[MURG] new Road Map draft

[king-yin yan]

From: cat13 at illrepute.org

>> But the skull probably
>> needs to be exposed a lot to give access to extensive interfacing.
>
>For the surgery, yes.  After the surgery, only a small hole would need to
>be exposed.

But for gradual uploading we're talking about performing infinitesimal
surgeries to the brain continually... What is the approx number of
surgeries for a whole-brain replacement? 50? or 10,000? I picture
a very big number.

>> Another problem is whether it would be very expensive to
>> sustain the body for a long time.
>
>Why would it be more expensive than it is now?

How much does it cost to sustain my 32-year-old body right now?
About $10 daily for the food. But if I get to 132, the cost will
escalate. Get real. All my organs will need medical intervention to
sustain. Why not just discard the body and sustain the brain only?
Maybe this is more cost-effective.

>> I don't think we'll develop different interfaces separately.
>
>We already are.  For example, the cortical interface I mentioned above is
>being developed separately from the artificial hippocampus which has been
>discussed previously:
>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993488
>which, in turn, is being developed separately from cochlear interfaces.
>Admittedly, the cochlear interface isn't connected to the brain itself,
>but it still talks directly to nerves, which is the issue at hand.

There's just some misunderstanding. My point is, we may start
to plan about the technology of replacing brain areas progressively
_for_the_same_person_, ie gradual replacement.

>> 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.
>
>This brings up an interesting question.  I agree that, when discussing
>uploading in general, we don't necessarily require a full understanding
>of the brain.  However, is that still the case in gradual uploading?
>It seems that, unless we can develop an artificial neuron capable of
>synaptogenesis, we won't be mindlessly replacing neurons but
>intelligently replacing functional areas comprised of multiple neurons,
>and that we'd need to understand how those areas function before being
>able to replace them.

We already have some plausible theories of the whole brain.
Whole-brain replacement will not be that far away IF these
theories turn out to be approximately correct.

Brothers Wright did not solve 10,000 differential equations
to invent flight. Instead they did it by trial and error.
Question is whether our current understanding of the brain
is close enough for WBE. This is a very interesting question
and I'm studying on it more... Notice that a neuroscientist
would be much more cautious than someone interested in MU.



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