"While we are far from understanding how the mind works, most philosophers and scientists agree that your mind is an emergent property of your body. In particular, your body’s connectome. Your connectome is the comprehensive network of neural connections in your brain and nervous system. Today your connectome is biological. "
This is a pretty speculative thesis. It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes of the brain. It's a very reductionist view that drastically underestimates the biological complexity of even individual cells. There's a good book, Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell, by Dennis Bray going into detail on how much functionality and physical processes are at work even in the most simplest cells that is routinely ignored by these analogies of the brain to a digital computer.
There is this extreme, and I would argue unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system probably because it enables this science-fiction speculation and dreams of immortality of people living in the cloud.
I’ve posed this claim to dozens of neuroscientists. If you consider the connectome just the static connections then you might be right. If you include the dynamics of the brain (the biochemical processes) as part of the connectome then most neuroscientists would agree that is sufficient to produce the emergent property of mind. The honest answer is we don’t know yet. That said, it’s likely not necessary to model every atom’s interaction with one another so there must be a level of abstraction sufficient enough to emulate a mind. Our foundation is trying to identify what is the minimal level of abstraction necessary to emulate a mind.
I hear the term 'emergent property' bandied about in relation to the mind as if using it somehow explains anything. It says nothing more than mind exists, somehow, yet we have no clue about its nature.
Scientists and philosophers agreeing on something means nothing as they have agreed on utter bunk before. The short of it is that we know little about the mind and have no idea how to even start expanding on the little we know.
I think we may be aligned in thinking that the evolution of the complexity within our cells is a greater marvel than the evolution of complex intelligence building on the base of the eukaryotic cell.
But perhaps we don't need to model cells, we could use real cells for that. If the connectome is the fragile short lived structure, we could model that in software, with the cellular level modelled by a vast array of vivisected tardigrades.
Ok probably not tardigrades, probably small replaceable batteries of human neural tissue.
But I do like that phase about future humans being 'bootstapped from tardigrades"
Your post started like a legitimate well-thought out criticism based on science (even if a bit cherry-picking, assuming that the author meant only connection between the cells, when they could have also meant the various physical connections between different parts and not only electrical impuplses between whole neurons).
But then it started throwing unsubstantiated claims in there along with the legitimate criticisms.
How does
> unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system
follow from
> It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes of the brain.
Even if the consciousness arises in a more profound way from the biochemical processes inside cells than from electrical connections between the cells, what is stopping us from recreationg those biochemical processes in a digital system as well? You know there are simulation equations for chemical reactions and complex biochemical systems, right? If this will be found useful, they will just be emulated the same ways the DL neurons are simplified and emulated now.
> It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes
I wouldn't expect anyone to consider the connectome to be absent the processes inside each of the individual neurons that are connected. I consider this to mean just that it's an emergent property of the collection working in concert. After all, everything is just connections all the way down, even deep inside individual cells.
Indeed. We humans largely create devices that function either through calculation or through physical reaction, relying on the underlying rules of the universe to "do the math" of, say, launching a cannonball and having it follow a consistent arc. The brain combines both at almost every level. It may be fundamentally impossible to emulate a human personality equal to a real one without a physics simulation of a human brain and its chemistry.
A dragonfly brain takes the input from thirty thousand visual receptor cells and uses it to track prey movement using only sixteen neurons. Could we do the same using an equal volume of transistors?
> There is this extreme, and I would argue unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system probably because it enables this science-fiction speculation and dreams of immortality of people living in the cloud.
I would argue differently: perhaps your point of view that's unscientific (or at least I don't see any scientific path to concluding mind emulation is impossible!).
Say there are complex processes going inside each neuronal cell. It should not be impossible to simulate those as well with arbitrary fidelity.
I think what is practically questionable is mind uploading -- we don't know if reading all this information is feasible, and it should be even more remote that reading it non-destructively would be possible. If it is feasible, then there's the question of cost.
I don't see why with a large enough computer we couldn't emulate a mind (or any other existing system). It is possible a quantum computer may be necessary, but there's still little evidence of entangled processes in the brain (indeed we strongly expect no large-scale entanglement due to high temperatures).
I think it's quite radical, and difficult to understand, the possibility of mind emulation and its impact in our society. The rights of the individuals, all the possibilities like making copies, backups, modifications, pausing a simulation, running an emulated mind faster than real minds, expanding memory, and much more. This goes all completely outside usual human experience (live out your consciousness, with occasional pauses in sleep and sedation, until you die and it stops). I predict it'll take very long until we come to gripes with all consequences of it.
