11 Facts About Mind uploading

Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer.

Some believe mind uploading is humanity's current best option for preserving the identity of the species, as opposed to cryonics.

Mind uploading is a central conceptual feature of numerous science fiction novels, films, and games.

Possible method for mind uploading is serial sectioning, in which the brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen and then scanned and analyzed layer by layer, which for frozen samples at nano-scale requires a cryo-ultramicrotome, thus capturing the structure of the neurons and their interconnections.

Blue Brain Project by the Brain and Mind uploading Institute of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering mammalian brain circuitry.

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Mind uploading relies on the idea that the human mind, just like non-human minds, is represented by the current neural network paths and the weights of the brain synapses rather than by a dualistic and mystic soul and spirit.

An analogy to the idea of mind uploading is to copy the temporary information state of a computer program from the computer memory to another computer and continue its execution.

For example, Buddhist transhumanist James Hughes has pointed out that this consideration only goes so far: if one believes the self is an illusion, worries about survival are not reasons to avoid uploading, and Keith Wiley has presented an argument wherein all resulting minds of an uploading procedure are granted equal primacy in their claim to the original identity, such that survival of the self is determined retroactively from a strictly subjective position.

Mind uploading then concludes: “If, as I argue above, a sufficiently detailed computational simulation of the brain is potentially operationally equivalent to an organic brain, it follows that we must consider extending protections against suffering to simulations.

Mind uploading has been advocated by a number of researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as the late Marvin Minsky.

In 1993, Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics circles and elsewhere on the net.