like you're faxing yourself to another planet exactly, all right,
that's the basic idea. Do somehow simulate our brains in
a computer to escape our soft, perishable bodies. The next
question is, of course, how would this work? What are
the possible technologies that people have thought about doing this?
(03:27):
Mind uploading?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
I should emphasize that this is not something we can
expect in the next decade or so. I think that
this is probably at least two or three decades away,
and maybe even further. There are several steps involved in uploading. First,
you need to scan the brain in extreme detail, and
the main concept there is that somehow you freeze the
(03:51):
brain and you cut it up in thin, thin, thin slices,
and then you scan.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Each slice whoa.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then you have to somehow organize all the information
you have gotten out of this and use that on
the machine. That is then meant to run your mind.
That would be an example of so called destructive uploading,
which requires that your brain is destroyed.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, it seems you really have to commit to.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
It absolutely, and many people might hesitate about that.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So that's option one. Freeze your brain, slice it really thin,
scan each slice, and then reconstruct the three D structure
of your brain, all the neurons and how they're connected
to each other. Of course the problem with that is
that you have to freeze your brain and slice it.
Fortunately there's option number two.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But the more ambitious concept if you're worry about having
your brain destroyed, is the idea of non destructive uploading.
So that requires figuring out how to do this scanning
thing with out destroying the brain. That would be to
have nano robots somehow, maybe through the blood stream, enter
the brain and photograph and otherwise record what is going
(05:11):
on there in the brain.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
WHOA, I thought you were going to say something like fMRI,
like some kind of magnetic scanner somehow reads yourselves. Is
that a possibility?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I don't know. If that were doable, then that sounds
less invasive.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So then idia would be nano robots who'd go into
your blood stream. It would get into your brain. And
then how do they record all your neurons.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
That's something that has to be figured out, but some
sort of electromagnetic recording device, and then maybe they can
transfer this information the radio link or.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Something that's uption number two nanobots. We'll talk about other
ways to scan or capture who you are later in
the program, but for now, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Once you scan your brain, what's thanks? Okay. And then
once you scan your brain, you presumably have a picture
of how all your neurons are connected to each other.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Right, a kind of three D picture. But the key
feature is that it's going to contain all the information
about connectedness between synapses and so on and so forth,
enough to reconstruct the whole brain state. And then yeah,
the brain processes, the thinking and so on started on
the computer.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Fascinating. Okay. So, now, once you have a bottel of
your brain, then you would create a new brain, or
you would stimulate one in the computer.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The idea would be to run this on a computer,
and if this simulation is faithful enough, some people hope
that this would actually be as good as having a
new brain. Wow, in a sense, even better. If you
are the kind of person who valuesness, maybe getting your
(07:01):
robot body as a replacemant for your present and highly imperfect,
presumably flesh and blood body. Or alternatively, if you want
to live in maybe other environments than the physical environment
that you maybe not maybe you could migrate to virtual
worlds on some really big computer that can host maybe
(07:24):
emulations of you and your loved ones and fans and
everybody who wants to join, could maybe live in a
society on this machine. It's the kind of technology that
we don't know if it's doable, but we also don't
have like physical limits that show that it's impossible, so
it may be worth thinking about.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
All right, So that's uploading your brain and simulating it
in a computer, and you can imagine there are several
reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you're near
the end of your life and this could be a
way for you to live longer, maybe even forever. But
according to doctor Hagstrom, there are other things you could
do with this technology, starting with cloning yourself.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
In a sense, a more radical thing you might do
is that once you have this emulation running on the machine,
it's an easy thing to copy it, so you can
have several emulations of yourself running on the machine.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
WHOA, You could clone yourself basically.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yes, And it's a much more precise thing than just
genetic cloning, because if you would, through genetics create clowns
on yourself, well, that would be persons who would share
your g you know, but not your upbringing and education
and so on. So they might be very different people,
just like identical twins typically somewhat different people. But in
(08:53):
this case you get a pair of ultra identical twins,
much much more identical than the identical twins we have now.
