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Jonathan Bartlett on why we can’t upload our brains to computers

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2019 AI Hype Countdown #5: The idea that we can upload our brains to computers to avoid death shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between types of thinking:

Computers are very effective but they operate with a very limited set of causal abilities. Humans work from an entirely different set of causal abilities. Uploading your brain to a computer is not a question of technology. It can’t work in principle.

Jonathan Bartlett, “Transhumanism never grows old” at Mind Matters News

He thinks cyborgs are at least a somewhat more plausible idea.

See also: Would you want immortal life as a cyborg? Would you give up your right arm for a robotic device that performs better? Think about it.

and

Noted astronomer envisions cyborgs on Mars Sir Martin Rees thinks of this “post-human evolution” as going beyond Darwin to “secular intelligent design.”

Comments
As I sat sharpening my lawnmower's blades with my granddad's old files the other day, I found myself pondering one of the old saws widely attributed to a baseball legend, while still waiting for the miracle of "bio-engineering" that I was promised 25 years ago. Namely, grass for lawns that would be genetically modified -- so "they" said -- to grow an inch high, then stop growing.
The hardest thing of all to predict is the future. -Yogi Berra
So pardon me if I, just on general principles, take predictions of uploading human brains to computers with a grain of salt the size of the Great Salt Lake.jstanley01
December 31, 2019
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