[MURG] Ideas outlines

[Alex McLin]

Hello there, while I haven't replied to the mailing list in a very very long time, I've been keeping up with the messages. I'm glad that the list's traffic have gone up quite dramatically. Anyway, here's some brief info about myself, I'm currently a computer science and mathematics double major with an interest in computational neuroscience and a wide number of other fields. Obviously I'm also interested in seeing that mind uploading or whole brain emulation become a reality.

I'm just typing out some of the ideas that I've thought of about researching for mind uploading, I plan t write down a more comphrensive list, but right now it's just a sketch, please feel free to criticize because I'm not sure about the feasibility of the ideas.

Whole brain emulation(WBE) is going to require a wide variety of technology spanning many fields. We're talking not just actually achieving the uploading but also creating the platform and environment for the uploads to exist in. That means designing highly robust software resistant to crashing or significant malfunctioning as well advanced enough to maximize uploads' freedom. It won't do to live in a small downrun house that's constantly falling apart. On top of that, we also have to worry about the long term software maintenace which minimize downtime or possibily eliminate it altogether. It won't do to have to shut down uploads' residence to reinstall a new operating system and any other important software modules for upgrading.

Our current group is very small, there are plenty of people out there will be interested in achieving the same goals as we. We should think about providing incentives to help in mind uploading research. There are different companies working on disparate ideas when brought together brings mind uploading closer to reality. Would it be difficult to establish a consortium for investing in companies we think have good potential and/or start up companies to undertake enterprises related to WBE. It can provide us a strong source of income to finance advanced WBE research. It will be largely up to us to guide all the resources available to us both in science and free market fields to achieve out goals.

As pertaining to my interest in computational neuroscience, there are current ongoing efforts to create high resolution models of cells and then generalize the models to multicellular organisms. Such research is of interest to medicine because doctors would be able to model drug interactions and medical interventions before carrying them out on patients. It's not a stretch of imagination to imagine that patents will have a model of his own body in his medical records for customizing his medical treatment. Neurosurgeons likely will want accurate, high resolution models of parts of the brain upon which they're operating on. It's not difficult to realize that when models of the brain's parts are put together, their descriptions will encompass the entire brain, which is of course our goal.

There are many different tools out there that people are using to study neural networks and the human brain. There is a problem with that, there are so many different ways people are doing to research in this area. It's hard to tabulate all the results and unify them. I'm talking about creating an uniform software environment independent of platforms where people can work with standardized and improved advanced tools. How about creating a programming language designed uniquely for mind uploading. C++ and other languages weren't exactly created with mind uploading in mind.

I'm just throwing out ideas, feel free to comment :-)

Alex
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