During our current technological age of the 21st century, topics
like robotics, AI, mind uploading, and indefinite life extension are no
longer topics of science-fiction, but rather of science-facts and
possibilities. The most common one being heavily debated at the current
moment is mind uploading. Once we’re able to artificially replicate the
human brain, and then begin uploading ourselves into said artificial
brain, will we lose consciousness?
Will we still be ourselves or will we simply create a copy?
Is it a risk we’re willing to take?
I love life. And so the prospect of indefinite life extension is very
attractive, IMO. Then again, seeing as how I wish to live much longer
than my biologically-fixed clock dictates, to simply make a copy of
myself to live forever, but not actually myself, just doesn’t cut it. I
would never destroy my brain and let someone else be me for me. If I’m
to achieve indefinite life extension, then I want to do so with both my
physical and functional continuity still in complete operation. Without
one, the other is completely irrelevant.
What is physical and functional continuity? Functional continuity is
basically the stream of consciousness which makes you…well…you.
“Destroying” functional continuity wouldn’t necessarily do anything to
you, nor would it remain destroyed, per se. When we’re going through REM
sleep every night, our functional continuity fluctuates on and off,
only to be completely restored the next morning. Yes, your consciousness
before sleep was different from the consciousness you now acquire after
sleep, but you remain yourself – you’re still self-aware. The same
applies when getting surgery, thus knocked out due to anesthesia. Only
this time, your functional continuity is turned completely off. There is
no streaming of consciousness. And yet, after the surgery, your
functional continuity turns back on, unaffected insofar as you remain
self-aware.
So what about physical continuity? Physical continuity is very
important – much more important than functional continuity. Physical
continuity – using as simple an understanding as possible – is
essentially the brain and all of its synaptic operations. To destroy
physical continuity would be to destroy the brain. Thus destroying
everything, including the functional continuity which comes along with
it. Reason being why physical continuity should be highly looked after
much more so than functional continuity. You can destroy your functional
continuity and still have the chance to regain it so long physical
continuity remains intact. The contrary, however, would be the end of
yourself in its entirety.
Thus bringing us to our current dilemma of mind uploading. How are we
to achieve mind uploading without destroying physical continuity in the
process? To simply “download” everything within your brain and upload
it into an artificial brain, while functional continuity is being
streamed, physical continuity is being replicated, not maintained.
Essentially you’d be partaking in a really cool process of cloning.
That’s it. Think of Lt Cmdr Data and his brother Lore from the Star Trek
universe (ignoring, of course, your cloned self being a maniacal
psychopath).
Which brings me to our current understanding of what is known as
“Brain Lateralization” – the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain,
separated by a longitudinal fissure. In other words, the left and right
brain. Both are almost complete replicas to one another. Which we’ve
since discovered that, if you’re to destroy one side of the brain, the
other side should remain functional, thus maintaining relative normalcy.
A great example of this would be now-twenty-six-year-old Christina
Santhouse, who suffered from Rasmussen’s encephalitis – a neurological
disease which causes seizures and the loss of motor skills. Once she
began having over 100 seizures a day at such a young age, her and her
family decided to take on a radical approach to address this very
serious problem – take out the side of the brain causing this disease.
The result? She’s now a normal young woman, earning a scholarship to
Misericordia University under a speech-language pathology major!
Why is this important? Because, IMO, it paves the way in
understanding how to maintain physical continuity while subsequently
uploading your mind into an artificial brain. Imagine going through a
process of downloading your entire brain and its various synaptic
operations – including consciousness, functional continuity. Then you
upload it into an artificially designed right hemisphere of the brain.
Now let’s say that you have an operation which replaces your right
hemisphere of your biological brain for the artificial replica, all
while keeping your left hemisphere completely intact. Over time, the
right artificial hemisphere would become the dominant hemisphere,
especially once your left biological hemisphere dies. So not only would
you have then maintained functional continuity, but also physical
continuity as well. You would achieve indefinite life extension via
“digital immortality”, per se.
This is the only way I can think of which will allow us to achieve both without losing one or the other in the process.
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