[Back to Meetings]

http://hplusclub.com/tucson/presentation20071207

John Smart - "The Limits of Biology and The Promise of Technology"

Date and Time: Friday, December 07, 2007 from 4:00pm until 6:00pm MST

Location: Tubac Room, 4th Floor, Student Union Memorial Center, 1303 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ, USA 85721-0017 | Google Maps

Description: "Mind Uploading Discussion" - Discussion of a few technical pathways to mind uploading, and considerations of alternatives. Is it the Safer, Simpler Path to the Singularity?

Event Listings

• UA News Calendar listing

Presentations

• [PowerPoint] Technical strategies to uploading: why neuroscience may not matter by eon fathom
• [YouTube] "Neurons and How They Work"
• [Google Video] "3D Sectiona view of whole brain"

Meeting Notes

Technical Stages for Uploading

Benefits
- copies, backups, easy modification, fast thoughts

Materialism
- physical reality is the only reality

Consequences
- the mind is physical

Simulation speed
- sims can be run much faster than reality

Three key factors
- scanner resolution
- neuron understanding
- computing power available

Neuroscience
- low-res experiments will not lead to uploading

Technology
- high-res x-ray lasers
- all available today

"We" are information
- cells are replaced every 7 years
- whatever we are, it is not the atoms we are made of

Reasons not to upload
- AI comes first; wrong people uploaded

Timeframe
- could take hundreds of years
- tech is available today, need people to implement it

ATLUM Project
- taking the first steps towards uploading?

Microscopy is science
- great problems of biology can be solved just by looking at them

Stanford and European X-ray Lasers
- brightness is 10 billion times brighter than anything else
- x-ray attempts to look at molecules before they explode

Imaging the brain
- appears that learning and memory is preserved in cryonics
- sectioning using diamond sectioning seems to work

Computing challenge
- computing architecture pursued for commercial aspects

Could we better program for certain functions?
- wouldn't trust it, lots more to learn

Computation needs large computers?
- an engineering problem
- maybe quantum or superconducting computing necessary
- optical computers, DNA computing

Polyworld
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_m97_kL4ox0
- artificial algorithms to evolve robots to compete for food

You can follow responses to this entry with this RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.