I’ve named this process after the ship of Theseus. This is how I intend to ultimately escape the confines of my body without just making a copy.
I’m aware of similar processes, most closely Moravec’s, but his process is destructive and makes more assumptions than mine. I believe his process results in a copy, not a migrated original.
My process preserves consciousness equally well as passage of time in an original brain does. It’s less disruptive or risky in this sense than mere sleep is. Any argument against the result of this process being the original must apply to existing original brains as well.
The Process Itself
All that is required is a construct superior to original neurons in durability, behavior, and motion, that can position itself, follow these steps, and ultimately replace individual neurons such that adjacent neurons both synthetic and original can operate normally.
For a baseline Theseus transfer these synthetic (apprentice?) neurons (SN) must do the following.
Swim up to existing neurons and take position nearby.
Learn to predict their actions based on surrounding neurons of either type.
Detect when the observed neuron dies.
Move in and replace those functions fast enough to prevent disruption/detection at the conscious level.
Step 2 may not even require anything like processing power. It may be done mechanically or biochemically depending on what original neurons actually do. If they are entirely rule based themselves then production, positioning, and replacement becomes all that’s needed for a bare bones substrate migration. Ultimately this list and any upgrades to it are technical problems. And nothing about the baseline list is impossible.
Once that is accomplished, the mind is now going to slowly, cell by cell, migrate to the new substrate. The mind being transferred will no more detect these change-overs than it does now when a brain cell dies.
The Potential
What you can do with this foundation as a starting point quickly becomes staggering and assuming technical abilities starts to be more a set of philosophical exercises than technological projections. I’m reminded of the idea that sufficiently advanced technology appears magical. This is definitely related. I leave the Sci-Fi and fantasy repercussions to your imagination.
I strongly request you comment (as always) here if you see anything like a flaw in my logic or the concept.
Humanity needs basic meme hygiene. Currently we do not regulate the spread of memes in any way. Like the apocryphal dark ages peasant throwing feces in the street and obliviously walking through it, we are completely blind to the cognitive version of germs all around us.
Like real germs its not that all memes are bad, just some of them. And the vectors for the bad ones need regulation.
We need the memetic equivalent of basic hygiene in this context to take back the planet from the PR technicians the image above is referencing.
Facts don’t matter. The nuclear power industry has proven this exhaustively. But really it should be obvious from the continued existence of religious debate. If one of the religions were correct, and facts actually had bearing on what people believed, then we’d all share the same one or a lack of it. We all realize that fiction is promulgated as fact everywhere across every possible topic.
We lament it in others but are blind to it by definition in ourselves. I’m no exception. There must be facts I’m blind to. And this is because like that bucket dumping peasant, we have no real understanding of the germs crawling all over every surface of our mind.
It takes research and training to combat pathogens of every stripe. And we need both. Our current methods are crude and basically ineffective. We block ads and filter content, but that’s just blunt quarantine. We need hygiene and antibiotic equivalents. We need a way to disinfect a mind.
We must change what Max lamented…
We must take steps to prevent pathogenic memes from further unhinging belief and reality. Convincing fantasy can be glorious, but it must be qualitatively consensual, we must not continue to allow the unregulated and invisible use of what amounts to a mind control virus.
I don’t mean religion. Overt religion has a place and a purpose. That debate I now leave to others. I mean all the other beliefs people have that function exactly like religions. The ones that people get angry at you for the exact same way if you offer them evidence or facts that attack their belief system.
As always I don’t complain until I have some solution to offer, and my solution is this: Fund memetic pathogen program at the CDC. (I’ll be emailing them this link, maybe they have something interesting to share.)
TLDR: I propose specific facilities for plausible delusions for the purposes of addressing three questions.
The curing of genuinely sick patients.
The study of these potential events.
The study of fact and evidence resistance, the study of delusion itself.
The reason I think this would be superior is because it would provide a clear criteria for sanity, it would allow humanity itself to prove it has an open mind, and it would give patients, fixated individuals, and interested third parties a dignified place to interact.
The two biggest categories are religious delusions and conspiracy delusions.
Imagine a place where we could substantively start untangling the line between belief and illness. And imagine what we could learn from leveraging all the currently wasted intellect of fixated individuals.
