Electronic backup of your brain.

This is the latest prediction of leading scientist Raymond Kurzweil, that within the next two decades you will be able to back and store all your thoughts and memories electronically.

All your thoughts, dreams, experiences, everything that makes you, well, you.

More on the talk he gave here

Would you back yourself up electronically and if so, would you want to tbe able to access all your stored thoughts.

If they could create a player for it, you could have the ultimate mindreader. Download someone's thoughts and play them back for all to see.

What would happen if it broke down, or you got someone else's memories?

What do you think the future brings?

I think the potential for having all their thoughts, urges and assorted other extremely personal memories being exposed to the public via theft, system glitches or hacking, would give almost anyone pause before downloading themselves into a digital media like that. People already distrust Facebook, imagine the paranoia this would instill.

Oh dear, now I'm trying to figure out which would go kablooey faster, my job or my marriage.

Jesus Christ. Hell No.

There would be, according to this scheme, something that thought it was ME in that computer.

I couldn't do that to anyone.

ETA: Nightmare example, #1 - you make a backup of yourself, and have it running so you've got someone to talk when you're old and in the home. Which is bad enough.

Then consider this: The young, stored version of you is watching you deteriorate. Knowing all the while that you're the real one and it's the copy. And you're stuck facing, at the same time, a perfect image of the capabilities you used to have while your mind was healthier.

Yeah, I'm having trouble seeing the upside to this technology. Unless the developers are keen on hurling civilization towards a dystopian, Bladerunner-esque future as quickly as possible.

Oh, I'm sure it would be sold as, "Now you can have yourself caring for your needs in your old age, and who do you trust more than yourself?"



Ha!

Check that, some horrible Matrix/Terminator-esque dystopian future.

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Originally posted by OtakuLoki

Oh, I'm sure it would be sold as, "Now you can have yourself caring for your needs in your old age, and who do you trust more than yourself?

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Younger-computer-me would probably kill old-deteriorating-me. Every young person is willing to sacrifice their older self for a little temporary comfort, after all. ;)

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Originally posted by Zuul

Younger-computer-me would probably kill old-deteriorating-me. Every young person is willing to sacrifice their older self for a little temporary comfort, after all. ;)

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You're forgetting: Younger-computer-me knows Younger-computer-me is stuck in the computer for the rest of old-deteriorating-me's life. At which point Younger-computer-me dies, too. You may be more merciful, but my Younger-computer-me would torment old-deteriorating-me while making sure to care for his physical well-being, in some desire for revenge for the trick of being stuffed in a box, never to be allowed out again.

TBH, younger-computer-me would most likely keep old-deteriorating-me drugged up so younger-computer-me could spend all my time downloading porn into my computer world.

Ah, yes. The joys of looking at what you can never, ever, ever have again.

Don't forget the food porn!

Precisely. And hating me for putting "me" in that position the whole time!

And you're just going to keep fleshy self drugged up? Bah. The fucker would be having spurious fire alarms every time he starts into good REM sleep.


You don't want to know what showers and toileting would be like.

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Originally posted by OtakuLoki

And you're just going to keep fleshy self drugged up? Bah. The fucker would be having spurious fire alarms every time he starts into good REM sleep.


You don't want to know what showers and toileting would be like.

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Come now. You're not being creative enough. This is you we're talking about. Who else knows your darkest fears? Your weaknesses? The best ways to absolutely fuck with you?

Oh, the things I could do to myself.

The problem there is that my biggest fears are non-physical, and I see no reason to assume that transfer into a computer would alleviate those. So, the only way to beat myself with the concept of infinity would be to embrace it, and then elaborate on it. At length.

Which would be self torment squared.

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Kurzweil told 500 guests at a sponsored 'future talk' event in Vienna, Austria, that the human brain backup was now already technically possible.

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Frankly, I remain dubious.

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He said: 'I believe that within the next 20 years we will have thousands of nanobot computer machines in our blood that will heal our bodies, improve our performance, and even be able to back up all the contents of our brains, just as you backup your files on a computer.