And each one of these simulations would feel like they argue,
So this would give rise to maybe even legal questions
about who has ownership to your possessions and if you're married,
(09:17):
who gets yourselves?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, I'm not sure my spouse can handle more than
one of me. She already gets frustrated enough with one
of me.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
So it's quite a far out scenario, and it's not
easy to figure out how we would organize a society
where we have easy access to this uploading technology.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, once you're in the cloud, you could copy yourself,
and your copies could live in different robots or in
different virtual worlds, although this opens up some logistical problems.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
And I give one other example of a legal issue
that might arise.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, please, namely if.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
At this future time we still value the idea of
democracy and every person has one vote, and an argument
should be made that emulated minds should have the same
rights as democratic citizens as biological minds, because they are
as capable as us, and they have the same canceled
(10:25):
feelings and so forth, so they should really have the
whole package of human rights. But if there's an election
coming up and you really root for this candidate rather
than the other candidate, what is going to prevent you
then from making a thousand emulated copies on you and
the collective of you will get one thousand votes in
(10:47):
this election. How would you construct a system of democracy
which can function in a world with emulated minds without
having these manipulations of the system.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Oh my goodness. Yeah, that would probably blow the minds
of our current politicians, who can't even handle voting by mail.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right, we can do it and Sweden, but I hear
you have some problems in the United States.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yes, democracy will get kind of sticky once people start
uploading and copying their brains. I mean, just think about
how many votes you have to count.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
When coppying is cheap. I don't know what will happen
to the world population. I can imagine that we might
quickly go from the billions to the trillions or quadrillions
of people.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Do you think it'll be cheaper to run a person
on a computer than to have them be alive.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah. One reason for thinking so is that we have
this very rapid development in computer efficiency, which doesn't seem
to be about to start.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah. Although on the plus that you wouldn't need healthcare
only tech support. Hey, today's IT technicians could be tomorrow's doctors.
Another interesting application of uploading your brain is space travel.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
There is really strong reason to replace these bodies that
we now have that are extremely ill suited for space
travel by robotic bodies, and uploading technology could achieve that
could be a case sep in conquering the galaxy and
other galaxies.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This could be one of the positives of uploading your brain.
If we could colonize space with our emulations of brains.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yes, potentially the biggest positives.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yes, we could upload our brains and explore the cosmos.
Your mind could live inside a spacecraft and be powered
for thousands of years by a solar or nuclear battery,
and you could travel and get to distant stars and
explore the other side of the galaxy, or visit this
super massive black hole at the center of it. Or
(13:02):
you could even imagine traveling to the edge of the universe.
All right, The last question I asked doctor Hagstrom was
what would it mean if we could do this? What
do you think it says that uploading your mind is possible?
What does it say about us as humans?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Perhaps if this is true, then it gives reason for
us to be a bit more humble in realizing that
our present kind of existence is not as uniquely tied
to our present bodies as we thought it was.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
The idea that we can be copied. She tells that
we're replaceable.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I guess, which is certainly worrying thought. And I think
that it's something we should ask ourselves very carefully before
we launch this technology, because if we don't think about
these questions carefully and arrive at the solution of how
to design in the society with uploaded minds that makes
(14:02):
us happy and satisfied, we might end up with something
that we would then deeply regret.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Okay, that's a pretty good overview of what the technology is,
how it might work, and what we could use it for.
The next question is can it actually be done. We'll
dig into the nitty gritty details of scanning your brain
with a neuroscientist, and then later we'll talk to an
expert about whether an uploaded you would still be you
(14:32):
stay with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay,
we're talking about uploading your brain to a computer, and
so far we've learned what that means and what you
could do with it. Next, we're going to talk to
(14:54):
Professor Dwayne Godwin, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest University, about
whether he thinks any of this is actually possible. Doctor
Godwin and I wrote a book together called Out of
Your Mind, in which we explore this and other fascinating
questions about the brain. Here's what he said, what's the
(15:15):
current state of the art in terms of scanning your brain?
