Can downloading your mind into a computer -really- make you immortal?

Is there any way to really know with certainty?

Intro Image: “On A Clear Day” by Duffy Sheridan http://www.duffysheridan.com/waterworks/waterworks-frame.html

A few weeks ago, prior to a less than stellar quarterly report for Tesla, Elon Musk had a reveal for another company he is involved in called Neuralink. This company is working on a direct brain-computer interface, and Elon, as he tends to do, made a number of extraordinary claims on less than complete evidence.

I will set aside all discussion of Neuralink—here is a very good review their technology and other actual experts review of their technology. Suffice to say that when Elon griped that it’s “quite difficult” to get approval from the FDA for devices meant to be implanted by brain surgery first into paralyzed persons for treatment and then normal people for augmentation, well, there’s a reason the FDA demands a high safety bar. And in fairness, Elon is not the only one to ever gripe about the time and cost of gathering evidence for a medical drug or device to meet FDA standards. But it exists for a reason, and the story of Dr. Frances Kelsey vs. thalidomide is a good place to start. There is a tricky balance between safety testing of new therapies (“first do no harm”) and speed to the clinic if they are safe AND useful. If you are a believer in technology, like Elon, the safety part apparently can be boring and never fast enough.

I also wonder sometimes, given Elon’s acceleration of other technologies (i.e. “full self driving” features on Teslas), if he is a little too presumptive of safety. I know there is pressure to be first, and the idea that any wrinkles can be ironed out later, but failure in a car at highway speeds or brain surgery can be catastrophic to say the least. My impression is Elon simply believes that technology has or will quickly find a solution, and getting something he truly believes is useful and safe (enough) out as fast as possible is the better part of valor. Turning cynical, I sometimes wonder if his well-known belief that we are living in a computer simulation, not a “real” universe, also influences this.

After all, if you believed, truly and sincerely believed, that we were nothing but computer programs interacting in a completely simulated environment which only seems real to us, catastrophic brain surgery or self-driving failure is not really all that catastrophic. If the person to whom that catastrophe strikes is a “player character” they will simply wake up in whatever universe is running the simulation. If they are just a computer program, well, they are a computer program no longer interacting in the simulation, and there is little moral burden attached to that. The danger in convincing yourself of the “simulation” idea (and its attraction I suppose) is that actions can be divorced from moral consequences. If it’s all just one big video game, nothing really matters. You are free to do whatever you choose, with no regrets. That is a slippery slope to real monstrosity though. If anything goes, then anything goes.

The same is true for a completely materialistic philosophy. If we are merely the product of biochemistry in brains, and once that dies, we are gone—no afterlife, just eternal nothingness—then there is no real consequence to what happens on this third rock orbiting an otherwise unremarkable, average star.

However, perhaps fortunately, there is no way to know for certain if you are in such a simulation or a completely materialistic universe. We don’t know with 100% certainty what happens when we die. This may not be a simulation after all. Life as spirit, or at least as consciousness devoid of mere biology, may continue. To modify Pascal’s Wager a bit, if you cannot be certain your actions here are simulated or otherwise meaningless, you better damn well act like they have moral weight and meaning. So if there is any chance that you could kill or cripple an actual, real life innocent, then you need to act like that chance exists. Anything else would be unethical.

We’ll extend that idea to another modern controversy some other time. Instead, the mind-machine interface idea made me remember I had started a bit of a write up on an interesting idea from science fiction and then forgotten it by the time I was writing the last couple Rambles.

So I will take the pivot offered by Neuralink’s idea to revisit it. Just forgive me for being a little dated on the reference by now…

Altered Carbon, the Netflix series based on some “Altered Carbon” books I have not read, popped up enough in mentions and podcasts that I checked it out. As a show, it’s decent. As an idea, a way for essential human immortality and what that would mean, it was far more interesting.

