why 'brain scanning' is unlikely to save us
Wouldn't it be great to digitize ourselves?
To back up and immortalize all our special memories, delightful personality traits, irreplaceable knowledge, and unique points of view?
The notion is especially attractive to those who have achieved a bit of wealth in this world, and don't want to lose it to an eternity of nothingness.
In theory it's not impossible.
Unbelievably complex devices could accurately scan all neurons and their connections.
The devices could be less than a thousandth of a millimeter long, made of several million atoms arranged in a precise way.
Arguably, most of the world economy should be dedicated to inventing such a device.
It would be rather difficult:
The cellular 'wires' that connect neurons have tiny gaps where they link up.
These gaps contain thousands of tiny receptors (there are dozens of types) and molecules that can be released and absorbed several times per second.
There may be hundreds of trillions such gaps, each like a tiny molecular computer.
At worst, the device mentioned above might have to scan every single molecule inside these gaps without damaging them before the measurement is completed.
Perhaps it would be enough to just map the connections themselves.
From a functional viewpoint, the complexity of the human brain is almost certainly overrated, even if it's politically incorrect to say so. Those who have witnessed enough human stupidity in their lifetimes would be less surprised.
Either way, there would have to be very many such devices, scanning the entire brain at roughly the same time.
They might infiltrate the whole brain before scanning every neuron at once, or advance through the brain tissue in an all-devouring swarm.
The 'patient' would have to be anesthetized first or possibly frozen.
Clearly, the easiest way to accomplish this task would also destroy the brain.
Then some additional steps would have to take place.
Once the scanned brain has been exactly recreated as an active computer simulation, immortality has been achieved: the copy would have the same awareness as the original.
Technology even more powerful was demonstrated in the 1990s in the film "Strange Days", which featured a headset that could scan and interact with the brain remotely through the skull.
In reality, the task seems almost impossible, like Galileo dreaming about a moon flight.
It almost certainly won't happen anything like this, for one simple reason:
There would have to be many unimaginable breakthroughs and inventions first.
By the time it becomes possible to scan an entire brain, the intermediate technologies will have changed society beyond all recognition.
And yet there's no alternative but to aim for this goal.
It's an extreme long shot, but the alternative is infinite non-existence. That's a long time to be unaware of anything: after all, there is no God. There's no heaven waiting for us, only total oblivion.
And there's another good reason: the world as it is today absolutely sucks.
Analog life is basically intolerable. Infinitely better to live inside a perfect-resolution videogame, with unlimited time and opportunities to realize every wish and dream.
Of course there would have to be safeguards and such.
Eventually, all the required technology will become available, provided post-humanity (whatever it has become by then) manages not to destroy itself first.
The future could be fantastically wonderful for those strange descendants lucky enough to partake in it.
Striving to free mankind from decay and death is the noblest goal imaginable.
For this reason, everyone should do whatever they can to speed up the rate of technological progress.
The problem is that you, the person reading this right now, will probably pass away long before that happens.
We'll all miss out on this wonderful future by a few decades or more.
Still, that's no reason not to accelerate progress as much as possible. Today's world clearly isn't working.
It may never make sense to scan an entire human brain, since the required technology will have to be much more complex than the brain itself, which will have become obsolete by comparison. But there may be other, simpler ways to copy part of a mind, or at least its essence.
The answer will turn out to be something completely unexpected.
pre-post-human mind extensions
Scanning and digitally copying a human brain is the hardest task that's not impossible.
Colonizing the entire universe would be easy by comparison.
Converting the scanned brain into an 'immortal' computer program would answer many age-old philosophical questions, plus others that haven't even been asked yet, all to end up right back where we started: defeating the fear of death.
However, this journey will change the travelers beyond recognition.
At worst, emotions and even sentience may become obsolete.
Scanning just one brain would require more calculations than have been performed in all human history.
Some fantastic ways this goal might be achieved have been discussed by Ray Kurzweil and others.
However, the mystery of consciousness will have to be solved well before then.
The 'brain-maps' of the 2030s will show all of the mind's subsystems like overlapping spider webs, incredibly intricate diagrams spreading out and looping back.
Eventually they will even reveal the mechanism responsible for the desire for immortality, and thus how to suppress it.
It will be possible to precisely measure how any brain differs from an 'average' mind.
Even if the goal of brain scanning is ever achieved, it will be the start of a cautious post-human transition period, not the fabulous 'Singularity', which would require the development of intelligence far superior to human minds.
In fact if digital immortality is possible, the rate of apparent progress may come to an abrupt halt for some virtual eons.
It's extremely unfortunate that none of us will be around to enjoy the endless opportunities and thrills of this grand period.
Our digital descendants may occasionally remember our tiny lives, when they're not too busy enjoying their own awesomeness.
This is unacceptable!
Could there be a way to achieve some limited form of digital immortality even with our own pathetically inadequate technology?
The notion seems absurd, but it's not impossible.
Since we know so little about the structure of the brain, the solution would have to be software based: a 'mind extension' program with only one purpose: to learn as much about its owner as possible.
By measuring the brain's external actions, it would attempt to map its deeper patterns.
Somewhat like virtualeternity.com, only much better.
It would begin with a questionnaire, the first of many.
Then it would monitor the user's location at every moment in time, and their online activities. Vast amounts of video could be recorded and analyzed.
Different users' programs would link up to unravel their social connections and to get more objective data.
The crucial step will be the spontaneous formation of an 'antisocial network', a forbidden version of Facebook.
It will keep track of everyone's activities, allies and rivalries and secrets, whether they want to be tracked or not.
The hardest step will be the first one:
It will require at least one blindingly brilliant, visionary insight, a way to tie all the data together. Someone will have to see the vast potential of a relatively simple tool, like the desktop PC revolution of the 1970s or the early Internet circa 1989.
The end result will be something like an immortal diary that becomes a permanent extension of the user's mind, the closest thing to a brain/machine interface.
Even this may not happen within our lifetimes. Such brilliance appears perhaps once a century.
Today's computers are so bad they're basically evil. They'll probably get even more complicated and harder to use, or devolve into oversimplified single-purpose applications.
Instead of human immortality there may only be immortal bureaucracy.
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