What kind of information into what resolution can we do that?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So, one of the ways that we can do it
on the structural side is something called ultra high field MRI.
There's this giant magnet that's alternating a magnetic field, and
it's able to compose a functional image as well as
the structural image of the brain. And it's able to
do that at a pretty high resolutions. It can resolve
(15:44):
the living brain at submillimeter detail, so less than a millimeter,
but not at the level of synapses are on the
level of microns and nanometers. That's the level at which
synapses and synaptic protein are operating.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I see you're not getting the details of like this
neuron is sending a signal to that neuron. Right, that's
too small.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
That's right, that's too small.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Do you think that can get better over time? Like?
Are people trying to make that micro level fMRI?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, everything gets better all the time. I guess the
question is is the current state capable of doing what
you posed in your initial question? And I would say no,
at the moment, it's incapable of doing that. But can
you imagine that some day in the future there would
be you know, sufficiently strong magnets or ways to capture
(16:36):
that information. Yeah, sure, you could imagine that. It's just
that it's not here yet.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
All right. That sounds promising. There's also the option of
slicing your brain. Would that work to capture who you are.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So there are methods where you can look at that
level of detail. Unfortunately, those methods require that you die.
We don't yet have wadys of looking at it without
taking chunks of your brain out, essentially pickling them and
then slicing them into very very thin sections of brain
(17:11):
that we then aim an electron beam at in order
to look at the proteins that are in those very
fine level synapses. So yeah, it's in principle possible for
you to capture that level of detail from a human brain.
We do it from animal brains all the time. But
what you're getting is the instant after you had actually died.
(17:34):
So I don't think you want to be necessarily preserved
in that state, right.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, that would not be my preferred way to scan
my brain. And the problem here is also that you'd
be scanning a not so fresh brain. Yes, Like the
process would have to be like I die and then
my brain is sliced. It has to be sliced right
away before it spoils.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Basically, yeah, it would take many hours most likely before
I could be placed into a state where my body
could be preserved in order to be able to make
those fine sections of tissue. And even then it would
be after my brain had been deprived of oxygen for
a while. Things might not be looking so good inside
(18:20):
my old brain. So bringing me back might bring me
back to the moment of my demise, and I might
not be in such good shape.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Then you might be missing parts of the brain, like
it might be a corrupted scan of your brain.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Yeah, exactly, all right.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So you can't do any of this right now. But
as doctor Godwood mention, these are technical problems. You could
imagine that in the future we could come up with
better fMRI technology or figure right away to perfectly slice
your brain without any of it going bad. The next
question I had for him was would it be enough?
(18:56):
Would a scan of your brain be sufficient to recreate
who you are? Well, let's talk a little bit about
the challenges here. Like, let's say I get an fMRI
down to where I can detect neurons and how they're
connected to each other, basically the snapshot of the web
of the network in my brain of neurons. Is that
(19:17):
enough you think to recreate me in a computer?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Well, let's think about it this way. By an analogy.
Let's say you wanted to know how your computer worked.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Okay, what if.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
You could take the very best photograph and the very
best scan of the structure of your computer right now, Okay,
down to the level of individual connections and logic gates
like the circuit. Yeah, like the circuit. Would you be
able to tell whether your computer was on social media
or running Microsoft Word versus some other thing that it
(19:51):
might be doing. So that there's kind of a difference
here between getting a good picture of the hardware of
the brain and the ability to understand what the brain
is doing at any given moment.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
What doctor Godwin is saying here is even if we
could scan your brain down to the molecular level, that
doesn't mean we understand how the brain works. Let's say
I'm able to perfectly scan your brain and detect every
neuron connection it's in abs Wait, I have all this
information about my brain, and let's say it's pretty intact.
(20:24):
Could I get a computer to run it?