It should be noted almost certainly Agent-AGI (AGI that acts like a person) will come before trying to emulate exactly a human mind. AGI has its own very interesting ethical questions. I think the main point we need to start taking in is that those beings will be conscious like us, thus we need to give them rights, take care with their experience, make sure they aren't exploited (by say simulating many AGI-individuals in terrible conditions). Again there is much outside of human experience, because they will have much more freedom. An AGI doesn't necessarily need to feel pain. Any real system might be able to override pain signals if convenient (something we can't do); but still, if it has motivators, I think it will be able to "suffer" (when things it cares about go bad).
One of the ways we will tackle this questions is through fiction. It's been ongoing, from what I know at least since William Gibson's Neuromancer there have been simulated minds (and robots existed long before, although they are not always treated as equals, or the possibility of different cognitive natures is explored).
I really loved Permutation City, and loved the beginning of Fall, but man it felt like Fall just turned into a really hard slog after a certain point. I have definitely enjoyed some of Neal Stephenson's other novels too, even slower-paced ones like Anathem, but for some reason Fall just didn't do it for me.
My feedback. I think if I were to donate I would like to see a clear roadmap for even getting in the ballpark of doing this.
I have donated to SENS for years, and particularly when they started, they didn't really say exactly "donate to cure aging", they said "these are the important known problems that we need to spend time/money on to make progress here."
I believe there are multiple large known problems doing brain emulation. What are they? How will donating to you progress those?
Not really a question, more of a remark: both the destructive and non-destructive approaches result in the same thing:
a copy of 'you', not actually 'you'. (The same is true when you go to sleep, of course. Whoever wakes up isn't you either)
What you would need is a Ship of Theseus approach - preserving the consciousness stream while neuron after neuron is being replaced by a digital version, slowly, to convince the stream into thinking it's still the same. You can't just take a single scan; you have to keep scanning continuously and keep a running feedback stream between the (decreasing) wetbrain and the (increasing) bitbrain to ensure the illusion of continuity.
(But to be honest, I don't actually believe in consciousness or a Self. Whoever started writing this short comment wasn't 'me', and neither am I, nothing is)
> This digital emulation could then interact with the rest of the world using a simple text interface or a more sophisticated robotic avatar with digital representations of taste, sight, touch, smell, and sound.
I found this to be the most intriguing bit of the described process. I can digest the (theoretical) idea of reproducing the mind, mostly agreeing with a materialistic perspective of it. What I got myself imagining was the process of adaptation this mind would have to go to be capable of interacting with the new kinds of inputs and outputs it would have. Imagine you freeze a computer while it was running a VR game with max resolution settings. You then go on and move the machine to a different setup, with a CRT monitor and a keyboard to interact with it. How can any meaningful interaction happen in such a context? Unless you provide a virtual environment to interact with it and allow it to adapt... But then, how would such an environment look like to a copy of a mind? Would you have any insights on that?
I am always amused at this kind of approach to immortality. While the copy of me that is reborn would appreciate my preparedness, that doesn't make this copy any less unhappy about dying.
When you wake up in the morning billions of your cells have changed from the night before. Are you any less you?
It is possible one day you will go to sleep biologically and wake up non-biologically. It’s just a matter of sufficiently emulating the processes that were present when you were the biological you.
For many people it's not the bodydying that's scary it's the end of consciousness while a copy of your consciousness lives on. But I believe it's possible to make the transition seamless without a break from conscious thought.
The process would probably involved disconnecting parts of the brain while simultaneously activating the emulated versions. It might be possible to do while awake even. but not for a long time
Personally I think Western culture in particular has neglected the physical aspects of existence. The idea that our bodies are simply vessels for our minds seems more the result of cultural neglect than anything.
We are not claiming they are entirely independent, quite the contrary. The mind is an emergent property of the body. Just like music is an emergent property of sound waves.
Thank you for saying this. It's always so strange to me that there are people obsessed with prolonging the inevitable, as if immortality itself could be an end-state.
> Personally I think Western culture in particular has neglected the physical aspects of existence.
Do you mean eastern?
The western culture is the one that has a lot of focus on the physical aspects and comforts of life. Arguably, many times too much focus on that which has been detrimental for many people's own psychological and spiritual well-being.
