[MURG] new Road Map draft

[king-yin yan]

From: cat13 at illrepute.org
>Pardon - when I said "bus" I meant "multiplexing bus", which
>would take the myriad wires within the skull and turn the information
>into myriad signals going down a smaller number of wires leaving the
>skull.

Good point =). That solves one problem. But the skull probably
needs to be exposed a lot to give access to extensive interfacing.
Another problem is whether it would be very expensive to
sustain the body for a long time.

>Different areas of the brain work differently, no?  Sure, they all
>have neurons and synapses and encode information in those low-level
>pieces, but the ways in which they encode information and the ways
>in which they function vary from area to area - no?
>So, tin order to create a whole-brain interface, we'd need lots of
>separate interfaces to communicate with each of those different
>areas, each of which would have to be developed separately.
>Sure, connecting electrodes to each of the areas might use the same
>process, but interpreting the information from those electrodes
>would differ.

I don't think we'll develop different interfaces separately. Most
likely it will be assisted by computerized automation. Also, we
can replace each deep-brain structure bit-by-bit gradually. All
we need is some generic NN emulation software. This is the
basic tenet of mind uploading -- that we don't need to fully
understand the brain.

>I'm starting to think that you're talking about a completed
>uploading technology, and I'm talking about how to get there.
>
>Here's what I was envisioning: the human race develops an
>understanding of, say, the visual cortex, and that understanding
>is strong enough that we can replace the visual cortex with
>something that works even better.  A bunch of people get this
>operation done.  Then, since the organic visual cortex is
>unnecessary, we have a decent number of test subjects without one,
>and we improve out understanding of the subcortical area,
>replace IT, and so forth, continually digging deeper until
>the entire brain, in each of its parts, can be replaced.

This is a very good question, I am very concerned with how
to get there. One thing I want to point out is that our
ability to replace brain structures will most likely occur
concurrently rather than step-by-step one structure after
another. So we have to prepare for this scenario.

ALSO there is the possibility that we'll get uploaded first
and then download other modules as they're available. For
example "Vessopressin receptor subtype patch version 1.2.3"
and so on.

One problem is when we get to the point of experimenting
with the first human / primate uploads, those uploaded
entities may have some "aberrations" from the biological
brain. Do we shut them down if things get out of control,
or what?

>I'm getting the impression that you were envisioning, on the
>other hand, the day when we already understand all of those areas,
>and you were talking about how to replace all of the parts of the
>brain in a relatively small number of operations (perhaps just
>one) in a relatively short amount of time.

You're right about what I'm thinking. I want to figure out
the "big-picture" so we can get to whole-brain replacement
faster. That's the point of the exercise. Though I'm aware
that my predictions could be wrong.

>a) why must the person be immobile if the wires aren't physically
>attached to the computer?
>b) the biological body won't necessarily be discarded after
>uploading

a) The wireless idea may work, I'll be content with living with
a long cable attached to me.
b) That's weird. No comment.



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