| | Ted:
When I read Kurzweil, I just took it as a very intelligently argued hypothetical. His argument is something akin to, perception is reality. Meaning, at some physical level, we don't actually directly perceive the world around us, it is relayed to the core of our conciousness, whatever that is, via sensors and relay channels, nerves. That same conciousness, in dream state, is stimulated via other pathways, self playback of real and imagined/manufactured stimuli.
We are already at the Kitty Hawk stages of direct stimulation of our brain, replacing natural sensors with artificial sensors. There has been some remarkable work where a grid of stimulating sensors were embedded into a sightless human, and it provided a rudimentary ability to detect rough distinctions between areas of light and dark. Kitty Hawk. An establishement of the basic linga franca of artificial/human interfacing. Like with almost every other similar technology, what is left is ... increases in resolution, the transition from b/w to color, and so on, and then we'll be able to directly stimulate the brain with sensory input.
Not the same as 'immortality', but imagine that technology advanced a century or less. Imaging all five senses directly stimulated... in High Def. At some level of existence, would the 'I' inside of you experience life any less completely if the brain cell stimuli came from an alternative source, an augmented source, and not your 'wetbit' analog nerve pathways? Would life be like a dream state, and at that point, would life be any differently percieved if it was 'real' input from actual augmented sensor inputs, or manufactured/dream state input from high def mulstichannel recorded inputs? (Ala, Matrix.)
If you had the choice of passing with your corporal body at age 100, or living for another 100 years in 'high def' direct stimulation, what would 'you' choose? Could you be productive in that state, newly creative, 'forever young' for another 100 years, or would you choose to cease to be at all?
I think Ray's point is, not everyone will choose to expire, and those who choose to live on in that state, will, in some sense.
I also think Ray's point is as much about life inside the machine as it is the machine inside of life. We want to believe we are more than process, we want to believe in the special nature of our soul; the real antagonism toward the existence that Ray hypothesises about is what it might reveal about the machine-like nature of the processes already inside of us, as we are now.
His point is also, I think, a purely observational one. It doesn't matter what we think about this, if it can be done, it will be done, which, all things considered, probably means it will be done, at some point.
Eyeglasses, false teeth, hearing aids, pacemakers, ... we so far have resisted the urge to annoint a Grand Poobah of Could Be.
Walk into any nursing home, and poll the residents. Let them try being young again -- in their minds, if not body, -- and ask them if they want the Big Dirt Nap, or another hundred years of XBOX 360000... Not everyone will tell you to go jump.
Will creative minds still be able to create in that state of augmented perception? Maybe not until V10.0. Talk about 'second life.' How soon might some opt for that existence over the organic alternative?
What % of our brains is devoted to preprocessing stimuli from our sensory organs, and what % is devoted to percieving that stimuli? We may eventually corral the mind into a tiny box, with much lower maintenance--or, we are just as likely to find that it can't be done, we are not simply processors processing and responding to stimuli from the world and our stored perceptions of the world.
Would 'knowing' that we were human Tivos drive us insane, or would we exist in a perpetual semi dream state, aware but self-protected from insanity, in the same way we apprently are when are dreaming nonsense?
Let me be the first to admit, "I don't know."
But that apparently doesn't stop mankind, in total, from wondering such things, and acting on those ideas. So, if it can be done, it will be done.
But, that is not to say, it can be done.
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