Eternal life: replacing the brain with another carrier while preserving consciousness and personality

Who among us at least once in your life did not think about living forever?
It happened with me. You can make a biological cell, oriented to an infinite number of divisions, without depending on the cell type.
But as a matter of techie, I understand that the human body is imperfect.
Eternal life for a biological individual can be achieved in two ways. Different in their complexity and opportunities that will provide these solutions.

1. Controlled infinite division of a biological cell
2. Transfer of consciousness to another more fault-tolerant carrier.

The meaning of the article and the subsequent discussion is to investigate the theory precisely according to item 2, since it does not mean copying the personality when your brain is copied into someone else, but you remain yourself, but transfer your brain to another carrier, so that you do not cease your existence, the mental continuum, self-awareness.

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Cynicism? Utopia? Inevitable reality.

If a damaged biological body can be replaced with a new one without losing functionality, then the brain, alas, is almost impossible. Since it will be no longer you.

Why do you need it

The biological mind is vulnerable. First of all, before other biological forms of life. (bacteria, viruses, etc.). Not to mention the lack of power, damage.

The biological mind is difficult to standardize - you will not find 2 identical brains. As a result, it is impossible to train him instantly. Read - to release the "expansion unit", which can be connected to any brain - and it is already possible to solve a range of tasks for which it is intended.

If you create technology ... artificial perpetual brain, then
on the one hand, we can scale it as you please with performance gains, without any damage to the scalable part
on the other hand, you can connect it to a biological body in the same way as a natural brain. At the same time, be content with all the benefits and pleasures of the biological body, knowing that you are immortal. In any case, the transfer technology (and not copying!) Is described below. It doesn’t care what carrier to transfer to.

Technology transfer of consciousness. High level design

In total there are 2 axioms that are empirically confirmed and are intuitive for people. Not requiring evidence.
There is the original brain / consciousness. Call it X.
Let X consist of some units x [i], losing that X practically does not lose the functional (well, or approaches the ideal - it does NOT lose the functional). For a biological brain, these will be neurons or clusters of connected neurons.

1. From the point of view of an interested subject X: if you copy X into Y, then destroy X, then Y will be a double of X at the time of copying. But entity X will be gone.
From a practical point of view, this means that if your brain was copied and you were killed, then your copy will live, but not you. She will think like you, do the same thing as you. But at the moment of your death you will cease to exist for yourself. Those. your conscious existential mental continuum will break.
What looks paradoxically, for everyone else, you will live (unless they know that they copied you), but not for themselves. A sort of philosophical paradox.

2. If in X dies from m to nx [i], where m> = 1, n> = m, then X will not die.
I will explain in practice. You drink a bottle of vodka. One or more neurons die (let's say). Or hit you on the head well. Neurons are dead, but after that you have not ceased to be yourself
All the memories that you had. all skills, your self-awareness - everything is preserved. Those. you have not ceased to exist. And after hitting a glass of vodka, you are you, not your copy. All thanks to the noise immunity of the drive (brain). It’s another thing if you were hit hard and / or before that you also drank it. So much so that they lost consciousness.
Neocortex disconnects But it does not collapse (does not die)
Those. the phrase "conscious existence" is not applicable. Existence remains.
But the self-conscious existence (the existence of a neural network that stores information about itself and the world in itself) does continue.

A small lyrical digression.
And here is an interesting situation.
Human de facto consciousness continues to exist. Those. the brain functions and it remains the same brain X from the point of view of brain X. But others see it as a loss of consciousness. Funny. And if you copy X to Y, and destroy X, then for those who do not know about copying, “X” will continue to consciously exist and from their point of view it will be X. But from the point of view of X, X, existence will not continue. Since no more X.