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Dr. Kurzweil, you crazy, crazy man. Bless you for being so optimistic about the potential of technology. When we are both eternally young and living in Space Valhalla, I will be the first in line to apologize for doubting you.

Maybe people in Austria will be immortal cyborgs in 20 years. I can barely afford to keep the brain I have now in working order. Who's going to pay for these hypothetical nanobot computer machines in my blood, I ask you? By "we" I presume you mean "rich people."

I'm game for it. I like the backups being used already -- letters, notes, e-files, photos, audio recordings, videos, and other persons' recollections that assist me with my recollections.

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Originally posted by terrifel

Maybe people in Austria will be immortal cyborgs in 20 years. I can barely afford to keep the brain I have now in working order. Who's going to pay for these hypothetical nanobot computer machines in my blood, I ask you? By "we" I presume you mean "rich people."

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Yes, it'll be a new and wonderful way for the rich to be better off than the poor. And as the two hundred year old billionaires with their eternally twenty-something good looks see the shriveled poor people in their seventies they'll say "well it's their own fault for choosing to get old."

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Originally posted by Muffin

I'm game for it. I like the backups being used already -- letters, notes, e-files, photos, audio recordings, videos, and other persons' recollections that assist me with my recollections.

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It does seem to be the eventual next step for storing information. I find the idea creepy, but I also find my laptop's webcam creepy. I might just be a Luddite.

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Originally posted by Zuul

It does seem to be the eventual next step for storing information. I find the idea creepy, but I also find my laptop's webcam creepy. I might just be a Luddite.

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Most people I know put tape across laptops webcams.

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Originally posted by CatInASuit

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Originally posted by Zuul

It does seem to be the eventual next step for storing information. I find the idea creepy, but I also find my laptop's webcam creepy. I might just be a Luddite.

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Most people I know put tape across laptops webcams.

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As do I. It's far, far too easy for your privacy to be compromised.

Last week, a friend called me in quite a state of upset because she had forgotten a minor appointment. She was worried about her memory, for she had not forgotten an appointment in many years. By comparison, I usually do not remember appointments, and must rely almost entirely on my scheduler. I've even forgotten my own name on occasion (e.g. first university exam -- top of a 1,200 person class at University of Toronto, but could not remember my name -- good thing I could remember my student number).

I would be a lot more productive and a lot more creative if I were able to access my past memories -- all the more so if I could have instant access, for example, when playing the piano so as to not forget where I am mid-way, or when finding my car in a parking lot when it is raining and I have misplaced it as I did today. What it comes down to is that my mind makes for a pretty good CPU, but my RAM is limited.

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Originally posted by Muffin

I'm game for it. I like the backups being used already -- letters, notes, e-files, photos, audio recordings, videos, and other persons' recollections that assist me with my recollections.

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Well sure this is it, people who really wanna "back up their brains" already do it with audiovisual material and the written word, have done to some extent since writing was invented.

A backup of my thoughts would just be data. "Me" is that data run on the hardware of neurology. I mean, how could the backup experience love without the neurotransmitter to express it?

Frankly I'd need to see how this technology worked. If the storted data has a personality of its own, pass. If it is a disconnected series of memories and thoughts that can't coalesce into consciousness, I'm game. But only if I'm right about this, and we know enough about the conscious mind to prove it to me.

I might be full of crap. I wouldn't chance it if I weren't certain. But an electronic backup of thoughts and feelings ight not necessarily be conscious in the same way I am.

ETA: A better way of articulating it - an e-copy o my thoughts might just be my personality, but in stasis. With no meat to run the thoughts through, the thoughts might sit still. In that case, go for it... assuming I could be convinced of the security and reliability, of course.

Good points, AllWalker. Yeah, I think when it comes to a mind the hardware running your program is going to be as important as the software itself.

I don't see how it would work. My memories of my experiences change over time. And I see things differently when I learn new things. Downloading all that stuff would just be a static picture of a point in time which would be outdated the second I downloaded it.

And yeah, I don't think I'd want people to know my every thought either. Some of them, even I wonder about.