Beyond creepy
Want to be virtually preserved? These guys are trying to turn it into a business.
But that’s nothing compared to this:
What if, rather than simply picking and choosing what we want to capture in digital form, it was possible to record the contents of a mind in their entirety? This work is neither science fiction nor the niche pursuit of unreasonably ambitious scientists. Theoretically, the process would require three key breakthroughs. Scientists must first discover how to preserve, non-destructively, someone’s brain upon their death. Then the content of the preserved brain must be analysed and captured. Finally, that capture of the person’s mind must be recreated on a simulated human brain.
It gives me the willies. It also reminds me of a short story titled “The Diary of the Rose” by Ursula Le Guin, which appeared in her book The Compass Rose, one of my favorite collections.
This particular story is about a futuristic society in which a machine that images people’s minds and thoughts has been invented, and is being used for political indoctrination and control. People whose minds deviate too greatly from the PC norm are sent for a type of electroconvulsive therapy that destroys their memories and personality.
Here’s an excerpt of a conversation between the technician who operates the brain scanning machine (and who by this time has begun to realize that her purpose is not as therapeutic as she had heretofore thought) and a brilliant but irascible patient of whom she has grown quite fond:
In the scope room this morning I told him what I had been doing. His reaction was (as usual) not what I expected. He is fond of that old man and I thought he would be pleased. He said, “You mean they saved the tapes, and destroyed the mind?” I told him that all tapes are kept for use in teaching, and asked him if that didn’t cheer him, to know that a record of Arca’s thoughts in his prime existed: wasn’t it like his book, after all, the lasting part of a mind which sooner or later would have to grow senile and die anyhow? He said “No! Not so long as the book is banned and the tape is classified! Neither freedom nor privacy even in death? That is the worst of all!”
“Walpurgis Night” by Roger Zelazny – Tombstones that have hologram projectors and sound recording of the persons buried there; press a button and you get sight and sound. Then this progresses to AI that records the memories of the dead, so the holograms are interactive. One of the , ah, interned gets his nephew to install devices so that he can press the buttons in the cemetery, leading to parties of the dead (as interactive holograms) at night. A much more fun and lighter story than LeGuin’s.
Beyond creepy indeed!
Those interested in this topic might enjoy my recent book, Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress (Encounter)
“This work is neither science fiction nor the niche pursuit of unreasonably ambitious scientists. Theoretically, the process would require three key breakthroughs. Scientists must first discover how to preserve, non-destructively, someone’s brain upon their death. Then the content of the preserved brain must be analysed and captured. Finally, that capture of the person’s mind must be recreated on a simulated human brain.”
Of course its science fiction, we not only can’t; preserve, non-destructively, someone’s brain upon their death or analyze and capture a brain’s contents or recreate it on a simulated human brain, we have no theoretical concept of how that might actually be done.
That said, many scifi authors have imagined it and Hollywood already made a movie about it, “The 6th Day” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The preserved brain contents are downloaded into a clone of the donor, offering a form of immortality.
But would the ghost go with the machine?
That is the question.
What a nutty proposition, we, each of us are an ongoing amalgamation of all of our sensory input every day of our lives that allows us to learn and grow as long as we are conscious. We are so much more than a giant memory bank of thoughts and ideas and when we are gone there is nothing wrong with us turning into dust and ashes and living for just a bit longer in the memories of of friends, families, children and grandchildren.
I detest the creepy idea of having my brain stuff, memories, thoughts and plans put into a machine and grinding along with more outside input without me around. I also happen to believe that I have a soul that is on its way to another place so there’s that too.
The idea has been explored in science fiction many times. There was a story by Joe Haldeman, whose name I can’t recall at the moment, about techniques to keep a person young forever. There’s a supporting character who has uploaded his personality and memories into a computer; he refreshes the system every year or so. A downloaded version of him accompanies the protagonists on their adventures.
Spider Robinson also explored the idea, somewhat more benignly, in his Mindkiller series. (I particularly liked the third in the series, Lifehouse.) To his credit, he did not avoid the creepier aspects of the technology, nor did his protagonist.
As for the real world, I take some comfort in knowing that we’re not close to doing any of this yet.
All these folks seem to have forgotton the lesson of Tithonus: Eternal life without eternal “youth” is a curse.
The remarkable thing about the brain isn’t its cells but the electrical connections between its cells. The brain isn’t analogous to a computer; each brain cell is analogous to a computer. We can talk about the total capacity of the brain to store information, but that’s nothing compared to the brain’s ability to adapt itself. I mean, you can capture a brain at the moment of death. It’s right there in the skull (depending on how you died, of course). The thing you can’t duplicate is the animation of the brain.
We’re seeing something similar as we study genetics. DNA is pretty cool. You can copy it onto a data file. But the cell somehow knows how and when to unspool it and copy sections (only the right sections) of it to make it vital. We aren’t any closer to understanding what makes something alive. That’s the ghost, the soul.
WMDs may fail to destroy this planet, but mind control weapons and Weapons of Mass Deception can destroy people’s souls.
A brain without a body is not a mind. Our ethereal characteristics require both a vessel and sensory input.
We would be boring as brain tissue in a jar.
Brain science is not a mind science – never was, never will be. All naturalistic explanations of spirituality and conscience are pure bullshit. Brain is, among host of other functions, an organ connecting soul (mind) to body, and nothing more. This was a brilliant isight of the most famous physisist of 20 century, Nobel prize winner Erwin Shroedinger, author of the main equation governing quantum mechanics and named after him. It was explained in his popular book “What is Life from Physisist Perspective” (my translation of the title, I do not know exact wording of English translation title) and his phylosophical credo “Meine Weltansicht”.
‘That Hideous Strength’ by C.S.Lewis, last in his space trilogy.
{Shiver}
Oh, yeah, we shouldn’t let the guys from that first link off the hook, either. “Eterni-me”. Tells you everything you need to know about the kind of person who’d sign up for it.