In brief, both books and series are set far into the future where a very specific technology exists and has long been in use. This technology allows an entire human mind to be encoded on a chip as a program. Note that this is one of the stated eventual goals of technologies like Neuralink. In the Altered Carbon universe, this chip can then be placed into new flesh and blood bodies which are equipped for a chip, but do not currently have one in them. In a clever play on this idea, this means the chip containing the program or memories/skills/personality/soul of a person can wind up in a radically different body than the one they were biologically born to. For example, in the Netflix series, a 7 year old girl is put into the only available body (an elderly smoker), and a wife comes back as a man with a beard. The program/“soul” can be copied, and placed into different bodies at once—although this is a crime in that universe. Thus, you only truly die if the chip containing the last existing copy of your mind is destroyed. There is also some play with highly advanced AI and virtual reality. For example, your chipped mind can be plugged into a simulated computer environment, and this is shown for recreational, therapeutic, and even torture/interrogation (since your chipped mind is “trapped” in this virtual world). Prisons consist largely of keeping a convict’s chip out of a flesh and blood body, sometimes for centuries. Other near reality tech, but still science fiction, include various synthetic upgrades of the flesh and blood chip host-body, ranging from cloning a new identical flesh and blood body from the original DNA to various technological enhancements (pheromones for better sexual performance; improved reflexes, strength, stamina; one character loses an arm and gets a vastly superior titanium core replacement). There are also fully synthetic androids available too, which a “chipped” brain can apparently download into. Interstellar travel exists and is possible by the clever trick of sending flesh and blood or synthetic bodies without chips to new planets and then simply sending the program of human minds (our new colonists) as a downloading signal across space to chips waiting on the new world. Robots (presumably) then implant the chips in the bodies you sent ahead and bam–interstellar travel and colonization. Now, there is some scientific inaccuracy in this portion—you cannot transmit data faster than light either, so sending the program through space would still take a very long time. Much longer than the nearly instantaneous travel into new waiting bodies on new worlds in the show. On the other hand, everyone is effectively immortal so long as a chip has a copy of them intact, so “long time” is relative.

The universe presented is a dystopia. Getting a new flesh and blood body to chip back into when your current flesh and blood body bites it is prohibitively expensive. Most people can only afford a few such “reincarnations” before the money runs out. Thus, the average citizen of this universe gets only a few lifetime’s worth before their chip is too poor to afford a new home and will exist in stasis if it is not destroyed outright. Only a few super rich achieve true immortality with numerous copies of their mind stored (often in multiple secure locations so that one copy is likely to make it at all times) and numerous available clones to immediately jump back in to. These wealthy become enormously powerful in this universe, with combined advantages of millennia of compounding interest providing unparalleled wealth and immortality. However, these rich are locked into their all too human nature, and their failings persist. In fact, worsen, as centuries of existence leave them bored and chasing ever more decadent thrills.

A big theme of the available Netflix season is questioning if human kind, given its flaws, is truly meant to live forever. The antihero protagonist, for example, comes from a sect that says no. This sect comes to a similar conclusion from a different direction than the “Neo-Catholics” who explicitly choose NOT to have their mind chip reimplanted, and thus truly die when their current body dies. I’m not sure if anyone has asked the Pope this theoretical to know if this would be actual Church doctrine. In most medical matters, the Church usually comes down on efforts to preserve life, despite the belief that our life here is a transient one that will end in eternal spiritual life with a new body in God’s direct presence. Further, since you can still “die” with chip destruction, you are not necessarily “cheating” God via digital immortality. God is by definition omnipotent in creation. So if your body needs to go so your spirit is freed for immortality, then I am pretty sure the Church would agree that is what is going to happen and nothing short of a divine change of heart will stop that. Presumably, the reason behind this “Neo-Catholic” doctrine in the show stems from possible interpretation of Methuselah, who in the Book of Genesis lives for 969 years. So long, in fact, that God says he will not let humans live as long as Metusalah again.

Try not to think about being the guy who had such a long life that even God was like “whew…that was a little much. We’re not doing that again…

Regardless, the series shies away from an exploration of the theology behind this presentation. The “Neo-Catholics” exist in the universe to show religion attempting to cope with humanity granting itself it’s own immortality, and those who believe that natural death is a defining quality of their humanity.

“The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
—Achilles, “Troy”, 2004

Alright, I lied. That introduction to the universe was not at all brief. Sorry—got carried away.

The reason Altered Carbon and now Neuralink, headed in a similar direction, had me thinking is that this technology raises technical and philosophical questions.

The first is the practical and obvious. Why is ANYONE doing going back into a flesh and blood body at all? Since they have full functional, fully synthetic bodies available, why NOT go into one of those? Improved reflexes. Improved strength. More durable. Resists cold, heat, never tires. No aging. No hunger. You wouldn’t even need to breathe. Who would choose a “new” biological body, and not the android best version of you? Forever young?

That bothered me every time someone hopped into a new biological body.

But that’s a minor quibble. Let’s talk about this “immortality” idea. Are you truly immortal in this universe? Or better question, are you truly immortal in this universe, using this technology?

