RE: where do copies come from?

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 14:22:05 -0400

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>Nevertheless, I still think it would be *extremely* difficult to emulate a
>whole brain. Just about every physical parameter for each neuron would be
>relevant, down to the atomic level. If any of these parameters are slightly
>off, or if the mathematical model is slightly off, the behaviour of a
>single neuron may seem to be unaffected, but the error will be amplified
>enormously by the cascade as one neuron triggers another.

I don't think that follows. After all, we maintain the same personality
despite the fact that these detailed parameters are constantly varying in
our own neurons (and the neurons themselves are being completely replaced
every few months or so); neural networks are not that "brittle", they tend
to be able to function in broadly the same way even when damaged in various
ways, and slight imperfections in the simulated behavior of individual
neurons could be seen as a type of damage. As long as the behavior of each
simulated neuron is "close enough" to how the original neuron would have
behaved in the same circumstances, I don't think occasional slight
deviations would be fatal to the upload (but perhaps the first uploads will
act like people who are slightly drunk or have a chemical imbalance or
something, and they'll have to experiment with tweaking various high-level
parameters--the equivalent of giving themselves simulated prozac or
something--until they feel 'normal' again).

Jesse
Received on Sun Jul 10 2005 - 14:27:36 PDT