Instead of a “cure” we would be offering people the chance to truly prove their thesis. As they work to do so they would no doubt teach us things, one way or the other. By creating a facility with the express multi-purpose of mental healthcare facility and event research facility we would be making a place that is objectively the right place for these people regardless of what the truth actually is.
Instead of trying to cure people, we could unleash them as scientists. There would be no antagonism between the groups. If they are mentally ill then we could show them exactly why we think so and their counter arguments would teach us more and more about the mind.
These places would in essence be science training camps, or theology schools. We would finally leverage the intensity and creativity of insanity for the benefit of humanity’s collective rational mind.
And imagine the benefits from a therapeutic standpoint. You could actually leverage psychoses against each other. If the doctors can’t break Through the barrier of a delusions maybe the effort to prove it could. As the patient works to prove their delusions real they convince themselves and each other what isn’t real.
And then there’s the research benefits. Firstly a whole crowd of new help with the science, who knows they might leave the system with PHDs. Secondly we’d be given them the tools to scientifically describe what they are experiencing in a language the whole species can understand.
We start with the basic and totally fair statement that hey, you could be right, We think that’s unlikely, but we’re gonna give you the chance to prove your assertions with a clear non subjective set of criteria. The scientific method. Even if we don’t convince you and you don’t convince us we’ll both be better off. If they start to panic from the conflict of their delusion with reality we remind them that it’s possible to be both. We say to them in word and deed that you may genuinely have a point and be a little bit mentally ill at the same time. The efforts aren’t mutually exclusive and we don’t ever have to have a final say because science never stops. We’re not trying to cure you so much as create a way for us to work together. Either way you’re an expert in this context and experts are always valuable in the right context.
Society has to handle mental illness, and we have a couple basic options. I think this approach combines all the best elements of each one.
When confronted with a person we call crazy society has to either cure them, sequester them, listen to them, or put them to use. Instead of trying to figure out who goes where and which is which, why not create a process and place that can do any blend of the three?
Prisons and homeless shelters have totally attempted to fill the asylum gap, and that is ethically repugnant. Our society has pretty clearly criminalized and monetized both mental illness and poverty.
I think it really would be wise and therapeutic to break down the walls between “sick” and healthy people. After all, if we’re so healthy where’s the harm in hearing them out? Giving them a chance to provewhat they believe?
To me, it’s pretty clear that insanity of some degree is pandemic anyway. Maybe that’s the real problem. That we’re collectively afraid to subject sanity to the same critical examination as insanity.
One can argue that subjectivity itself is insane to some degree. It by definition is irrational after all.
Free will may logically and physically be an illusion.
But there is another way that you are not the master of your own mind that is useful to know.
There are three huge forces at work in your body besides your consciousness. Probably others.
1. Your symbiotic systems.
2. Your enteric nervous system.
3. Your unconscious brain processes.
In order to root your own brain you currently need to spend a great deal of time learning how and implementing it.
Meditation, biology, neurobiology, lucid dreaming, neuropsychology, public relations.
The cost of learning to do so is high in terms of time and effort. However, realizing you aren’t (yet?) in full command has immediate benefits. And the concept applied to choices can carry you in a more comfortable direction.
You may not need to learn to command them, to make peace with them. This is the real source of ancient concepts like unifying “mind body and spirit.” A modern program of internal peacemaking is possible.
There are a seemingly infinite number of variables no question, but you may chance on solutions easily if you at least begin looking. And they might feedback. Gains empowering further gains.
I’ve noticed that my mood is best over the long term when I try to cultivate a concept of compassion for all the “people” trapped inside me. That sounds weird. Let me explain. I use people first of all just to cultivate compassion. If I say animals or systems or pets even, we tend to dial back compassion, that’s unwise. Also, humans are wired to relate to other humans, which means that a metaphor using hypothetical people is easier to process.
Now, the enteric nervous system is a living thing. It’s my guts. It feels things, it has nerves and does a lot of information processing. Having it is like being linked to a large blind and deaf pet snake. What and how I eat is really the only substantive way I have to be good to it. And I should, just generally, but also because when I am, it in turn is good to me.
