Stephen Hawking: Brains Could Be Copied To Computers To Allow Life After Death

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

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Huffington Post

An interesting theory, but a profoundly bizarre one.  To note, I find it difficult to compare the human mind to a computer program knowing that computer programs are themselves the creation of man.  Plus, what are the implications of such an idea?  Would a self-proclaimed programmer "God" from this reality inherit complete control over our 'e-souls?'  Heck, is physical life itself the subject of one giant video game app on the iPhone of some alien who spends his life playing with our artificial existence, in which we continuously advance to the next level in search for the final boss?

What do you all think?

[TJ in Oregon]

This assumes a deterministic view of our minds, that much is for sure.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

This assumes a deterministic view of our minds, that much is for sure.

A functionalist one, too.

I don't trust people who compare things to fairy tales as a way of implying irrelevance or illegitimacy, as a rule.

[Beet]

They don't have the technology. If you want to live forever on this miserable ing planet better to have them cryogenically freeze your brain so in 500 years when this technology exists at least a zombified version of yourself has a chance of coming back. Otherwise just accept that we are all part of the cosmos or rest your faith in a higher being, or both.

[Beet]

I mean, Hawkings idea is neat and all, but there are a lot of steps between Google glass and immortality. And if the military has discovered the latter they're probably keeping it a secret.

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

They don't have the technology. If you want to live forever on this miserable ing planet better to have them cryogenically freeze your brain so in 500 years when this technology exists at least a zombified version of yourself has a chance of coming back. Otherwise just accept that we are all part of the cosmos or rest your faith in a higher being, or both.

Well, Hawking himself said that the feat lies "beyond our present capabilities."  I don't know how serious he was being when he suggested this.

And really, who would want to spend their days as a robot?

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Our brain is a functioning, perceiving, problem-solving mass of hydrocarbons that physically functions through electrical signals.  A computer is not THAT much different.  Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?  Non-living elements that have come together in such a way to allow the organism to function?

Hawkins idea is, IMO, much more within the realm of possibility than any religion. 

[DemPGH]

I think it's a fantastic idea. I have tremendous interest in where humanity is going, I would love to be here 500 years from now, and if before I go into decline, as we all do, I would like for my consciousness to be transferred to a robot. No, I probably couldn't enjoy wine and other things, but it would be an experience worth trying. But I don't think I have an immortal soul, so why not?

I don't trust people who compare things to fairy tales as a way of implying irrelevance or illegitimacy, as a rule.

I really don't follow that, honestly. It's kind of like "sweet lemons" reasoning. There's first a difference between something being irrelevant and something being a basis for knowledge. Secondly, stories about people walking on water or an ancient human building a ship the size of football stadium out of some trees and then rounding up every animal on Earth so he could herd all the animals on it to protect them from a flood are really, really implausible for the same reason jack and the beanstalk is. Are those stories irrelevant? Certainly not. They tell us volumes about human myth-making. But are they a good basis for knowledge? Most assuredly not, which is all that Hawking is attacking. I'm genuinely surprised at the small number of quite apt university students here who have a hard time with that concept.

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

This reminds me of the similar thing that happened in Dollhouse, though I was skeptical that human minds could be stored on disc drives due to the sheer amount of storage needed. Same deal here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's worth pointing out that (obviously) this area is not anywhere near Hawking's specialism(s) and so his musings on the subject aren't worth that much more than mine, yours, or the random racist old man on the number twelve bus.

But this - and older fantasies like cryogenics - is a truly terrible idea. Terrible. Cold Lazarus gives as good a demonstration as any, I think.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

We aren't a collection of parts that work together in unison to function?  If you don't believe in the soul, robots and humans aren't terribly different from each other.

[afleitch]

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

We aren't a collection of parts that work together in unison to function?  If you don't believe in the soul, robots and humans aren't terribly different from each other.

I prefer to think of us as walking bacteria incubators.

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

We aren't a collection of parts that work together in unison to function?  If you don't believe in the soul, robots and humans aren't terribly different from each other.

I'd say that depends on the atheist's view of free will.  If you don't believe in free will, then there's very little distinguishing humans from robots.  If you do believe in free will, then the difference is very significant.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

We aren't a collection of parts that work together in unison to function?  If you don't believe in the soul, robots and humans aren't terribly different from each other.

I'd say that depends on the atheist's view of free will.  If you don't believe in free will, then there's very little distinguishing humans from robots.  If you do believe in free will, then the difference is very significant.

No, I believe in free will.  I was making the comparison in the most crude and physical of terms.  Also, I'm not making the assumption that robots can not have free will.  Ever play Mega Man X?

[Kitteh]

Yeah, this isn't really anything new, the only new thing about this is that someone "credible" outside of the niche and (for now) fringe fields of life extension and transhumanism is talking about it. Which as people have mentioned does not exactly make it more credible, though imo what Steven Hawking has to say on this topic outside his field is a little more relevant than just the ramblings of some random person on the street, since he probably comes into contact with many more people involved with research in these topics than you or I do.

Personally, as someone who sees a lot of value in transhumanist research I wish its advocates weren't so overzealous sometimes. There's a lot of difference between "this is something that's plausible and could be extremely extremely important so we should research it" and "this is something we can do and probably will in a few decades!", and people shouldn't have to fall back on the latter to justify research for these things. Hawking isn't nearly as guilty of that as some people are (*cough* Ray Kurzweil *cough*), and I think this statement is being exaggerated by the popular press, but it's still true to some extent here. To be fair it isn't entirely the scientists' fault, a lot of it has to do I think with budget cuts and governments that hate to fund any research unless it has immediate, tangible results, and the sensationalist  media playing to the scientism that's popular today.

