So we can’t upload our consciousness to the Internet?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 23, 2015

Mind, Neuroscience, News}

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Further to: Still chipping away at the sense of self (Such efforts are virtually always uninsightful. After all, they would be world news if they weren’t),

Another current pop sci rave is uploading our consciousness to the Internet.

We Will Never Be Able to Upload Our Consciousness

says Ann Althouse, referring to this discussion between Daniel Kaufman and Massimo Pigliucci*:

*Note: Pigliucci, blogging at Scientia Salon, was one of the The Altenberg 16

See also: Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away

Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?

and

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

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Comments

I also watched the movie Ex Machina a couple of days ago. I'm conflicted. On the one hand, it is drearily predictable about AI cheerleading -- it's inevitable, it will be here in 20 years, blah, blah, blah without giving the slightest nod to the intractable problems that have real AI research (hard AI anyway) mired in moribund stagnation. On the other hand, the movie has some penetrating insights into the moral questions of treating "people" as means instead of ends, and the inevitable corruption of the soul of the one who does so. So, I recommend it with caveats.Barry Arrington_{August 24, 2015
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Coincidentally, I watched the movie Ex Machina last night which is all about AI and the Turing Test. It's a good movie but I think we're still a long way from downloading a human consciousness into a computer or uploading it to the Internet, if only because we have no real idea of how consciousness works. Of course, if we could it would have tremendous implications for, say, space travel. If we could be transferred to android-type machines that don't require all the life-support needed for biological bodies and aren't as vulnerable to all the radiation in space, that could be a tremendous advantage.Seversky_{August 23, 2015
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BA: Yeah, but are the quads conscious? I think this is yet another example of how randomness constrained by physical law and selection for reproductive advantage can produce things that appear for all the world like they were intelligently and purposefully designed. -- Because of their careful and thorough indoctrination into the scientism of our age, I'd bet that the majority of the bright people present in that room, watching the quads perform, believe that the brains, control theory and bodies of human athletes are the products of just such a process. A little more OT: Incarnateleodp_{August 23, 2015
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OT: Quadrocopter Ball Juggling, ETH Zurich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y The Astounding Athletic Power of Quadcopters | Raffaello D'Andrea | TED Talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQbornagain77_{August 23, 2015
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