Stephen Hawking: It is theoretically possible to copy brain information to a computer

A few days ago, the 33rd Cambridge Film Festival opened with a Hawking documentary about the life of Stephen Hawking. The event was accompanied by a press conference broadcasting immediately in 70 cinemas in England and Ireland, during which 71-year-old Professor Hawking answered questions; Sir Richard Branson (head of Virgin Galactic - a company on suborbital commercial flights), Morgan Freeman (headliner of a series of documentary serials on space subjects, in particular " Discovery: Through space and time with Morgan Freeman ", if you have not seen) and the team of the Big Bang Theory series (for obvious reasons).

In addition to the film itself, which is available on iTunes , Hawking gave several answers to interesting questions concerning such anxious thing as potential human immortality, without diminishing, however, the characteristic scientific skepticism on this issue.

In particular, he spoke on the subject of life after death as follows:

I think that the brain is like a computer with a mind program, so it is theoretically possible to copy the brain to a computer and thus provide one of the forms of life after death ... However, this lies far beyond our current capabilities. I think life after death is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.

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In fairness it should be noted that Hawking’s point of view on “computerizability” (at least in today's understanding of computers) of a person’s consciousness is far from being the only one. On this account there is a brilliant book by Sir Roger Penrose, The New Mind of the King, which considers “an idea based on the assumption that consciousness is inexplicable at the level of classical mechanics and can only be explained with the help of postulates of quantum mechanics, superposition phenomena, quantum entanglement and others. "

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