I think there is a fundamental paradox at the root of consciousness and thought: once we succeed in alleviating suffering by discarding the body, we are already in hell. What is the purpose of a mind without a body? To witness? To what ends? There's a reason that the lower brain is at the seat of the throne. Maybe we should focus more on cooperating and less on becoming a purposeless husk. If the string is too tight it breaks, if it is too loose it will not play.
Yep, this kind of terrifies me. The human mind has an incredible capacity for suffering. An emulated mind might have many orders of magnitude higher capacity for suffering, on top of being effectively immortal. At least the human mind will die after 80 or 90 years or so.
The best I've seen the topic of mind and computation bridged and well communicated has been by Joscha Bach. Recommend watching this video on Computational Meta-Psychology [1]. Also his 3 hour conversation with Lex Fridman is a whole other amazing rabbit hole [2].
1. We still don't know what the memory engrams truly are ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_(neuropsychology) ). I once read that aside from relying on the interconnections of the neurons they also rely on specific proteins created during memory creation. They are then vital for memory recollection.
2. We know that the connections between neurons are important but we just realized that the support cells (glia) also affect the firing mecanism: they are not only support but a filter as well ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glia )
All in all to replicate the brain functionality we would need to fully replicate the chemical composition of the brain to the lowest level (molecules).
So the C. Elegans connectome was done in 1986, and we still haven't made a fully functional model of the c. elegans brain. I'm not sure that this bottom up approach (synapses -> model -> behavior) will work better than a top down approach that has been making a lot of progress in AI (behavior -> model)
Focussing on synaptic connections seems rather simplistic. For full "emulation" they would probably need to emulate the electric fields and neurotransmitter concentrations, otherwise just-the-spikes simulation will probably capture only a small percentage of brain dynamics.
You're probably right, at least in terms of neurotransmitter concentration, but I doubt that synaptic connections are only a 'small percentage' of brain dynamics.
This is so ahead of the curve of reality that it’s easy to dismiss- BUT at the least it’s possible that it could lead to some interesting basic research being done. Hopefully that, rather than misleading rich marks and separating them from their cash is the real goal.
this could effectively lead to the creation of heaven, an afterlife that would eliminate the notion of death. I never quite understood why the entire human species, once made aware of the non zero probability of this working, not diverted most of its entire global energy, time and resources towards this effort. I can only imagine it is because most people have no capacity to really imagine, or outright refuse to ever imagine, death. In a way I do envy them.
How can you be sure that if we could eliminate death, we would also be able to make life so great that our mind would find it worthwhile to keep living century after century? In other words, if we enabled people's minds to continue forever, how do we know it would be heaven and not hell?
It is very hard to destroy or even contain all copies of information. Thus, I find it very plausible that if a copy of my mind is created, at least one copy will be effectively enslaved or tortured.
Possibly more copies would find themselves in heaven than in hell, but how we weight that tradeoff is subjective, and I'm a bit of a pessimist so I would prefer not to take the risk, thanks. (Especially since as a Christian I believe my original mind is likely to reach God's heaven.)
You're basically arguing a techno-religious Pascal's Wager, so my contra-argument is the same: if the nonzero probability is a 0.1% chance, would you really risk your one and only life dedicated to something that has a 99.9% chance of not happening, whether it be real or techno-heaven?
Ive been wondering whether this was possible and/or feasible. We don’t know if the “brain in the vat” would alter their original personality, which is very likely having that it has to live in foreign artificial environment.
The mind itself could become depressive and unwilling to tick because why would it? Just so it exists while not really existing phisically?
My hesitation with mind emulation is not so much with the technical side; I think it’s fairly clear that we’ll get there.
However, the question of responsible stewardship looms large, and is rarely addressed. With whom am I entrusting my mind? How can I be sure that such stewardship won’t be transferred to another party at some point? Who’s to guarantee that my mind won’t be installed into an eternal torment sim?
The stewardship questions have always bothered the hell out of me, and the lack of convincing answers has always led me to avoid buying completely into the preservation of my body for future scanning and uploading into a sim.
How does having the connectome get you the mind? Don't you need the weights in the neurons? I thought I also read that neurons are not discrete units, that there might be weights within the dendrites/axons.
At this point, I wonder if it would make sense to establish a Time Travel Foundation, to ensure that such dangerous technology does not fall into the wrong hands once it is, inevitably, created.
