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This is more a philosophical post, but it does relate to neurology.
If you are interested lease peruse my prior thread on my philosophical view of consciousness and how it ceases after death in a threat I posted a long time ago: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=689912
Anyways, on another forum, someone asked if "...the consciousness in my brain [could] be uploaded to a computer?"
I responded as follows:
No.
This technology does not exist and is very unlikely to be developed in your lifetime.
Your consciousness is an emergent property of a very complicated neural network consisting of roughly one trillion neurons. These neurons have electochemical connections and influence each other in complex ways, some of which are understood by neuroscientists and others which remain mysterious.
I make no hyperbole when I state that your specific neural network cannot be adequately modeled in silicon form without very detailed information about the exact structure of your brain on the microscopic level.
For instance, a single atom change could change your consciousness. As an example, if you had a polymorphic dopamine receptor in you ventral tegmental area, this could have profound influences on your personality, character, temperment, tendency towards substance abuse, and so forth.
These authors speculate that the oxytocin receptor gene promoter may have important behavioral effects: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23734094
I could give various other examples of how small changes have big consequences.
Modeling your consciousness on a computer would require the following:
1) An improvement in our understanding of the neuroscience of consciousness
2) A way to gather detailed information about the structure of your brain on the microscopic level
3) A way to import the information into a pragmatic consciousness-modeling program.
Even as an informational problem, it would be impossible for a modern computer to store the atomic characteristics, position, charge, spin, and velocity of each of 10^14 atoms in each of 10^12 neurons, not to mention the glia, connective tissue, and even characteristics of the serum which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain.
The point of this lengthy post is to convince you of the following:
You will die. You will not be rescued by advances in medical technology or computer science. Your consciousness will utterly cease to exist. There is no afterlife.
This is your one chance to enjoy life and make a positive contribution to the world. live it up!
what do you think of my argument? Do you believe that consciousness persists after death (again, check out my prior thread if interested in my arguments). Do you think that we can become immortal by modeling our consciousness with a computer? Do you think that we can escape mortality through advancements in allopathic medicine?
If you are interested lease peruse my prior thread on my philosophical view of consciousness and how it ceases after death in a threat I posted a long time ago: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=689912
Anyways, on another forum, someone asked if "...the consciousness in my brain [could] be uploaded to a computer?"
I responded as follows:
No.
This technology does not exist and is very unlikely to be developed in your lifetime.
Your consciousness is an emergent property of a very complicated neural network consisting of roughly one trillion neurons. These neurons have electochemical connections and influence each other in complex ways, some of which are understood by neuroscientists and others which remain mysterious.
I make no hyperbole when I state that your specific neural network cannot be adequately modeled in silicon form without very detailed information about the exact structure of your brain on the microscopic level.
For instance, a single atom change could change your consciousness. As an example, if you had a polymorphic dopamine receptor in you ventral tegmental area, this could have profound influences on your personality, character, temperment, tendency towards substance abuse, and so forth.
These authors speculate that the oxytocin receptor gene promoter may have important behavioral effects: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23734094
I could give various other examples of how small changes have big consequences.
Modeling your consciousness on a computer would require the following:
1) An improvement in our understanding of the neuroscience of consciousness
2) A way to gather detailed information about the structure of your brain on the microscopic level
3) A way to import the information into a pragmatic consciousness-modeling program.
Even as an informational problem, it would be impossible for a modern computer to store the atomic characteristics, position, charge, spin, and velocity of each of 10^14 atoms in each of 10^12 neurons, not to mention the glia, connective tissue, and even characteristics of the serum which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain.
The point of this lengthy post is to convince you of the following:
You will die. You will not be rescued by advances in medical technology or computer science. Your consciousness will utterly cease to exist. There is no afterlife.
This is your one chance to enjoy life and make a positive contribution to the world. live it up!
what do you think of my argument? Do you believe that consciousness persists after death (again, check out my prior thread if interested in my arguments). Do you think that we can become immortal by modeling our consciousness with a computer? Do you think that we can escape mortality through advancements in allopathic medicine?
