Uploading Our Brains. A Reality Check.
It's an idea being worked on. But science suggests it may not be possible. There are benefits to humanity to keep trying though. If we do it right.
It is a long running trope of silence-fiction stories in various formats. Just before we die our brain gets uploaded to a hard drive. Voila! Immortality. Perhaps it’s downloaded to a newly grown body or we just zip around networks, giddy ones and zeroes, hither and thither. The technology is moving there.
Some will outright object, others think it super cool and some will just be skeptical. Uploading our brains comes with a whole host of questions and issues. Morality, ethics, existence of the soul, religiopus beliefs, cultural norms.
Humans are inextricably bound to technology. We cannot survive, let alone evolve as a species without it. Even on earth, nature is hostile for humans. We can only live in a very narrow band between water, land and sky.
There is a select group of people known as post-humanists. One of their ideas is that uploading our brains to a digital world is the only way that humanity can survive and progress. They have the notion that human thought, consciousness, intelligence, can be reduced to simple algorithms. This is evolution on a diet.
Some, like Elon Musk, are taking a step in this direction by creating brain implants so humans and Artificial Intelligence can work together. His company is called Neuralink. It is not without its controversies. Par for the course for Mr. Musk.
Can We Even Upload Our Brains?
For the post-humanists, this is an unequivocal yes. But it may not actually be achievable. Yet working on this sort of challenge could lead to some significant benefits such as treatments for dementia, depression and other brain-related diseases, perhaps even treating comas.
We’ve long held this idea that our brains are a thing on its own, that the rest of our body is simply a container. After all, we can lose a limb, become paralyzed from the neck down or in various ways, transplant organs easily.
Evolving research however, suggests that yes, we may be able to do these things, but the brain and the rest of the body may be more deeply interconnected than we thought. Such as what we’re learning about the brain-gut connection. Some scientists call our gut the second brain.
Some suggest we store memories not just in our brain, but throughout our body. Some physicists propose that some or all of our memories may exist “out there” in the aether of the cosmos. At the end of the day, we just don’t know yet.
We know that people who receive organ transplants such as kidneys and livers, don’t face just the physical rejection risks of the kidney, but that it impacts their mental health as well. They experience depression, rapid changes in behaviour. They need both physical mental assistance but also psychological help.
All of this would suggest that uploading our brain, our mind, may not be biologically possible.
Cultural Factors of Uploading Our Brains
When it comes to just about any technology, culture is the methodology humans use to determine whether or not that technology will be adopted, how, where and why it will be used. This is often a rather messy, complex and time consuming process.
When for example, heart transplants become possible, there were various sociocultural reactions. For some it was just weird, but okay. For other cultures it was abhorrent and morally wrong. Eventually it was accepted.
Uploading our brains for many cultures will be an even bigger and complex minefield. Because it goes to the very core of what it means to be human. Our brains may be the physical processor, but our worldview, shared by the majority (but not all) of cultures, is that our brain is where our soul, spirit and mind, our self, reside.
Should we arrive at that place where we can indeed, upload our brains, many cultures will resist. For the post-humanist subculture, they will view those who don’t choose to upload as non-progressive and stagnant.
Consciousness, Intelligence and Uploading
Then there’s the fact that we still have little to no idea of what either consciousness or intelligence means, what they are. Where does consciousness come from? What makes humans intelligent? If both are integral to what it means to be human, then are we even human anymore when we upload our brains?
Our brains and perhaps consciousness itself, is deeply tied to our nervous system, connected to our brains that includes our ganglia, gut and spine.
Technologists say that machines are intelligent. But are they really? Are we just applying human terms, anthropomorphizing something so that we can relate to it more easily? Reality is, after all, subjective and different for each of us.
Where Do We Go From Here?
An upside of those exploring how we might upload our brain and the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is that we are having discussions and debates that we’ve not really had since the Age of Enlightenment. We may well be entering an Age of Enlightenment 2.0 now.
Human’s have largely focused on technologies that augment our physical capabilities. Now, we are creating and imagining technologies that augment our cognitive abilities. We are entering the Cognitive Age.
The reality is, we are unlikely to stop, pause and take time to think about the myriad sociocultural and physiological impacts of uploading our brains, just as we are not about to do the same with AI as we blunder on. If you’re a fan of Hobbesian thinking, this is just the way it is.
I tend to think that we will use the same process and methodology we have used for thousands of years; culture.
To really progress, we will have to move beyond the current state of global affairs. Nations dividing based on value systems. Autocracies versus democracies and the in-between ideologies. Until we wind our way through these sorts of messes, we’re unlikely to focus on AI and uploading our brains in a whole-of-society way.
The process of adopting and adapting technologies has always been messy. But we do have a way of figuring things out. Humans are very innovative. Inherently, we want to survive as a species.