BrainInaJar

The ultimate fate of the last "humans," I believe, is to be a BrainInaJar. There are other possibilities: Perhaps we will form new bodies for ourselves, and transplant ourselves into them. But I believe the LowerEnergyStatesTheory of our development. I believe that WeAreSymbolCreatures, and will find our natural habitat in VirtualReality. Economy will move us to develop "Jar" technology: 3'x3' high-tech cubes for the storage of brains.

If we consider a person who's body is falling apart, we find mechanical substitutes for the ailing limbs. You lose a leg, but pick up a mechanical one in its place. You lose an arm? Well, we have a replacement for you. Perhaps we will develop an artificial heart and lungs. Eyes zapped by laser light? Never mind, we'll push signals through optic pathways, or something.

The target result is clear: Everything but the irreplacable. After that, we may even find a way to replace the brain, and replace it, neuron by neuron, with functionally equivalent silicon. (See: TheProblemOfAwareness.)

Most people reject these ideas; See ShockLevel and RejectionOfModernity. But people will acclimatize to these technologies, and each step will seem like something that makes sense to most people, after a few years.

I believe that the BrainInaJar scenario is the real one. I believe we may see it in your lifetime. The fate of the BrainInaJar scenario, I think, is to construct a TowerOfThreeFootCubes. Actually, probably, (if we're smart, which we will be:) several towers of 3'x3'x3' cubes.

Each 3'x3'x3' cube will house a human brian, and provide a complete VirtualReality experience within it. The cubes will be tracked for easy storage and shipping. When people need a low latency connection with one another, they will (from within the VirtualReality) signal the system to relocate themselves together. Perhaps bricks from Seattle, Los Angelas, and London will be shipped to New York. The experience within the cubes would be of continuously decreasing latency between connections.

I just suspect that this kind of thing will become real by 2070, 2080. It is, of course, completely ludicrous to think about life beyond, say, 2035. We really just don't know. So, I'm pulling 2070 out of thin air.

This might not happen, if people are sufficiently disgusted by the possibility, for so long. I don't think they will. I think they are disgusted now. But as people mechanize their body, as cyborgs become more and more common, as people feel less and less psychological attachment to their bodies, it seems to me that they'll be used to it. Again, acclimitizing, ShockLevel, RejectionOfModernity. The classic example: When a new technology appears that throws people out of the loop, they almost always say, "Well, that's very nice and convenient, if the technology works, but I still like to go in and talk with the clerk. It just feels more human that way." 10 years later, and not only have they completely converted, but they don't even remember feeling any other way. "Oh, well, of course- it's nothing against the clerk, it's just 100x more convenient this way."

When people realize: "Pop's body's completely messed up, the only thing we can do is put him in a cube, where he will enjoy immense freedom," they'll make the choice to save their dad.

addendum:

BrainInaJar requires BrainComputerInterface. BrainInaJar would likely lead to UpLoad, if that's possible. Or, perhaps BrainInaJar will be skipped entirely, and we leap straight to UpLoad.

BrainComputerInterface --> BrainInaJar --> UpLoad
                   \                         ^
                    \____(NanoTechnology?)___|

-- LionKimbro 2005-03-28 05:44:11

• It's wrong to think about it as jars. Of course, the mind will not reside in a human brain by 2070. But it won't be in neat 3'x3'x3' cubes either. It will be distributed with massive parallelism and redundant backups over this planet and beyond, with people lives completely virtual, without a CPU that you can point to and say "It's the person X". Some people will still control physical bodies (the mind can remain in the distributed network), because the life is not about feeling and subjective experiences (which easily can happen in VR only), but also about doing real things, changing the world, etc. For this reason many people will still populate bodies (human, animal, robotic, fluid nanobotic, abstract, etc.) for awhile after uploading becomes possible.

  People will also combine living on the network with changing/perceiving the world in a complex distributed way - through many robots, various sensors, devices, simulations of reality, etc. To speak of "jars" is to vastly oversimplify the likely developments. -- DanilaMedvedev 2005-03-28 11:27:59

  • I'd say that mainly depends on if it's possible or not to "upload" minds. Maybe it's only possible by "copying" (and simulating) every neuron, and maybe that's too expensive / difficult. In the meanwhile, keeping the brain in a jar might be a reasonable solution. Hmm, makes me think of ImmortalProgrammers. -- EmileKroeger

  I think we should have the UpLoad conversation on another page.

  Danila, can you explain what you mean by "vastly oversimplify?" I'm only calling them "jars" because (A) they hold things, (B) people are used to calling it "the brain in a jar," and (C) I like humor by understatement. I'm imagining these to be some pretty high tech jars; not glass containers with two electrodes sticking out of the top, after all.

  Danila, I haven't researched UpLoad ideas very much. The only thing I know about is the idea of simulating neurons one by one, mainly from conversations about TheProblemOfAwareness. Would you write the UpLoad page? -- LionKimbro 2005-03-29 05:33:27

  • Should have left a message on my user page. You might already be up to date on uploading (7 months is almost an eternity in 2005), but I did write the page. -- DanilaMedvedev 2005-11-18 16:49:04

MarshallBrain has just published a new web essay: The Day You Discard Your Body, about the BrainInaJar scenario.

-- 63.231.42.78 2005-08-22 18:54:21

Need to learn more about this quote: "If we expanded our central nervous system to the electromagnetic technology, it is only one step more for the transmission of our consciousness also into the world of the computers." -- MarshallMcluhan

Is he being quoted out of context? This is a description of "the electronic age."

-- LionKimbro 2005-11-17 20:52:18