Speaker 4 (20:26):
You know, it's always a mistake to say something can't
be done. The best I can say right now is
that we're not in a position to do that right now.
But with some of the new computer architectures and chip architectures.
You know, there are these things called neuromorphic chips. I
think we could probably run simulations at some point in
the future that will almost perfectly emulate a lot of
(20:47):
the different states.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Of your brain.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
And I think, you know, looking who knows ten one
hundred years into the future, when AI is actually able
to help us, not only mimic the brain, but all
so help us and tell us the things that need
to be done to improve resolution and computation, then yeah,
I could see these things happening in the future.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I thought you were going to say that it was
not possible because we don't know all the processes that
are happening at the synapse level and the neurons. We
don't know yet how to create a simulation of the brain.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Well, I think that's correct that we don't yet know
how to do that, But I think your question was
broader about will we ever be able to do that.
I'm an optimist about these things. I think there could
be at some point in the future a powerful enough computer,
enough computational power, enough understanding of how these different elements
within the brain, the different connections are made, and how
(21:40):
information flows from one part of the brain to the
other that, yeah, you could run some sort of simulation
that is very much like you, but we're aways from that.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
What doctor Godwin is saying here is that right now
we just don't yet fully understand how the brain works.
But if doctor Godwin said, with more signs, we could
know all of this in the future. Until then, I
asked doctor Godwin about an alternate scenario, one in which
you maybe don't have to scan all of your brain,
(22:11):
and that is using AI or artificial intelligence. Okay, next question,
do you think you could train an AI to be.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
You could do you train an AI to think like you? Well,
I think that you could certainly train an AI to
follow you around, follow your movements, listen to your voice,
see what you see. Maybe you've written several books, you know,
the AI could train on that and make an astment
of what it would be like to have an AI
Woge or an AI Dwyane.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Okay, how about this sci fi scenario. What if I
create an AI that is conscious, that is like thinking
and is sentient, but it's sort of like a blank
version of a human, And then I can go, Okay,
I make a copy of this and train it on Whoorge,
so that it's basically like a sentient being trained to
be like Orge.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, that's not a bad approach. And I wrote a
blog post some years ago where I was saying, well,
maybe this is a path because you know, there are
probably some aspects of how the brain works that are
common to almost everyone. So for example, walking walking is
a thing that people with two legs all do, and
that program is probably pretty consistent from one person to another.
(23:24):
So you could see stringing together a number of those
different things and then say, Okay, let's put that in
an android brain or body, and then let's just focus
on the thing that makes four hay or hay interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Meaning maybe you don't need to upload your whole brain, Like,
maybe you don't need to scan every single synapse and
you're run in your brain just the parts that really
make me who I am, so that we can then
program that or put that into a generic, hopefully better
looking and smarter, perversion of meat.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
I mean, it's not an unreasonable idea, right, So yeah, yeah,
it might be that you don't need to upload your
whole brain.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
You might only need to upload or train an AI
on the parts that make you uniquely you. Okay, now
let's say that we could one day scan your brain
and run a pretty good simulation of it in a computer.
What's that program technically be alive? And more important, would
it actually be you? In other words, would any of
(24:27):
this actually work? When we come back, we're going to
tackle this question, and fair warning, it's going to get
very philosophical. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey,
(24:52):
welcome back. All right, we're talking about uploading your brain
to a computer, and so far we've learned what it is,
it could be useful, and whether a brain scientist thinks
it's possible. Next, we're going to answer the question would
this actually work. Let's say we could scan your brain
down to the synapse and maybe even the molecular level,
(25:15):
and let's say we could get a computer to somehow
simulate your brain. Well, there are two very big questions
about what happens next, and these questions are mainly philosophical.
