Daily Email Newsletter

Enter your email address:

Author Archive
On The Amazing Benefits Of Mind Uploading
Thursday, 17 May 2012 14:00
No Comments
Photo: Kemitsv (CC)

Photo: Kemitsv (CC)

Music and paying the gas bill have been digitalized, so you knew this was next. How can we stop abusing the environment, give ourselves superintelligence, and live forever? H+ Magazine on the inevitable necessity of switching from spongy flesh brains to uploaded ones:

Universal mind uploading, or universal uploading for short, is the concept (I’m not sure who originated it –if you know, say so in the comments), that the technology of mind uploading will eventually become universally adopted by all who can afford it, similar to the adoption of modern agriculture, hygiene, and permanent dwellings. (Read more…) Some futurists, such as myself, see the eventuality as plausible by as early as 2050.

Mind uploading would involve simulating a human brain in a computer in enough detail that the “simulation” becomes, for all practical purposes, a perfect copy and experiences consciousness, just like protein-based human minds. If functionalism is true, as many cognitive scientists and philosophers believe, then all the features of human consciousness that we know and love — including all our memories, personality, and sexual quirks — would be preserved through the transition.

Regardless of how perplexed one may be by contemplating this possibility for the first time from a 20th century perspective of personal identity, an upload of you with all your memories and personality intact is no different from you than the person you are today is different than the person you were yesterday when you went to sleep, or the person you were 10-30 seconds ago when quantum fluctuations momentarily destroyed and recreated all the particles in your brain.

Widespread uploading would have huge effects. By allowing human minds to run on computing substrates that will be a million to a billion times faster than biological brains, as well as the possibility of spinning off non-conscious “daemons” to accomplish rote tasks, economic growth — at least insofar as it can be magnified by the intelligence and the robotics of 2050 as a starting point — will accelerate greatly.

Complete environmental recovery. By spending most of our time as programs running on a worldwide network, we will consume far less space and use less energy and natural resources than we would in a conventional human body.



 
Do Psychedelics Expand the Mind by Reducing Brain Activity?
Thursday, 17 May 2012 13:00
No Comments
Psychedelics

Illustration: Dizzy thorns (CC)

So what do you think, psychonauts? Pretty interesting article from Adam Halberstadt and Mark Geyer in Scientific American:

What would you see if you could look inside a hallucinating brain? Despite decades of scientific investigation, we still lack a clear understanding of how hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, and psilocybin (the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms) work in the brain. (Read more…) Modern science has demonstrated that hallucinogens activate receptors for serotonin, one of the brain’s key chemical messengers. Specifically, of the 15 different serotonin receptors, the 2A subtype (5-HT2A), seems to be the one that produces profound alterations of thought and perception.

It is uncertain, however, why activation of the 5-HT2A receptor by hallucinogens produces psychedelic effects, but many scientists believe that the effects are linked to increases in brain activity. Although it is not known why this activation would lead to profound alterations of consciousness, one speculation is that an increase in the spontaneous firing of certain types of brain cells leads to altered sensory and perceptual processing, uncontrolled memory retrieval, and the projection of mental “noise” into the mind’s eye…



 
‘Radioactive Man’ Pulled Over By Connecticut Police
Thursday, 17 May 2012 11:00
No Comments

Stop RadioactivityState police cars have radioactivity detectors … Reports Amanda Cuda in the Connecticut Post:

Mike Apatow was minding his own business Wednesday, driving to an appointment for work in Washington Depot when a state police car appeared suddenly and signaled for the Milford resident to pull over.

Apatow, 42, was entering Interstate 84 in Newtown when the cruiser appeared, and he had no idea what he’d done to merit police attention. It turns out he didn’t do anything. (Read more…)

But earlier that day, Apatow, who’d experienced a recent spike in his blood pressure, had a nuclear stress test at Cardiology Associates of Fairfield County in Trumbull. In the test, a small amount of a radioactive material is injected into the veins and used to help track blood flow to the heart.