while diving around the net, and try as I might I could not keep quiet about this one. The article, entitled "6 reasons why you'll never upload your mind into a computer" claims to outline the six major problems with virtualization.... actually that's inaccurate... It CLAIMS to outline several problems with the "singularity" (A distinctly different idea than virtualization). Here, I'll just go ahead and dive in:
"You may have heard of the so-called Singularity — the idea that, thanks to technology, we'll soon be able to upload our minds into computers and become, for all intents and purposes, immortal. It's an exciting notion. Even The New York Times likes the idea. There's just one problem: It's a load of bull."
Alright... first of all, I'm just gonna throw him a bone on this one and admit that the word singularity has been used and abused for a long time... but if you're even a little keen on your etymology, it's obvious which definition is most accurate. What he's talking about, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer is called "virtualization," the idea that it might make you immortal is...well... "immortalism." Basically, the idea that he thinks is singularity is really "immortalist virtualism." Now you're probably wondering what the singularity is... here's the short version: The singularity has been an article of religious faiths and spiritualist teachings for eons, It's the idea that all consciousness on Earth will one day join together to become one giant, all-knowing consciousness. Furthermore, it's the belief that this is not only possible but the very goal of all life, the finish line... now, whether you think that sacrificing individuality is the cornerstone of enlightenment or enslavement, you have to respect that this is a completely separate idea from virtualization... Sure, virtualization could be one route to the singularity, but it's not the only one and it's certainly not an equivalent concept... Anyway, to lend any credence what-so-ever to the rest of this garbage, we'll have to imagine that whenever the 'writer' says "Singularity" he means "Virtualization." So let's see the Six reasons we'll never "Reach Singularity."
Two Words: Fail Whale
This may seem like a cheap shot, but "uptime" is something our most advanced computer scientists still struggle with. Hell, our super-sophisticated algorithms can't even keep a text-based microblogging service from crashing during the World Cup — what happens when there's a Fail Whale for your mind? Will it be like getting a hangover, having a stroke, or dying? You'd have to assume we'll all be "backed up," but that raises troubling questions too: when the server running You goes kaplooie, is your "backup" really you, or just a clone of you that takes your place now that the "real" you is lost? The Singularitarians don't have reassuring answers, and I don't want to find out the hard way.
...Hm. Okay, you want two words? How about Brain Aneurysm... or Myocardial infarction, Oh how about Acute Appendicitis. The truth is that computer scientists aren't the only ones dealing with uptime problems, at any moment you could drop dead from 100 things you don't know are happening in your body, that's the way it's always going to be. Sure, that blows a whole in "immortalism" but not in virtualization... and honestly, if you stop and think about it for a second, isn't it likely that your prosthetic body will be much more self-diagnostic than your current wetware? At any rate, the philosophical babble at the end about the loss of "self" and whether the "self" can be backed up is pretty much moot, these are things that are yet to be understood and besides that, who said that we would need to be backed up? As long as our cyberbrains are bistable and have multiple on-board redundancies, it would take a pretty traumatic event to shut it down. ...Next.
The Storage Media Won't Last Five Years, Much Less Forever
Stone tablets written in Sanskrit may last millennia, but digital storage media go to shit alarmingly fast when used continuously (and you'd have to assume there'd be constant disk activity if millions of people were "living" on them!). Without frequent physical backups, refreshes, and format updates, precious data will quickly be rendered unreadable or inaccessible. So when we're all "in the cloud," who's gonna be down on the ground doing all that real-world maintenance — robots? Morlocks? Even if that works, it just seems evolutionarily unwise to swap one faulty physical substrate (albeit one that has been honed for millions of years, runs on sugar and water, and lasts nearly a century) for another one that can barely make it from one Olympic season to the next, even with permanent air-conditioning.
Okay, this is a fairly reasonable argument... I mean, who's gonna maintain the big computer? This is where the disparity between his title and his article become painfully obvious. This is a reason why there may never be a technological singularity, or at least a one-part, centralized, fully-virtualized singularity... However, as his title implies, this is NOT a reason why you'll never upload your brain into a computer. Obviously, the current materials are lacking in a certain durability, but if that's your only argument, it's tantamount to saying "It can't be done now, so it will never be done." As far as ' frequent physical backups, refreshes, and format updates' are concerned, he's got an interesting point about who would do maintenance on a mainframe-type singularity... although it is conceivable that a singlulatarian mainframe may be capable of working on itself... Take, for example, the idea that the singularity may occur (jf at all) as a population of networked, semi-autonomous cyborgs. They would be capable of maintaining themselves and the network for as long as they had materials to do so. And as far as non-singulatarian virtualization is concerned, I agree with a comment that was made on the article in response to the statement about how ' frequent physical backups, refreshes, and format updates' would be vital. The response was simply: "Then do that." (Besides, our sugar-water centurion computers require their own measure of upkeep) Dalyee...
Insane Energy Demand
The human brain only needs 20 watts to run the app called You, but with almost 7 billion of us and counting, we're already straining the earth's ability to host us all. Meanwhile, you know how much juice one Google data center consumes just to index the latest LOLcats (a task much, much simpler than hosting your digital consciousness)? 100 million watts. Do the math: We'd have to invent fusion reactors or build a Dyson sphere just to keep the lights on. Neither of those technologies are theoretically impossible — in fact, they fit right into the Singularitarians' techno-magical worldview. But they're definitely not gonna happen within the next few decades, and probably not even within the next century or two.
