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Uploading the Mind to a Computer

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday March 16 2016, @05:46PM   
from the ghost-in-the-machine dept.

AnonTechie writes:

While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer, reports Tristan Quinn. "Within the next 30 years," promises Dmitry Itskov, "I am going to make sure that we can all live forever."

It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35-year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful to humanity. "I'm 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it," he says. It is a breathtaking ambition, but could it actually be done? Itskov doesn't have too much time to find out.

"If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years," he laments. Death is inevitable - currently at least - because as we get older the cells that make up our bodies lose their ability to repair themselves, making us vulnerable to cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions that kill about two-thirds of us.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771

Horizon: The Immortalist, produced and directed by Tristan Quinn, will be shown on BBC 2 at 20:00 on Wednesday 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on the BBC iPlayer

Dmitry Itskov, Founder of 2045 Initiative

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Original Submission

• Re:There's a hitch Re:There's a hitch (Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:15PM

  by julian (6003) on Wednesday March 16 2016, @08:15PM (#319193)

  Is the digital "you" really you?

  Is the biological? Prove to me that your life (or, ad absurdum, the entire universe) didn't start when you woke up this morning. You can't. Intuition and parsimony make it the most likely explanation, but there's no way to verify that you're the same person who went to bed last night. It's the transporter paradox again.

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• Re:There's a hitch (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:06AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @12:06AM (#319345)

  I have a reasonable level of confidence that my life didn't start when I woke up this morning. I have no such confidence about my consciousness magically transferring to a digital copy of my mind. Basic logic would seem to preclude this.

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• Re:There's a hitch (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:57AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 17 2016, @06:57AM (#319470)

  Prove to me that your life (or, ad absurdum, the entire universe) didn't start when you woke up this morning.

  Perhaps we die almost every time we sleep?

  So if it turns out there's a Creator and we all try to accuse the Creator of great evil, killing millions or billions, he can just turn around and say, what's the big deal, the truth is billions of you die every night and you bunch seemed quite happy to do so.

  And anyway "The Customer wanted it that way".

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