So to take us through this, I reached out to
Professor Qualtiero Piccinini. Well, thank you, doctor Piccinini for joining.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Us, Thank you for having me. I'm a philosophy professor
at University of Missouri. So I researched mostly philosophy of
mind and the mind sciences.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Okay, the first question we're going to tackle here is
whether the brain that you simulate in the computer has consciousness. Okay,
what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Means that it has a subjective experience, you know, like
real emotions that it feels, or visual or auditory perceptions
that it actually perceives, or thoughts that it can access
and tell you what they are from the inside, as
opposed to just you know, uttering the words. Sometimes philosophers
call this phenomenal consciousness or what it's like to be you.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
All right.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Consciousness is a very tricky subject, one that we could
spend the whole episode talking about, but it's basically the
difference between the feeling that you have that you're a
person and you have thoughts and emotions and a certain
self awareness, and a pre programmed machine that only reacts
to things yourself. Doctor Piccinini puts.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It, Okay, what I'm saying is a simulation of a brain,
would that experience anything or would it just be crunching
some numbers? And then at the end it gives you
an output that sounds like things that you would have
said or behaves that you would have exhibited with your body.
But behind that there's no actual subjective feelings or thoughts.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
But I guess, if it's simulating a brain, wouldn't it
have internal states and wouldn't it have representations of feelings
If it's going to simulate how we process information.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yes, it would have representations of feelings. That a representation
of a feeling is not necessarily a feeling, just like
a representation of a fire doesn't necessarily burn anything, or
representation of wind doesn't blow anything I see, or a
representation of volcano doesn't have any real hot lava. It's
(27:40):
a representation and it's dynamical, it evolves, you know. It
tells you when the volcano is erupting, and when the
lava is coming out, and how many things it burns
on its path. But then it's still just a representation
of all these things. It doesn't destroy anything.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Oh, I see. What doctor Paccinini is saying is that
it's an open question whether or not a simulation of
a brain in a computer can be conscious. There are
a lot of theories about what is needed to have consciousness,
and some of them say a computer program can have consciousness,
and some of them say a computer can't. As you
(28:16):
put it, a simulation of a volcano is not a volcano.
It all hinges on the question of whether consciousness requires
you to have a body or not.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
A few of these theories do posit that the right
kind of information processing is sufficient for consciousness, but a
lot of them do not, and in fact positive the opposite,
that something more is needed. A certain kind of physical
process or a certain kind of living system has to
be there.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I see there is something about that computation being in
a biological system that maybe makes it true consciousness.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yes, I've seen more people defending the idea that it
takes more than just computation to generate a real mind.
And for example, there's a very distinguished psychologist, a neuroscientist
by the name of Anil Seth, and he has an
article coming out now in an important journal defending the
idea that you have to be alive to be conscious.
(29:19):
So conscious requires a biological system. I don't necessarily agree
that it has to be biological. I'm not totally convinced,
but one point that I agree with is that it
takes more than just computation or information processing.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Now, there's a lot of debate between philosophers and neuroscientists
about this, But doctor Piccinini says, there's a growing sense
that your brain uploaded to a computer wouldn't really be
a conscious being simply because it doesn't have a body.
That maybe there's something about having a physical body that's
essential to having consciousness. I wonder what you're saying is
(29:59):
that we say, somehow need the need to be alive
as a functioning biological system in order to have the
experience that we know of as the human experience.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Well, that's what Aniel Seth says, that we have to
be alive. I don't know if we have to be alive,
but like for us to even be able to process
information in the right kind of way, all these other
background conditions have to be in place, and they seem
to be part of what makes the system be able
to have experiences, conscious experiences, conscious thoughts.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Meaning if I lived inside of a computer in a bus,
it wouldn't be the same experience.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, and maybe there wouldn't be any experience at all.
