From: Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Date: Thu Jun 12 1997 - 16:41:15 MDT
Max More <maxmore@primenet.com> pursued:
> How exactly do you think we will do that as uploads? It's not
> obvious that a change of platform will instantly make us totally
> malleable or give us the ability easily to simply plug in new
> abilities.
Yes, I didn't mean to imply that our initial move to another
platform would "instantly make us totally malleable". Many have
already brought up many important issues like the extreme complexity
and integrated nature of our memories. Of course complete
understanding of all this would be required before we could start
increasing our intelligence and finally being able to "plug in a PhD".
But, the only difference between someone before his PhD and
after is only a material state change. Currently we really have to
struggle to make that amount of state change because of our inability
to directly comprehend and directly manipulate the relevant brain
matter. Surely, some day, though admittedly likely a very difficult
and complex process, we should be able to achieve such state changes
much easier on a future platform.
I really like Anders comments:
> What we will need to truly be able to transfer skills, memories and
> experience is some kind of "neural lingua franca"; maybe add-on
> lobes of our uploaded brains which are identical in all people and
> information inside them hence can easily be transferred.
Yes, I imagine an additional visual cortex, for example, being
added. Rather than receiving data from an additional set of eyes, the
visual space being experienced in another visual cortex is simply
being identically reproduced. With such an enhancement we will
probably discover that some people have inverted or different color
qualia for representing various wavelengths of light. I emagine
generic lobes and cortexes being able to reproduce arbitrary
sensations and ideas identically as others are experiencing them based
on data from brain observers. "wow, that isn't what salt tastes like
to me!" some future enhanced person might say.
Evolution wired a very valuable joy to the chemical content of
cheese cake. But this particular pleasure is completely arbitrary.
This is proved by synesthesia (miss wiring) where people taste things
like shapes. At first we may only be able to switch them off. But
surely, eventually, we will be able to completely rearchitect them at
will.
Only when we can so choose and change what we want to want
will we really be free. Now, we are simply hard wired to want cheese
cake by our creator. Surely we will be able to eventually cut these
puppet strings and become truly free.
Brent Allsop
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