READER QUESTION:I am 59 years old, and in reasonably good health.
Is it possible that I will live long enough to put my brain into a computer?
Reality, however, is much more complicated.
For starters, we dont actually know how much information the human brain can hold.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Data extraction and storage, however, is not the only challenge.
And the estimated number of connections is a staggering ten to the power of 15.
Any error in doing so would probably prove fatal.
This is only one problem.
But would you consent to your brain being sliced in that way?
The brain of a man has a volume of about 1.26 million cubic millimeters.
If I havent already dissuaded you from trying the procedure, consider what happens when taking time into account.
But even more problematic is the fact that our brain ages.
From the age of 20, we lose85,000 neuronsa day.
This triggers a program to self-destruction (called apoptosis).
In other words, several tens of thousands of our neurons kill themselves every day.
Other neurons die because of exhaustion or infection.
But what would be the right age to stop, scan and store?
Would you rather store an 80-year-old mind or a 20-year-old one?
And if it were, you probably would not want to venture in that direction.
But in case youre still tempted, Ill continue.
After the what question (what information is there?
), and the when question (when would be the right time to transfer?
), the toughest is the how question.
Lets not be too radical.
We do know some things.
These can transfer from one neuron to another directly or via exchange surfaces call synapses.
This means again fixating and cutting the tissue in thin slices.
It also often involves dying techniques, and the cutting needs to be compatible with those.
But this is not necessarily compatible with the cutting needed to reconstruct the 3D structure.
Different types of synapses in a mouse brain slice.
Thats because there is no known method for collecting both types of information at the same time.
Perhaps, I should stop there, but I wont.
Because there is more to say.
Are our minds more than the sum of their (biological) parts?
I may have a useful, albeit unexpected, answer to give you after all.
If this hypothesis is correct, however, I must object.
The mind image transferred to the computer would therefore not be any more alive than the computer hosting it.
Thats because living things such as humans and animals exist because they are alive.
A living mind receives input from the world through the senses.
It is attached to a body that feels based on physical sensations.
How would this work for a computer without a body?
And how could it evolve and change?
and that this robot would be able to act and move, and speak (why not?).
Eyes are not simple cameras, ears arent just microphones and touch is not only about pressure estimation.
What about the danger of hacking?
So no, no and no.
May it bring you joy and dreams something androids will never have.
