This is just a section of the blog set aside for bits of writing that are not going to be full posts but are interesting nonetheless. They may be quotations from other papers or sites, or just perplexing questions that might engage some sort of discussion.
lets start with a question. If in the future at some-point we have developed the ability to completely map and render the brain artificially.
That is to say you would go into a machine that would copy your memory’s, your personality – everything about you that makes you, and would create an artificial you somewhere else, (either in an artificial body, or in a completely different artificial world.) for the sake of this discussion lets go with an artificial body that looks exactly like you so that you couldn’t even tell the difference.
Now lets imagine that as this machine copies your brain it also simultaneously destroys it, (I know not a great design feature but oh well) lets also assume that this process is perfect every single time so that there is no danger of losing memories or aspects of you.
So now we have a your brain (lets call it A1) we then copy this brain creating A2 that is exactly alike to A1. We then destroy A1. from the point of view (POV) of A2, it has gone into this machine (because it has all of A1s memories etc up until the point of separation) and has woken in an artificial body. from the POV of A1 it has gone into the machine and its consciousness has ended.
I guess the real question is whether this is something people would want to do? Is there more to what makes us who we are, other than what is coded in the brain?
For those who believe in some sort of soul this would probably seem unfeasible, for even when the brain is copied perfectly there would still be some sort of intangible element that would be destroyed and thus the creation of A2 would be missing a part of who we are. Even putting the existence of soul aside there is the problem that from my point of view i have gone into a machine and then just been killed, there is no continuation of consciousness, instead there has been a creation of a new consciousness with exactly the same components, And even though this A2 is still me in every single tangible way. It is me, the right now me, who has been killed in a machine. I guess its the sort of question that is hard to be sure of the outcome until it is tried (or maybe just make a machine that doesn’t destroy the A1 brain)
What if we started using this kind of technology for more everyday things like transport, instead of just a one time copying. Something like the Star Trek Transporter, but instead of converting us into an energy pattern and beaming it, it saves our brain and sends it to some sort of host body.
#2
How feasible is it to map dreams?
Let’s say for example 1000s of people wore EEGs to sleep every night. And during their REM sleep (which is believed to have the highest proportion of dreams) they were awoken and would then write down as much of their dream as they can remember.
It would be a tough experiment to take part in no doubt, and is perhaps unclear in its benefits nor the feasibility (ie how accurately can an EEG output correlate to specific dreams?).
But let’s say this was done. So then you would have all this data on sleep eeg, and the participants description of their dreams. So at this point one might be able to start to correlate these specific descriptions of the dream to particular areas or markers in the eeg data.
Wired Together 