What follows from this in practice?
From the first axiom it follows that it is impossible to transfer the system completely. Those. if we do not transfer the system completely, then we can transfer and not copy. (sufficient condition)
From the second axiom, it follows that the system should be carried over the smallest possible components of this system. The temporary absence of which will not affect the functioning of the system (a necessary condition)

From this it follows that it is possible to replace the minimum possible set of x [i] -s in X in parallel with the corresponding y [i]. In addition, each element x [i] must be assigned to y [i] (for now, for simplicity, we consider the 1: 1 ratio)
At the same time, we must ensure the performance of the same functions as x [i] performed. Those. the set of functions that performed x [i] will be preserved in y [i], but at the same time y [i] will have new properties that we need.

The simplest iterative example. We take the brain, replace one neuron with a silicon analogue, which is designed immediately to “get along” with biological neurons. And so all the neurons one by one.
On the one hand - because you temporarily lose one neuron one by one — you do not stop living and your conscious existence, self-awareness. Do not lose anything practically (at the time of replacement) . And immediately after the replacement you will have all the same as before the replacement. Those. you don't lose anything at all. You are purchasing another carrier. And since there is no copying of X into Y entirely with the subsequent destruction of X, (where Y is another medium), this will not be your double, but you.

(... technology development ....)
Profit !!!
You can move yourself anywhere. You can increase your computing power as you like, etc. You can live as long as you wish and as you like, adapting to changes in the outside world. If to fantasize - the possibility of transferring oneself (when appropriate technologies will be) to, say, a piece of drifting interstellar dust is not excluded.
But from a purely practical point of view, one must also have an action potential. Conscious dust must be able to do something, otherwise why exist. But this is a philosophy :)

Open questions, the solution of which may bring the creation of technology

Replacing neurons right inside the brain - we need a fairly well-developed technology.

Perhaps you can simply connect to the biological brain electronic. Through the wire in the ear :)
Before the transfer begins, the biological is complete. Electronic - empty.
Biological - X, electronic - Y.
X is connected to Y so that initially the consciousness X is distributed between the system of drives X + Y

Copying. We turn off the neuron / site in the biological brain. We copy to Y. The copied area has not disappeared anywhere, and after copying to Y and deleting it in X, the consciousness remained intact, since X continues to see everything that is in Y. So, piece by piece from X to Y. Until X becomes empty.

If how to “turn on” a plot in Y is even more or less clear, then how to “turn off a plot” in X ...

Summary

I have proved only the fundamental possibility of transferring consciousness to any carrier. No matter where we come from. From biological brain to silicon, from silicon to plasma, from plasma to quarks or anywhere else, to a parallel universe. The only requirement is that the original system (the one from which the transfer of consciousness originates) must have noise immunity. Those. it must be able to lose at least one element, of which it consists without significant losses for itself. In this case, the materiality of the losses will be expressed in the amount of memory failures in one way or another. This is a necessary condition. A sufficient - the system should not cease to exist when you turn off this single element. Such a system can be transferred.

The fact that this will require technology, I do not argue :) But it is possible.
What technologies - talk about it in the comments.

Posted by Sat Sep 15 02:10:52 GMT + 2
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Discussion and its results

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Very grateful to all who joined the discussion.
Since not all people understood from the first what I wanted to convey, and I had to explain in the comments, I understood (in how) that the article should be supplemented with a thought experiment. Which, however, will differ from the previous one.

Plus, you should add a block about consciousness. When it exists, when not. Such a function of consciousness from time to time. And explore whether it has breaks. One is already scheduled (@streepteaze pushed for this). Since on the one hand, it will facilitate understanding (I meant it, but I did not mention it anywhere explicitly). Some people took it on the fly as a matter of course. Some are not. Since I did not mention it and this is my mistake. On the other hand, the explanation will become simpler and more formal.

The revision will take some time. Think, collect information. End the discussion.
After that I will present this article in a new, more formalized and understandable form. Taking into account all comments and objections.

Some interesting moments also came to light. But about them - in the updated article.

05/08/2013 UPD: The approach I proposed is invariant with respect to the definition of “you” and “me”. Those. By observing the proposed algorithm, it is possible to transfer the “me” from one carrier to another without defining the “me”. No matter what is transferred. It is only important that it be transferred. "I" is obtained by "free variable"