Let’s say Neuralink or someone similar hits it big in our lifetime, and makes the technology powering Altered Carbon real. If your mind could be downloaded onto a chip and put into another body, yes, “you” would live on. But not through your eyes. You, the biological vehicle that gave rise to it, will die. If you are a materialist, and we are truly no more than the sum of biochemical processes of neurons, revealing “consciousness” and “personality” only via its interactions with the world around it, then you ARE your brain. You can exist nowhere else. We can copy the patterns of your interactions with the world thus far, and make a simulation of you in silico. But we could make that copy, put the chip in a new body, and you could face the clone of your mind in a clone of your body (much like two identical twins) even as the light slowly fades from your eyes. Your twin goes on. You do not. That is only a technical immortality, and not one for you personally. Your family and friends would still interact with your in silico twin—but you would not experience this. The neurons that are you, as you sit there reading this, are gone and in the grave.

But let’s say you are not a materialist. There is a spirit, a soul, a ghost in the machine. Does that transmit to the chip? Is this why chip cloning is illegal in the Altered Carbon universe—because it somehow fractures a soul? I suppose this technology would be one way to find out. If some part of you suddenly moved to your clone chip and into the clone body and you continued to see and experience as your original body died, at least we would have an answer. But only subjectively. I still don’t think there is a good objective way to prove that had happened, even if the first “twin” ever made survived the death of the original and claimed to be the same person. You could not be sure that the cloned personality and memories would not make that same claim (maybe believe that claim wholeheartedly, even if falsely!). An independent observer could never be certain that your actual consciousness, your soul as you sit there reading this, floated over to the program copy of you and is present there. That kind of immortality would still have to be taken on faith–until and unless it actually happened when you died and your spirit, your conscious perception, moved in silico with the program copy of you.

So go back to Elon Musk and the ethics of protecting life and limb, even in a simulation, if you cannot be certain you are NOT in a simulation. One could argue that killing or erasing the in silico human mind is not murder–after all, it’s just a program copy of you. You died with your neurons. In fact, the materialist would almost have to claim this. Almost. But, if you still could not be objectively certain that consciousness did not transfer to the chip, would you have treat “chip death” as equivalent to murder? Is it a crime to kill just your image in a mirror–how much of a chance that the mirror image is really you does there have to be until it IS a crime?

I’m not 100% sure.

Alright, so back to the practical with the technology. Is there a way to achieve the Altered Carbon immortality and still see through your own eyes forever without your spirit having to float over to the right chip? The only way to do so that would satisfy the materialists among us would be through a graduated series of bionic replacements of your brain. Basically, your brain would need to cloned and the biological portion replaced gradually, piece by piece. Your brainstem. Then limbic cores. Then frontal lobes. Due to the interconnectedness of many brain regions over very long distances (your individual neuron cells, despite being microscopic in size themselves, can run axons for a yard or more), this would be incredibly difficult to do. But it is the only chance to get your biologic, cellular brain, over to existing as a program running computer hardware replicating that brain and have it still be YOUR brain, your experience. Even then, one could argue that this procedure merely kills the biological you softly, moving the “twin” into your skull bit by bit! Eventually, the last biological neuron of “you” is gone and only the twin remains. Either the twin sees through your eyes—and yours are shut forever with the death of your neurons–or gradual replacement left your consciousness, your vision through your eyes, stuck in the in silico version.

Of course, this “solution” assumes that your consciousness, your soul, is confined to your biologic brain to begin with. Since we cannot prove an immaterial, immortal soul exists, we don’t really know where it might be, and how it really functions. Is the brain merely its keyboard and mouse, letting it control the body and interact with the world as it directs the subtle shifts of atoms to trigger neurotransmitters and the neurobiology machinery?

This calls into question the nature of consciousness. Are you just the sum of a program, and thus transferable to computer code and silicon? Merely the distillation of biochemical interactions in the cells of your brain? Would a computer program, even if 100% accurate in predicting your reaction to anything going on in the world around it or happening to it, still be you? Or would it merely do a good job of acting like you would–good enough to fool any objective observer into thinking it was you? I suspect that even if the program did, unless presented with the exact same stimuli/situations/challenges as you at the same time, always, over time you and the computer copy of you would inevitably diverge. You would have a different set of experiences, and grown differently in response to them, even if starting from the same place. Dr. Ian Malcolm explains the rationale for this reasonably well while trying to score some digits in “Jurassic Park”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-mpifTiPV4

Beyond that are the differences in biological and computer “hardware”. We know your cellular brain can grow, adapt and change—new cells, new axonal connections. All in response to your experiences, and, as near as we can tell, pretty much for your entire life. That degree of plasticity would be difficult to impossible for a chip without constantly pulling out the hardware and physically altering connections on it. You could make some software approximations, but some of the leaps that your biological brain, and novel interconnections it could make might be difficult to capture with code alone. So are you “stuck” to some degree with a limited variation on the same program once you make the leap from your biological body to the Altered Carbon chip? Do certain changes in your thinking and habits, maturation of you as a person, which might go beyond software fixes become impossible once you are a mind in silico? If you are trapped in your vices and addictions, or unable to grow despite the longevity of centuries, do you really want to step out of a biological brain that CAN change and improve?