It would just be dead sort of states or unconscious
states of information.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So even if you uploaded your brain to a computer,
it might not work. It wouldn't exist in the same
way that you exist right now. And this brings us
to the second big philosophical question, which is would that
uploaded you still be you.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Normally, we can make a simulation of whatever system we choose,
and we have the original target system, and we're simulating,
like say the weather, and then we have a simulation
of the weather, but the weather is still there. That was,
you know, We're just trying to simulate it over there,
and the simulation is a different system. So why would
anybody think that if we build a simulation of your brain,
(31:23):
then somehow you enter the simulation instead of staying there
where you are in your brain. I see, But yeah,
that's not you, that's a copy.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Meaning like, there's this fantasy that I would close my eyes,
I would feel like I'm going through a tunnel and
suddenly I'm in a computer. That's the fantasy, yeah, But
in reality, it's like I'll close my eyes and I'll
open them again, and then now suddenly there's something that's
like me on the computer.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yes, I think so.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
But for the thing in the computer, they would have
the experience of going to the tunnel, wouldn't they.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, they wouldn't exist before, so maybe they would have
a memory, you know, like a false memory of that.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Oh false a maoun.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
This gets so tricky.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, okay, this kind of blows the whole idea wide open.
What doctor Paccinini is saying is that the whole concept
of uploading your mind is not possible, and that's because
your mind is not like a file that can be transferred.
What you'd really be doing is making a copy of
your mind and then uploading that. But you would still
(32:30):
stay where you are. You wouldn't leave your body, which
begs the question what's the point then?
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And maybe, you know, maybe some people would like to
have a copy of them made it, and that's fine,
but let's not confuse that with you surviving in that way.
You know, it's not a way for you to survive.
That's just the way to make a copy of you.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I think you're arguing that the words uploading your mind
are just false because it's really more like you're uploading
a copy of your mind. Yes, all right, but here's
a twist, doct Cappuccinini things there is a way for
you to upload your brain and have it actually be
you that gets uploaded. And this is a scenario that
I had never heard before.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And the other idea is replacing parts of your brain
with some microchips a little bit at a time, and
so nothing of your brain is left anymore and it's
all microchips instead. So in the case the brain replacement,
it's actual a little more plausible that if you really
replace one part of your brain at a time, eventually
you sort of become all made out of artificial components,
(33:37):
because it's there's this one you, you know, there's one
system all along.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I mean, if you do it's slow enough, like a
ship of pieces, then you could transfer. Yeah, okay, this
is a scenario where you gradually replace your brain one
part at a time, little by little, you would change
out parts of your brain with computer chips and computer parts.
In that case, you could stay you the whole time,
(34:04):
and the being that ends up in the computer would
technically be a continuation of the you you are right now. Now.
I don't know if I have to say this, but
the technology to do any of this is pretty far
out in the future, if it's even possible at all.
But it's important to think about the philosophical questions because
(34:24):
it might help us figure out if it's worth doing.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, don't fall for it. And if anybody says, oh,
give us a million dollars and we'll freeze your brain
and then we'll upload your mind into a computer someday,
it's a scam. You wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. No,
I'll give a million dollars a charity before I do that. Wait,
before I do that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, yeah, spend them on a real person, not a
fake version of you. Right, all right, here's what we
learned today. A lot of smart people thinking about the
idea of uploading your brain. And technically there's nothing so
far that says that this is not physically possible. You
could imagine the science and the technology one day being
(35:11):
advanced enough to do it. But the bigger question is
is it worth it? Would it actually be you that's uploaded,
and with that uploaded version actually be alive and conscious.
The answer seems to be probably not, in which case
maybe the better question to ask is can we upgrade
(35:34):
our brains?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
That seems to.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Be something we more desperately need these days. Thanks for
downloading us into your podcast player. I'll see you next week.
You've been listening to science stuff. The production of iHeartRadio
written and produced by me Or hitch Ham, edited by
Rose Seguda, Executive producer Jerry Rowland, an audio engineer and
(35:58):
mixer Casey pepperm and you can follow me on social media.
Just search for PhD Comics and the name of your
favorite platform. Be sure to subscribe to sign stuff on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,
and please tell your friends We'll be back next Wednesday
with another episode.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.