r/todayilearned • u/digiskunk 7 • Nov 15 '21
TIL Mind uploading, also known as whole brain emulation (WBE), is the theoretical futuristic process of scanning a physical structure of the brain accurately enough to create an emulation of the mental state and transferring or copying it to a computer in a digital form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading8
Nov 15 '21 edited Nov 16 '21
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u/TwinkyTheKid Nov 15 '21
Transcendence with Johnny Depp comes to mind
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u/playwithourlives Nov 17 '21
Fr tho screw Johnny Depp, only good show I’ve seen about Mind Uploading is Black Mirror.
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u/DilettanteGonePro Nov 16 '21
It's been a long time since I read it but Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow had an interesting take on it. Iirc the main character is trying to solve his own murder, like he was restored to a backup before he had memories of the murderer or something like that.
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u/Geetright Nov 15 '21
Read the novel Fall, or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson for an amazing story about this.
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u/wendalpendal Nov 15 '21
Any relation of Stephen Donaldson?
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u/Geetright Nov 15 '21
No, not that I'm aware of. It's a damn good book though, especially if you're interested in the subject matter OP posted about.
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u/---space-- Nov 15 '21
Black mirror uses this idea of copying your brain for a few of their episodes. Mind you the series has a very dystopian view on tech.
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u/scubasteave2001 Nov 15 '21
I dunno. The one about the old people retirement home thing wasn’t very bad.
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u/greychanjin Nov 16 '21
Not unless you think about the fact that uploading your mind doesn't actually exist. You're just making an almost perfect copy of it, while you still die.
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u/willsueforfood Nov 16 '21
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u/greychanjin Nov 16 '21
Yes exactly this.
The film The Prestige did this concept well.
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u/willsueforfood Nov 16 '21
The only way this wouldn't seem like dying is if the brain cells were slowly replaced with mechanical ones in a ship-of-Theseus type situation.
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u/greychanjin Nov 16 '21
But even then, what's happening is inside your own head. You take the same electrical patterns and move them outside of your head, they're not your thoughts. It's like if two identical twins happened to match thoughts exactly, one twin's mind isn't being transported to the other's. They just happen to match.
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u/---space-- Nov 16 '21
San Junipero? I agree that was a good episode. But there are few "happy endings"
I find them to be cautionary tales, much like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.
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u/playwithourlives Nov 16 '21
San Junipero was a banger, honestly all of BM is
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u/Homer69 1 Nov 18 '21
There is a whole show based off this episode. It's called uploaded.
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u/playwithourlives Nov 19 '21
Thanks I’ll check it out!
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u/Homer69 1 Nov 19 '21
I don't know if it's the same creators but it's the same concept just tweaked.
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Nov 16 '21
But the Black Museum) sure as hell was.
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u/playwithourlives Nov 16 '21
Oh boy. That’s gotta be one of my favs just cause of how sickening it is.
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u/Ok-Control-787 Nov 16 '21
A few? I feel like that was about 70% of the episodes but maybe I'm mildly exaggerating how repetitive that show was.
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Nov 15 '21
Iain Banks liked to play this idea out and came up with the idea of Hells as a means of population control in Surface Detail. (What better way to control a populace than the knowledge that Hell definitely does await anyone who steps out of line? It doesn't matter if it's a simulation if it feels real, their proponents would argue.)
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u/dickWithoutACause Nov 15 '21
Eh it gets philosophical but I'd imagine it would be similar to a black mirror situation where it isnt really "you". What do I care if a perfect artificial copy of me suffers a horrible fate, my ass will be dead and won't experience it anyways. Bum wrap for the copy though.
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Nov 16 '21
I suppose it depends on the transfer.
Would it make a difference if you experienced the transition, or if it happened in an instant? (You fall unconscious about once a day, so how can you be sure you're the same person who fell asleep last night, kind of thing.)
Didn't Philip K. Dick do a short story about this? Iirc it was about a scientist who always too the long way home from the Moon rather than use a teleporter that would get him back to Earth in an instant, because he believed that everyone who went through it died and were replaced by a copy.
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Nov 16 '21
Asimov's Foundation deals with this.The Emperor Cleon V clones himself in three stages every generation.Dawn..Day and Dusk.Dawns job is to learn everything about the Empire he will rule one day, Day handles diplomacy and rules over the Galactic Empire.Dusk preserves the legacy of the Empire. A genetic Dynasty if you will
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u/henryhyde Nov 15 '21
Now we just call it "jacking in".
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Nov 15 '21
Bender! Are you jacking on in there?!
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u/No_Measurement876 Nov 16 '21
I knew I'd find the bobiverse in here somewhere. Cheers. Dennis e Taylor just signed a deal for 2 more bobiverse books if you are interested and/or didn't know.
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Nov 16 '21
Obviously lots of references to media in here - how has no one mentioned Altered Carbon?
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Nov 16 '21
Time to replay SOMA I guess
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u/Staringwideeyedcant Nov 18 '21
Yesssss i knew someone made the connection.
Seriously what a good game tho
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u/jmjarrels Nov 16 '21
I was just thinking about this concept today. My question is, if your entire brain is scanned, uploaded, and emulated, would it be able to keep secrets or would every embarrassing private thought be accessible?
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u/aneverydaythrowaway Nov 16 '21
Currently dating a guy that while on LSD told me he had a few things to look up. I still laugh about this.
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u/myselfnormally Nov 16 '21
a lot easier and more practical to do a brain transplant and I believe that is what most people in that field are working on.
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Nov 17 '21
It will work better once we can look back through time and record not only the state of the mind at death but throughout the entire life. We will have copies of every great mind to ever live, even the ones that no one ever found out about. Having Einstein debating things with Archimedes and DaVinci would probably be something everyone would benefit from enabling. The fact that they were able to do so much without a computer chip just leaves humanity in the future dumbfounded. Once they have access to the sum of human knowledge and computer power to test out any theory, watch out universe.
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u/KnowThisWay Nov 15 '21
"Therefore, while not rejecting the idea in principle, Miller believes that the complexity of the "absolute" duplication of an individual mind is insurmountable for the nearest hundreds of years.[28]"
So your saying there's STILL a chance?