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Interesting reading. It seems that a fruit fly and a mouse have already been digitized so we are not far off. 
I wonder what you would call a bug in the code of a bug?
I don't think humans need to understand something before they copy it and the process of copying may give us better understanding.
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Sometimes the bug in the bug will cancel each other.
I wonder if they will improve human software so that all these lengthy nightly reboots can be avoided 
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That would be good. If sleep was optional, I'd choose Thursdays.
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I remember the book Neverness (think it was from Alan Dean Foster) that I read several years ago. In this book a sentence was quoted several times:
If our brain was simple enough that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
So maybe creating and teaching an AI is possible, but I don't think copying/transferring would work.
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Hi,
There is no doubt that consciousness can be implemented in 'artificial' mediums. There is nothing 'magical' about living matter - and 'natural' consciousness is just the result of an (as of yet not understood) process implemented in matter. When we understand that process, we will be able to implement it in an appropriate artificial/non-living medium. And it is, almost beyond doubt, a computational process - and I personally believe that consciousness can even be implemented in current-generation hardware and software. We just need to understand it first!
Marius Myburg.
http://mariusmyburg.wordpress.com/
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Atoms may not - or may - be things. But either way - as Einstein is reported to have said, "Something is moving...".
"Something" is not "nothing", and something IS moving. And some things are intelligent and conscious, or at least they experience an illusion of being conscious.
Either way - that consciousness, exists.
Cogito ergo sum. What is and what is not matter, in the traditional sense, does not really matter. There is 'something'. And that 'something' is... matter.
But this is all kinda beside the point, I think .
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I agree except for the understanding bit. It would be helpful but not essential I think.
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Well, for some folks that I know it should be fairly easy to save their consciousness on a old-time 180K single-sided floppy disk, even together with some interresting data.
For most others I would say "No-way, José!"
You may store a snapshot of all the neuronic activities for >clik< THIS moment, but we are really not sure whether that is enough - what about the chemical state, how about the framework (I understand that the brains are wired differently from person to person) and so on.
And then there are the ethical / spiritual / practical problems... Much easier to rely on a divine intervention! 
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Ill dig out my 64mb memory stick out we can keep them all together so they don't get lonely.
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Yes, it will be possible IMO. This is how it can be done:
It will not be a scan, or a download, it will be slow.
Every cell in your brain can be replaced by a synthetic. Your consciousness is not in one cell, but is made up of a collection of all of your cells. Switching each one individual will allow your consciousness to switch over to electronics, at what point does that occur? It's not binary- at what spoonful of soil does a hill become a mountain?
After the transition is complete, the body and be destroyed and electric brain removed.
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I love a good paradox! If you pull the hairs out of your head 1 at a time, at which point do you become bald?
wizardzz wrote: After the transition is complete, the body and be destroyed and electric brain removed.
that's definitely not the most romantic way of doing it. It sounds a bit like peeling an orange! I'd not considered a gradual assimilation though.
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As long as we get to choose our own coloured light I don't mind.
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The question is premature, at least for Western science, as it hasn't even been figured out yet.
Though an advanced Buddhist meditator who has studied the Abhidharma(Google it) might have some intersting ideas to relate.
So how could you save it if you don't have a clue what it is?
Mike
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I admit that I only skim read about the Abhidarma. I got sidetracked as it made me imagine digitizing our brains in order to ascend.
AAC Mike wrote:
So how could you save it if you don't have a clue what it is?
I do that with my code sometimes.
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I like you last comment about saving your code. Thanks for the chuckle!
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The very detailed book "Astral Dynamics" by Robert Bruce provides first hand accounts of different types of consciousness in our different levels of bodies, saying that the physical body brain does indeed have a type of consciousness, even though it appears to be mortal and not the eternal consciousness of the soul. My own experience tends to agree with this. So, theoretically, I would say a qualified yes, to a degree.
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I'm not sure why, but that reminded me that praying mantis have two brains. I don't know if that's relevant or I'm just getting tired.
Bruce Patin wrote: My own experience tends to agree with this.
That sounds interesting. Have you had a near death or outer body experience?
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I had several out of body experiences in a period of two years after I started Transcendental Meditation. They stopped when life got busy and I couldn't relax enough.
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Just to clarify, lest you fear that the real you is going to die - the physical brain consciousness seems to be a subset of the soul consciousness, and is not lost in that regard. Frequently, experiences of the higher bodies are not always downloaded to the physical brain, so we don't always consciously remember in our physical brain what we experience beyond the physical body. Sometimes we need to go back to the higher experience and try to download it again. Sometimes it just won't download properly, because the physical brain can't yet relate to it. I am stretching, here. No guarantees of absolute truth. Still trying to understand it all thoroughly.
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If we consider the brain as simple computing device, then the answer is yes, but first we must understand what defines a consciousness, the minimum detail level we need to emulate so it works and the appropriate platform to emulate it.
Having said that, I believe that the time for everyone of us wearing and "Intel Inside" badge in our skulls, is a bit far away. 
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AMD then? I couldn't resist. 
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Lee Chetwynd wrote: it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically
Reading out the data and storing the structure of a brain is simply an engineering problem, probably not possible today, but within our grasp should we want to develop the technology. Whether that translates to storing a consciousness is unknown.
The difficult part comes in what ways you expect it can be used. Emulating it electronically, a la Heechee, we're still a ways away from that. Using it as a backup implies that you can restore it. We're a long, long ways away from being able to restore the saved data. As for developing a new consciousness, well, saving, executing and restoring a consciousness probably isn't terribly relevant to developing one.
Will we develop an artificial consciousness? I think we're starting to approach it in the right ways, but I'm not sure we'll recognize when we succeed. Personally, I'm beginning to suspect we've already succeeded.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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patbob wrote: I'm not sure we'll recognize when we succeed.
Leave it running with no input. If it gets bored and starts singing "Daisy Bell," it's conscious. And should be destroyed immediately.
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Nope.. that's what broken computers do. Not conscious ones
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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