Or would the reverse be true? Once in silico, could you directly access so many brains via networking, thus so many possible combinations, that your capacity for growth and new connections exceeds the human brain? After all, there is only so much physical space inside your noggin to fit cells, and they eventually reach a biological limit on length and number of axons. You could, with a large enough computer network, connect more nodes in a neural net than a human brain. But again, is that you? Or just a program that acts like you do, at one moment in time when it was first uploaded? Is it your consciousness that gets that access? Or does your image float out of the mirror, grow wings and transcend, while you, as you perceive through your own eyes, can only watch, trapped in your biology?

Also, I have questions about life in silico. Unless you can program different states of mind and sensory impulses, if you are just a consciousness, or personality download, living in a computer chip, how faithful can that really be to who you were? Your decisions, what you think about, how you feel, can be profoundly influenced by hunger, fatigue, pain. The endorphin rush of exercise. Snickers made an entire ad campaign around this universal human experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbpFpjLVabA We say that adversity reveals character. Unless you are put back into some kind of body to move around in the universe, what is “adverse” to life as a mind in silico? Does the computer contained version of your personality still get cranky because it did not get its coffee? Is there a software code that randomizes “got decaf” to better capture your likely reaction in the morning? Does a mind purely in silico have petty annoyances it can notice and respond to? If not, will it ever truly reflect you as a person? You were body and spirit, fused. Each profoundly influences the other. This is the reality of the mind-body connection we all know and feel. Should we not expect significant changes in spirit/consciousness in the absence of the body and its many subtle influences on us?

Is this a reason for going back into a biological body, and not an android in the world of Altered Carbon? To feel hunger, pain, and illness, so we can know struggle, challenge, perseverance and earned victory still? Again?

I know I am asking a lot of questions. I wish I was steeped enough in philosophy, engineering, and neuroscience to have answers to at least some of them. The whole thing makes me wonder if tomorrow, Neuralink or something similar hits the big time, and makes an in silico capture of your mind possible. Would you do it? Is there a “Turing Test” to know that the copy of your personality is accurate? What does that test even look like to prove fidelity of your own personality? Do you know yourself well enough to know if the copy got it exactly right? Going back to the “Seeing Double” Ramble, would you even want to meet the program that was you? If you did make a copy of yourself, could you turn it into the simulation that Elon Musk has postulated we live in, seeing what changes in it cause it to be like, before trying to make them yourself? Learn how to break your own addictions, conquer your own challenges, by forcing in silico you to do it, and then trying to copy what works.

I mean, how many of us torture ourselves already like that?

In the end, is humanity any closer to actual immortality? Or is consciousness, our souls, so intimately linked to our DNA encoded biology that we create these mirrors of ourselves in code, and say “as long as our image remains, we live”—but in delusion? As the last light fades, as the body decays, you perceive no longer. But your mirror image is there, stuck in the mirror still. Is that truly “life” eternal? Your life eternal?

On a more hopeful note, I am not as certain that even if this is true immortality, that it ends in dystopia like Altered Carbon suggests. I think dystopia makes for good compelling narrative. But I find in my own experience, and in talking with those who have survived more than my share of years, we get better perspective as we age. Most of us grow wiser—unless we make the terrible error of trying not to learn as get older. I forget where I read it, but it was well and truly said that the reason there is such drama to the teenager’s first heartbreak, at least to us who are older, is the difference in perspective. To the teenager, this is the first time they have felt the sting. To the adult, we have felt it, and know we survived. After all, we did. In some cases, we were the better for the experience. We forget what the first time was like though—and the teenager does not know yet. They have not lived past the first heartbreak.

There are physical downsides to aging, no doubt, but the advantage of experience and perspective more than compensates.

I concede the possibility that the “Methuselahs” of the Altered Carbon world could grow into dirty old men and women, locked in their vices. But I doubt it. The vices get boring. Virtue never does. Does one get tired of being wise? Sick of being courageous? Just can’t even justice any more? Do you ever get enough love?

No, it might take me centuries to become virtuous. I think once there, or close enough to virtuous, you don’t go back. The “Hotel California” of virtue would gather more and more “methuselahs” as a function of time, finally reaching enough critical mass that society could be steered from the most dystopic visions. I’m still not sure humanity can create its own heaven on earth, but I think given enough time, we can at least avoid hell.

Tell me if I’m not being cynical enough, though…

Talk to you later.

Tagged Addendum, Altered Carbon, Consciousness, Immortality, Materialism, Neuralink, Seeing Double