[Jimbee (OP)]

I've heard some people say that at the moment of death, someone's consciousness could be just uploaded into a computer.

Is that true? How would that work? I mean, what is consciousness? Is it only material or something like electricity being transfered in computer circuitry? Or is it something more? And are we the same people one year from now, ten years from now, or even moment to moment?

[varsigma]

I've heard some people say that at the moment of death, someone's consciousness could be just uploaded into a computer.

That seems to make an assumption or two. Does anyone know what a moment of death is, for instance? When does death "occur"? Uploading something also implies you have a protocol--some kind of handshaking going on--what would that look like?

Questions like this lead to more questions, as the rest of your post indicates.

[paul cotter]

You would first need to define consciousness and that is not a simple matter. Personally I think the idea is well beyond science fiction. A lot of people seem to think a brain is just a computer- it is way more complex than any computer. 

[Petrochemicals]

Yes possibly , if we had a consciousness vacuum.

[Origin]

No.  Consciousness is simply the working of your brain, it is not something separated from your brain.  I suppose with incredibly advanced medical procedures you could keep your brain alive outside of your body.

[evan_au]

If you define consciousness as "the pattern of activity in a person's brain"...

...then uploading it would imply copying the function of all the biological circuits in that person's brain
- That means copying the connectivity of neurons and synapses and weights which control the activity of that brain
- Current technology was in 2023 able to map the 135,000 neurons and 50 million synapses in a fly brain
- which took several years of work by researchers
- This study identified 4500 cell types in the brain, of which 1500 were new to science (and so their function has not yet been studied)
- In my simple understanding, this study could identify physical synapse connections (the connectome), but could not identify whether individual synapses were excitory or inhibitory, or how strong the weights are: could you call that the "logical" connections?
- So great progress has been made on analysing a fly brain, but a computer is not yet capable of "executing" the program built into a fly brain, which requires the weights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_connectome

The human brain has around 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses (plus weights) which control the activity of that brain
- So it is an advanced research project to map even a cubic millimeter of a human brain (which would not be very useful, since many of the connections would be with areas outside that cubic millimeter).
 
Even if the brain "program" could be executed on a computer, it still needs to have inputs from real or simulated eyes, ears, small, taste and touch and control outputs like muscles and glands to produce the same reactions as a real human
- Otherwise we will have recreated someone with "completely locked-in" syndrome: conscious, able to think, but in total isolation would quickly go mad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

    Other than @evan_au 's link to a wikipedia article,  I can't see any mention of the term "connectome".    That's a keyword people will want if they're looking for more information.

Otherwise we will have recreated someone with "completely locked-in" syndrome: conscious, able to think, but in total isolation would quickly go mad.

     Even this much is not certain.    A real-life connectome is never without some input and would always have some syanpses within it that are firing, i.e. it is half-way through processing something.    It is never completely "off" and inactive.
     If you built a perfect copy of a connectome, it still isn't known if it would spontaneously start to work or ever get into some sort of normal firing pattern,  it may just stay basically in the "off" position.     Since so much of the brain structure involves feedback loops, arbitrarily firing a synapse here or there is as likely to set up something like an epileptic seizure rather than switch the connectome on and get it into a normal firing pattern.
    So, ideally, you don't just want to copy the connectome,  you'd aso want to copy the exact firing pattern that was happening at that time etc.


Para-phrasing:    It's not enough just to copy the hardware.   The whole thing is more like a syphon pump.  It must have the fluid in it and be working now in order for a copy of it to also be a syphon pump.    Otherwise all you have is just an empty tube rather than a syphon pump.   Put one end of this tube into some water with the other end lower down and it does nothing.

Best Wishes.

[Kryptid]

I would argue that it cannot be done. As has been said before, the digital version would have to be an exact copy of your own brain. But what happens if you create the copy while you are still alive? If your mind is still your own, then what is in the computer must simply be a copy and not really "you". Whether you are alive or dead at the time of copying doesn't change that. The copy might even fully believe it is you, but it isn't. It's just a copy. You could theoretically create any number of copies this way, all believe they are the original.