Plus, what are the implications of such an idea?  Would a self-proclaimed programmer "God" from this reality inherit complete control over our 'e-souls?'  Heck, is physical life itself the subject of one giant video game app on the iPhone of some alien who spends his life playing with our artificial existence, in which we continuously advance to the next level in search for the final boss?

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

There's a really interesting argument about this, essentially saying that if humans ever do manage to design an artificial "reality" with self-contained sentient creatures, then it is extremely (99.99999999...(ad infinitum)%) likely that we ourselves are living in such a reality and that the creators of that reality are themselves living in such a reality and so on and on back for a gigantic number of "levels of reality". It wouldn't appear as such to us, because being entirely confined to this reality any "glitches" or interference from the creators of such a reality would be appear as the natural laws of the universe since we have nothing to compare them to. Which means ultimately this wouldn't substantially matter to us since by definition nothing would appear different from if this was the "only reality". It's still a very interesting thing to think about though-as you can see from all the debate it's caused (see the responses sections of that website).

Aren't we all just biological robots anyway?

No.

Not to play moderate hero, but this type of response is guilty of the exact same level of arrogance and overcertainty about something we really know nothing about that is problematic about Hawking's statement.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

These sort of things are always "just five years away". The Robot Revolution was meant to begin in the early 60s after all.

Given what we know about the 'mind' is greatly outstripped by what we don't know about it, such thinking is rather premature to say the least.

[compson III]

Brains are at the level of quantum computers at the very least, which is much more complex than any current kinds of computing.  This is not a merely a differences in degree, but rather a significant qualitative difference.

[anvi]

"The brain is like a program in the mind"?  What does that even mean?  The mind is the hardware and the brain is the software, so we can just put the software into a different host?  But then, what kind of "hardware" is "the mind"?  What kind of garbled Cartesian bs is that?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

"The brain is like a program in the mind"?  What does that even mean?  The mind is the hardware and the brain is the software, so we can just put the software into a different host?  But then, what kind of "hardware" is "the mind"?  What kind of garbled Cartesian bs is that?

The metaphor of the brain being the "hardware" and the mind as "software" is pretty common in certain areas of Cognitive Science.

[anvi]

So, Hawking may have just inverted the terms in the metaphor?  If so, then I understand now.  Thanks.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

I don't trust people who compare things to fairy tales as a way of implying irrelevance or illegitimacy, as a rule.

I really don't follow that, honestly. It's kind of like "sweet lemons" reasoning. There's first a difference between something being irrelevant and something being a basis for knowledge. Secondly, stories about people walking on water or an ancient human building a ship the size of football stadium out of some trees and then rounding up every animal on Earth so he could herd all the animals on it to protect them from a flood are really, really implausible for the same reason jack and the beanstalk is. Are those stories irrelevant? Certainly not. They tell us volumes about human myth-making. But are they a good basis for knowledge? Most assuredly not, which is all that Hawking is attacking. I'm genuinely surprised at the small number of quite apt university students here who have a hard time with that concept.

It's not that I have a hard time understanding the concept, it's just...

[หมูเด้ง]

This reminds me of the similar thing that happened in Dollhouse, though I was skeptical that human minds could be stored on disc drives due to the sheer amount of storage needed. Same deal here.

It would be about a couple a hundred modern high-end Desktop drives. There are computers now that arguably process more sheer information at once than a brain.

Sheer hardware ability, despite the fact that it could be a few more years before it is reasonably efficient, is not the problem.

The problem is with that power, how you organize it in a way to produce a consciousness. This is what the entire "Human Brain Project" is supposed to start doing next year if the country doesn't get torn apart because of the default.

The initial goal of these sort of things will not be to achieve immortality, but I could see how it could get us back on track in solving why people are mentally ill or eventually go senile. Perhaps beyond that, we could use what we learn from such projects to create operating systems, search engines and computer languages that work exactly the way they should and have robots that can operate in any environment.

Some of the ultimate goal of many ambitious research projects today could make something in 5 years and some may take 5000 years.

[Blue3]

*We don't even truly understand how the mind works... how would we know we're "copying" all of it, or reproducing it in a way that it would still function normally? And how do you know we wouldn't be leaving it what really makes us "us"?

*So much of our mind is based on our body... take away our body, and even our mind would be basically unrecognizable and completely inhuman?

*Let's say a copy of someone's mind is made... but the original body didn't die yet. Who is considered the "real" one? Both?

[หมูเด้ง]

*We don't even truly understand how the mind works... how would we know we're "copying" all of it, or reproducing it in a way that it would still function normally? And how do you know we wouldn't be leaving it what really makes us "us"?

*So much of our mind is based on our body... take away our body, and even our mind would be basically unrecognizable and completely inhuman?

*Let's say a copy of someone's mind is made... but the original body didn't die yet. Who is considered the "real" one? Both?

Well, its a thing Computer Science about deep and shallow copies. I doubt you can make a deep copy without actually moving it. But it would probably be a living hell to be "alive" without actually being alive, wouldn't it? Ghosts would be real.