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
This is a pretty speculative thesis. It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes of the brain. It's a very reductionist view that drastically underestimates the biological complexity of even individual cells. There's a good book, Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell, by Dennis Bray going into detail on how much functionality and physical processes are at work even in the most simplest cells that is routinely ignored by these analogies of the brain to a digital computer.
There is this extreme, and I would argue unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system probably because it enables this science-fiction speculation and dreams of immortality of people living in the cloud.
[+] [-] dsiroker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __tg__|5 years ago|reply
Scientists and philosophers agreeing on something means nothing as they have agreed on utter bunk before. The short of it is that we know little about the mind and have no idea how to even start expanding on the little we know.
[+] [-] monkeycantype|5 years ago|reply
But perhaps we don't need to model cells, we could use real cells for that. If the connectome is the fragile short lived structure, we could model that in software, with the cellular level modelled by a vast array of vivisected tardigrades.
Ok probably not tardigrades, probably small replaceable batteries of human neural tissue.
But I do like that phase about future humans being 'bootstapped from tardigrades"
[+] [-] Erlich_Bachman|5 years ago|reply
But then it started throwing unsubstantiated claims in there along with the legitimate criticisms.
How does
> unscientific bias towards treating the mind as something that's recreatable in a digital system
follow from
> It's not at all clear that everything relevant to the mind is found in the connections rather than the particular biochemical processes of the brain.
Even if the consciousness arises in a more profound way from the biochemical processes inside cells than from electrical connections between the cells, what is stopping us from recreationg those biochemical processes in a digital system as well? You know there are simulation equations for chemical reactions and complex biochemical systems, right? If this will be found useful, they will just be emulated the same ways the DL neurons are simplified and emulated now.
[+] [-] ebg13|5 years ago|reply
I wouldn't expect anyone to consider the connectome to be absent the processes inside each of the individual neurons that are connected. I consider this to mean just that it's an emergent property of the collection working in concert. After all, everything is just connections all the way down, even deep inside individual cells.
[+] [-] Causality1|5 years ago|reply
A dragonfly brain takes the input from thirty thousand visual receptor cells and uses it to track prey movement using only sixteen neurons. Could we do the same using an equal volume of transistors?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gnramires|5 years ago|reply
I would argue differently: perhaps your point of view that's unscientific (or at least I don't see any scientific path to concluding mind emulation is impossible!).
Say there are complex processes going inside each neuronal cell. It should not be impossible to simulate those as well with arbitrary fidelity.
I think what is practically questionable is mind uploading -- we don't know if reading all this information is feasible, and it should be even more remote that reading it non-destructively would be possible. If it is feasible, then there's the question of cost.
I don't see why with a large enough computer we couldn't emulate a mind (or any other existing system). It is possible a quantum computer may be necessary, but there's still little evidence of entangled processes in the brain (indeed we strongly expect no large-scale entanglement due to high temperatures).
I think it's quite radical, and difficult to understand, the possibility of mind emulation and its impact in our society. The rights of the individuals, all the possibilities like making copies, backups, modifications, pausing a simulation, running an emulated mind faster than real minds, expanding memory, and much more. This goes all completely outside usual human experience (live out your consciousness, with occasional pauses in sleep and sedation, until you die and it stops). I predict it'll take very long until we come to gripes with all consequences of it.
It should be noted almost certainly Agent-AGI (AGI that acts like a person) will come before trying to emulate exactly a human mind. AGI has its own very interesting ethical questions. I think the main point we need to start taking in is that those beings will be conscious like us, thus we need to give them rights, take care with their experience, make sure they aren't exploited (by say simulating many AGI-individuals in terrible conditions). Again there is much outside of human experience, because they will have much more freedom. An AGI doesn't necessarily need to feel pain. Any real system might be able to override pain signals if convenient (something we can't do); but still, if it has motivators, I think it will be able to "suffer" (when things it cares about go bad).
One of the ways we will tackle this questions is through fiction. It's been ongoing, from what I know at least since William Gibson's Neuromancer there have been simulated minds (and robots existed long before, although they are not always treated as equals, or the possibility of different cognitive natures is explored).
[+] [-] VikingCoder|5 years ago|reply
* "Fall, Or Dodge in Hell" by Neil Stephenson [1]
* "Permutation City" by Greg Egan [2]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PXM4VMD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B...
[+] [-] abecedarius|5 years ago|reply
The Age of Em https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198754620/
[+] [-] greatquux|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickM|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trasmatta|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsiroker|5 years ago|reply
Flattered to see this hit the front page! This is a project I’ve been passionate about for a while and been keeping it mostly under the radar.
