Brian James O'Connell

What Have Science Wrought - Mind Uploading

Monday July 27, 2009

So, when I’m brainstorming ideas for sketches or screenplays, ultimately my mind will wander (a fancy way of saying procrastinating, which I realize is actually the fancier word but “fancy” cannot be measured by mere syllable count alone, my friend) to larger philosophical quandaries about what science will ultimately be capable of in the near future.

If you were Orwell, you might be concerned that the powers that be would ultimately use scientific progress as a way to control our thoughts by erasing history and our memory of it.  If you were Orwell, you would also be dead.

If you were Huxley, you might be concerned that the progress of science will ultimately lead to our total distraction as the possibility of immediate satisfaction through convenience would allow the powers that be to simply take control of us while we were predisposed.  If you were Huxley, you would also be dead.

If you were Dr. Ian Malcolm, you might be so outraged that John Hammond’s scientists were so concerned with whether or not they COULD; they never bothered to consider whether or not they SHOULD. 

Then again, if you were Dr. Ian Malcolm, you wouldn’t exist because you are a fictional character.  You would also be dead as Dr. Ian Malcolm died at the end of the book, Jurassic Park.  Then, when Michael Crichton wrote a completely implausible sequel to that book, The Lost World, centered on your character somehow miraculously being alive you would then achieve the rare feat of not only being dead but ALSO not existing ONLY to be raised from the dead again.

I think of these things more than I care to admit.

Now, if you were me, your only concern would be that you are extremely disappointed in the future as it exists presently.

Where are my hover boards?  Where are my flying cars, teleportation devices and tube-based transportation infrastructure?  These are the awesome things that science has to offer in my opinion.  But there is a dark side to the future.

 I’ve come to grips with the fact that time travel and the machines necessary to achieve it will never exist because if it has (had? Will?) been realized in the future they would have already come back and told us. 

Unless, of course, the human race has reached the potential sometime in the future where they realize that the possibility of time travel offers more harm than good by the way of paradox and the consequences there in and therefore they just scrapped the whole technology and went about their day.  That, of course, means you’re depending on the same species that invented the atomic bomb to somehow collectively come to their senses and NOT be greedy, selfish, opportunistic ape beings hell bent on power by the gold paved avenue of stupidity.

And if you think that I’m not giving people enough credit, if you’re reading this in a public place, please gaze about the room and count how many people you would trust to walk your dog without losing him.  If you make it to the fingers on your second hand, newsflash:  You’re not one of the trustworthy ones because, dude, you are counting on your f’ing fingers.

If you’re still reading this, the next time you see me, please ask for that dollar I surely owe you.

Back to the matter at hand (the dark side of science), I’ve currently come across the newest moral conundrum that is Mind Uploading, or as I like to call it HOLY SHIT, SCIENCE, THE PUTATIVE FUTURE PROCESS OF COPYING ONE'S MIND FROM THE NATURAL SUBSTRATE OF THE BRAIN INTO AN ARTIFICIAL ONE, MANUFACTURED BY HUMANS WILL HAUNT MY DREAMS UNTIL I WAKE UP CRYING BLOOD UNTIL THE END OF MY DAYS.

Ahem.

I’m attaching a link so that at this point, if you aren’t already bored by my yakking and actually want to pursue the demented rabbit down the proverbial hole, be my guest.

But, in closing, the issue that I struggle with the most as it pertains to Mind Uploading is the issue of personal identity; the idea being that if my thoughts have been loaded into an android is it still, you know, me?

If you were Descartes, you would be pretty sure that when you said, “I think, therefore I am,” you were nowhere near considering the possibility of a race of humanoid robots walking amongst us and generally creeping all the rest of us out.  Unless, of course, if you were already a humanoid robot.  But being Descartes, you would be dead.

Which is what we should all hope to be should this living hell on Earth ever become a technological reality.

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