Okay, here's a seemingly logical argument (against virtualization, that is) The only problem is that in the course of writing this, he shot himself in the foot (tragically aiming several feet too low). First of all, the article that he cites for the statement about human brain power is actually about a solution to the very problem he's arguing. Secondly, his Google comparison is ill-founded and misleading. If you follow his link to the article about Google DataCenters, you'll find that he is referring to an especially power-hungry data center during a potential period full-capacity (not just to index the latest LOLcats, as much as it may seem that that's all Google does). By the way, that wattage is the power demand for the entire center... lighting, processing, cooling, security, Power Backup, switching, transmission... So yes, it takes 100 Million Watts to run 30 acres of web servers at full capacity 24/7 and keep them cool and maintained. What does that have to do with virtualization? ...well... nothing.
Lack of Processing Power
Singularitarians love to trot out simple arithmetic: add up all the brain's billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, and you get a "total processing power" of about 10 quadrillion calculations per second, or 10 petaflops. Meanwhile, IBM's Blue Gene/P supercomputer has a maximum theoretical limit of around 3 petaflops. So just give it a decade or two, and it'll lap us easy, right? It's Moore's Law, bitchez!
That might be true if neurons only acted like digital transistors. But they don't. Neuroscientists are still uncovering all the ways that the little wires in our heads encode information besides flipping bits: chemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), temporally (by changing the rate at which they fire, alone or in coordinated waves), even structurally (literally rewiring, strengthening, or pruning connections in response to new input). Adding up all that extra computational oomph is something scientists are still struggling to do, but even a conservative estimate would bump up that 10-quadrillion figure by several orders of magnitude. A million Blue Genes wouldn't be enough to match it.
This... I don't even really want to talk about it... this is going to be exhausting. Okay, first of all, where did he get this trash about Singulatarians and math? I've never seen this 10 petaflop number he's trouting. Secondly, his argument is all based on the idea that the brain will be somehow "emulated," that the physical processes behind the brain are going to be mimicked by software, but the truth is that if virtualization happens, it will occur by the use of very specialized computers that mimic (physically) the processes of the brain, the software will be "you." In light of that fact, the rest of his little rant is moot... But you have to appreciate the prowess with which he pulls that last bit out of his rear, "
a conservative estimate would bump up that 10-quadrillion figure by several orders of magnitude." That's not a conservative estimate by scientists, that's an inflated estimate by someone who obviously knows very little about computer science.
Minds Don't Work Without Bodies
Okay... I'm not gonna post this paragraph, if you like you can go to the link at the top of this article and read it. First of all, this statement is untrue. He tries, he really does try to make his case but let's take a look at what he cited in the paragraph... As evidence that our bodies are part of our "selves" he cites an article about how sociophobes behave differently when they are being represented on cyberspace by more attractive avatars... this is a body image problem, which relates only to a society where there are "bodies." Then, as evidence that our bodies perform functions that were previously attributed to the brain, he cites an article which he paraphrases as "
removing body parts affects visual perception" but when you actually read the article, you find that it's about people missing their hands and how it effects their ability to accurately judge the distance of nearby objects (because the brain uses the hands as a reference of distance, again, a problem only applicable in the macro-physical world, not in a virtual world). And then he throws another one in there which he paraphrases "simple abstract notions we take for granted boil down to physical sensations of the body in space." If you read the article, you'll find that it's really about how abstract notions are
reflected in body language... Okay, I'm done here... that's enough.
Who Gets Uploaded?
Damn... tough question, but not really a "reason you'll never upload your brain to a computer."
Alright, well I think that about covers it... I'm out of energy on this one, I've already given it way more thought than the author did.
Be well.
It's a pretty neat and inexpensive piece of tech. It runs about $25 and has a full QWERTY and touch pad, so that's just as much input as your average laptop, except from the palm of your hand. This is going to be a great feature for input, buit also for portability... speaking of which, before I get too portable, I'm going to need a new battery for my laptop. There are some great deals on eBay for those too (Wow, I sound like I'm advertising eBay, lol) Then it'll be a matter of lugging the laptop around along with all the peripheral equipment in-tow. Well, I've found a great solution to that as well. The "NY BUILT" Laptop Backpack:
Yes, it is as pricey as it looks. This backpack is "Made from lightweight neoprene and breathable air mesh" and will set you back a cool $80 new (or as low as $60 on eBay) It has room for a large laptop as well as a few peripherals and is super-slim and comfortable. It has a front-strap that (along with making you look super dorky) will help evenly distribute the weight of the computer and equipment, which is going to be especially important for me because I'll be wearing the thing almost all of the time. It also features a small zipper compartment in the front strap, which will be the perfect place to stow my micro-keyboard, I'll cut a little channel between the main compartment and the strap pocket so I can wire the keyboard through the backpack internally with no messy external wires hanging all over the place. Also, I'll be able to store all of the video adapters in the bag and run the display cables out of the top of the pack and up the back of my neck which will allow me to run the wires "covertly," again, avoiding the dorky, overly wired-up look. I suppose you could call these items the "Phase 2" of my wearable, allowing for maximum portability. But how about interaction with the computer on an even higher level? Well, that's phase 3...
14 saline sensors (so I'll have to keep them wet)