Now that it’s public, I’m happy to answer any questions the HN community has.
[+] [-] mchusma|5 years ago|reply
I have donated to SENS for years, and particularly when they started, they didn't really say exactly "donate to cure aging", they said "these are the important known problems that we need to spend time/money on to make progress here."
I believe there are multiple large known problems doing brain emulation. What are they? How will donating to you progress those?
[+] [-] anvandare|5 years ago|reply
What you would need is a Ship of Theseus approach - preserving the consciousness stream while neuron after neuron is being replaced by a digital version, slowly, to convince the stream into thinking it's still the same. You can't just take a single scan; you have to keep scanning continuously and keep a running feedback stream between the (decreasing) wetbrain and the (increasing) bitbrain to ensure the illusion of continuity.
(But to be honest, I don't actually believe in consciousness or a Self. Whoever started writing this short comment wasn't 'me', and neither am I, nothing is)
[+] [-] lachlan-sneff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobertoG|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vicnicius|5 years ago|reply
I found this to be the most intriguing bit of the described process. I can digest the (theoretical) idea of reproducing the mind, mostly agreeing with a materialistic perspective of it. What I got myself imagining was the process of adaptation this mind would have to go to be capable of interacting with the new kinds of inputs and outputs it would have. Imagine you freeze a computer while it was running a VR game with max resolution settings. You then go on and move the machine to a different setup, with a CRT monitor and a keyboard to interact with it. How can any meaningful interaction happen in such a context? Unless you provide a virtual environment to interact with it and allow it to adapt... But then, how would such an environment look like to a copy of a mind? Would you have any insights on that?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mcculley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsiroker|5 years ago|reply
It is possible one day you will go to sleep biologically and wake up non-biologically. It’s just a matter of sufficiently emulating the processes that were present when you were the biological you.
[+] [-] isaiahg|5 years ago|reply
The process would probably involved disconnecting parts of the brain while simultaneously activating the emulated versions. It might be possible to do while awake even. but not for a long time
[+] [-] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
Personally I think Western culture in particular has neglected the physical aspects of existence. The idea that our bodies are simply vessels for our minds seems more the result of cultural neglect than anything.
[+] [-] dsiroker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jesselawson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Erlich_Bachman|5 years ago|reply
Do you mean eastern?
The western culture is the one that has a lot of focus on the physical aspects and comforts of life. Arguably, many times too much focus on that which has been detrimental for many people's own psychological and spiritual well-being.
[+] [-] joeberon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darepublic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WealthVsSurvive|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trasmatta|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miketery|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM
[+] [-] prerok|5 years ago|reply
1. We still don't know what the memory engrams truly are ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_(neuropsychology) ). I once read that aside from relying on the interconnections of the neurons they also rely on specific proteins created during memory creation. They are then vital for memory recollection.
2. We know that the connections between neurons are important but we just realized that the support cells (glia) also affect the firing mecanism: they are not only support but a filter as well ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glia )
3. Inhibitory interneurons provide a way for synchronous firing of neurons to form a learning experience: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13170-w
All in all to replicate the brain functionality we would need to fully replicate the chemical composition of the brain to the lowest level (molecules).
I'm not holding my breath.
[+] [-] dontreact|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivansavz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravi-delia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkstu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sieste|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|5 years ago|reply
"Partitioning" the brain will destroy some of the nanometer-scale tissue as it is sliced.
[+] [-] jarinflation|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasperry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roca|5 years ago|reply
It is very hard to destroy or even contain all copies of information. Thus, I find it very plausible that if a copy of my mind is created, at least one copy will be effectively enslaved or tortured.
Possibly more copies would find themselves in heaven than in hell, but how we weight that tradeoff is subjective, and I'm a bit of a pessimist so I would prefer not to take the risk, thanks. (Especially since as a Christian I believe my original mind is likely to reach God's heaven.)
[+] [-] gallerdude|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grugagag|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camdenlock|5 years ago|reply
However, the question of responsible stewardship looms large, and is rarely addressed. With whom am I entrusting my mind? How can I be sure that such stewardship won’t be transferred to another party at some point? Who’s to guarantee that my mind won’t be installed into an eternal torment sim?
The stewardship questions have always bothered the hell out of me, and the lack of convincing answers has always led me to avoid buying completely into the preservation of my body for future scanning and uploading into a sim.
[+] [-] zzzeek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcculley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|5 years ago|reply