Every aspect of your mind also has a time element. It’s best to realize there is a past self, a future self, and a present self, and they all have links to each other. Your past self for example has made decisions which your present self is now dealing with. Your future self is making requests of your present self at all times as well. You will eventually be your future self so it’s wise to listen, however, you ARE your present self and it is the only self truly capable of feeling. You can’t feel the future until it’s the present. You can remember feeling from your past self, and memories themselves can cause feeling in the present self as well.
It sounds complicated but really it’s intuitive after you think about it and sleep on it a few times.
Why I say that brings us back to the people inside us. There are literally parts of your brain that are in a sense very separate from you. Like your guts, they can be thought of as organs and their feedback takes every possible cognitive form. The phrase five senses is extremely misleading. You actually have thousands. These thousands mesh to form your entire reality. Every modular and integrated bit of your sensorium is composed of sensations which are senses. They just aren’t direct linkages with the outside world. But they are built on that data and are thus every bit as valid.
Your sense of physical orientation for example is a sixth direct sense. Your time sense is an indirect one. Your sensation of proportion, the distance from your eye to your hand for example. And on and on. EVERY aspect of what you think of as reality come from these brain “organs” which aren’t always discreet organs. This goes to neuropsychology. You don’t need to understand all that to make use of it. You can just realize that you have a whole bunch of back brain processes going on all the time and they don’t all happen instantly.
Memory and learning require sleep cycles. Remember the compassion and people inside thing? Well, imagine there’s a second person, a second mind, trapped in your mind, and it only gets to be awake when you’re asleep. If you don’t give it good sleep it will be miserable, and it’s misery is partly your misery. Be good to it and it will be good to you.
Don’t let your future self tell you to pound coffee because you want career advancement for example. Being awake is a short term benefit anyway. Being awake or asleep right now is hardly ever worth having a lousy memory and being unable to learn things properly later.
My system of ethics is universal externally and it recently occurred to me that I should apply it internally as well. And just aiming the concept inwards fit and inspired this essay.
I feel like it could turn into a book almost hehe. It’s such a massive subject and I feel like I can parse so many elements of the human condition in this way usefully.
I feel compelled to point out why one can accomplish with a hacked or unified mind. Extremes of human accomplishment spring to mind and there are many, but really I think the most informative is Quang Duc and other self immolators.
We know, for an indisputable objective fact, that it’s possible for a person to train themselves to not feel pain. Not everyone can do this of course in their context. But it’s important and informative to realize that it’s physically possible and has a firm basis in reality.
I share that not to scold or inspire feelings of ineptitude but to inspire with a concept of what this line of thinking might be worth to you.
Earlier I mentioned a symbiotic system as well. By this I mean all the life that lives in you that isn’t even human. Most people are aware of the bacteria in their gut and on their skin but people tend to think of it as mostly a pest when in fact it’s a protective ecosystem.
There’s good evidence that your appendix and tonsils exist to provide shelter for beneficial strains of bacteria. Some hospital born skin infections can only exist because things done at a hospital temporarily strip away that skin based ecosystem.
I think it’s unwise to take a genocidal approach. And the harm done by the overuse of antibacterial soap supports that. Extend and apply this concept where ever you can. Don’t be over zealously clean or filthy. The filth thing is a factor too. The bacteria aren’t very smart. They need you to manage their civilization basically. You can’t let it turn into a giant slum because that’ll hurt it and therefore you.
It’s important to point out that all this applies to other actual people as well. This is why altruistic groups do better than selfish ones.
This notion that emotions are controllable is shared social mythology, not science.
“Conscious emotion is in a way a red herring: the feeling and behavior prompts are surface responses the initial mechanism orchestrates … Emotions are things that happen to us rather than things we make happen. We try to manipulate our emotions all the time but all we are doing is arranging the outside world so it triggers certain emotions, we cannot control our reactions directly. “~Joseph LeDoux, Professor of Neural Science and Psychology, New York University.
We hide from it to avoid the hard problem of free will and the resulting problem with culture based on that myth.
These facts undermine virtually all of our excuses for harming others and lauding ourselves. From the work ethic to prison to democracy, to identity itself and even religion.
Sorry, you’re just a meat machine too and you live inside a great big lie. The sad fact is that OTHERS have more control over your emotions than you do:
You know… I’m reminded of the Chinese parable of hell, the one with the long chopsticks. Where in heaven they feed each other and in hell they all starve because they can’t feed themselves.
