From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Fri Jan 01 1999 - 22:11:03 MST
You guys have some interesting thoughts about uploading, but I think we're
still talking past each other a bit when we get down to actual scenarios. I
can see several reasonably possibilities, depending on how fast different
technologies evolve. However, I think some of the options that have been
mentioned rely on combinations of capabilities and limitations that are
self-contradictory.
To do an upload requires advanced computers, advanced sensors, and knowledge
about how the brain works. To get a reasonably upload scenario you have to
project advances in all three of these fields at the same time, and see what
you come up with.
Now, the traditional proof-of-principle for uploading is obviously never
going to actually be used. It assumes no knowledge at all about how the
brain works, which results in enormous computation requirements. Unless you
think the Omega hardware will be built tomorrow, and everyone in the biotech
industry is about to jump off a cliff, that doesn't make sense.
A simulation at the cellular level, relying purely on advanced knowledge of
biochemistry, lets you reduce the computational burden by several orders of
magnitude. It still isn't very likely, however, because it matches a modest
increase in medical knowledge with a fantastic improvement in computers and
sensor technology.
A much more probable scenario would project medical advances forward until
there is hardware fast enough to run the sim, and sensors good enough to
gather the data. That implies at least a moderately good understanding of
the brain - something better than just an understanding of biochemistry, but
probably not good enough to just model the brain's data processing.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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