[alancalverd]

I usually avoid any discussion of consciousness since nobody ever agrees on a definition of the subject, but whatever it is, it is surely a function of the nervous system and not the system itself - software, or possibly firmware, not hardware.  So there is no requirement to replicate the mechanics of an organic brain in order to mimic its "black box" transfer functions.

Not that this solves the problem, but it does offer the possibility of a range of hardware solutions to a poorly-formulated question, and throws it back to the customer: just tell me exactly what you want the machine to do.

[evan_au]

It must ... be working now in order for a copy of it (to work)

Our conscious minds are able to reboot after anesthetic.
- That includes some subconscious functions like breathing, which are suppressed during heavy sedation

Is it possible that our brains could reboot after being copied?

[paul cotter]

The basic problem with all these speculations is, as Alan and I have said, that consciousness is an inscrutable concept. Until one comes up with a definition that can be widely acceptable it is pointless talking about uploading that which is entirely a subjective phenomenon. Consciousness is so different from tangible everyday ideas that I doubt we even have the necessary language to define it in any useful manner.

[varsigma]

I don't know if the following will be relevant at all but, that might be because of the nature of our reality, and because we don't usually consider, because we just don't really get that opportunity, the implications of quantum algorithms.

Here I think the nature of consciousness and the nature of reality are hard to tell apart. If the universe is evolving according to some laws of quantum interactions, so that the normal world we believe we're in appears, then what happens if there is a glitch?

Leonard Susskind looks at this;  not quite how I've done it, as a network of quantum gates which is updated regularly. But "someone" forgets to do it at the right time. How complex is the required correction so that "reality" doesn't glitch?

He takes this idea of complexity into black hole territory, and what happens when the event horizon forms. That is to say, what happens to quantum algorithms and updates? Can we assume therefore, that the universe is self-correcting? It seems to be, doesn't it? No glitches observed to date?

Ok, I've finished my coffee, so as to any relevance here. Some connection between complexity behind an event horizon, and complexity inside a brain.
Susskind has a theoretical result for his conjecture about it--complexity continues to grow behind the horizon after the formation of the event horizon. As if the universe, at least theoretically, has to conserve this. Black hole formation leaves a very simple object in ordinary space. Highly symmetric. Complexity is more or less a lack of symmetry; a large network of quantum gates--interactions--is required along with a complex algorithm to find some compositionality and talk about it. The gates have to be like a circuit diagram, but very complicated.

These are just ideas about what complexity is, and what kind of resources are needed to resolve anything. That is, our perception of reality, never mind event horizons, is this ongoing resolution of quantum complexity underlying it all.
In that sense from Susskind's perspective we are the "someone" who doesn't forget to do the thing. In fact we can't forget.

[varsigma]

Is there an argument, Susskind-wise, that resolution of complexity is connected to the existence of conscious beings (the product of 40 or so million years of primate evolution), and to the existence of event horizons; it's just that maybe they're extremes, one has extreme symmetry, the other has to keep breaking a few symmetries to stay out of equilibrium.

Perhaps. I don't know that saying life exists because it breaks the laws of event horizon formation to stay out of equilibrium and remain complex sounds non-woo; black holes exist because they increase complexity behind a horizon and it reaches an asymptotic limit. Life and black holes are both limits of complexity in the universe . . .

Hmm

[varsigma]

One more thing:

These days what the particles you are made of "are" or what they "have", isn't an important distinction.
It's common to say an electron has mass, charge and spin. But it's ok to also say an electron is mass, charge and spin in very small quantities.
What about the states of superposition? Again, saying two electrons are "in" superposition isn't different to saying they are a superposition of states. Particles are in a state, of superposition; equally they are states in superposition.

In German, ownership or owned by is the word eigen. Eigenstates are the particle states "owned by" them. But particles "are" states, of mass charge and spin. Not all particles own all of these quantities, if you like. So the complexity of quantum interactions is also "owned by" a system of particles, or, the states and the interactions are the complexity.

Quantum computers use fixed particles--they don't move around like gas particles--so that is just a way to reduce complexity. A computation is a simplification of all this; so copying something as complex as a consciousness, well, you have to overcome somehow this tendency for complexity to be really hard to simplify, unless a simplified consciousness is an ok result.  I don't know that I would volunteer, however.