[tt] [wta-talk] Interview with Anders Sandberg: 'We'll be able to upload our brains to a computer'

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from James Clement <clementlawyer at hotmail.com> -----

From: James Clement <clementlawyer at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:06:15 -0800
To: 'World Transhumanist Association Discussion List' <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: [wta-talk] Interview with Anders Sandberg: 'We'll be able to upload
	our brains to a computer'
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http://news.independent.co.uk/education/higher/article3180162.ece


Against the grain: 'We'll be able to upload our brains to a computer' 

Interview by Nick Jackson 

Published: 22 November 2007 

Anders Sandberg is James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity
Institute, University of Oxford. Dr Sandberg believes that in the future we
will be able to, and should, dramatically change what it means to be human.

Transhumanism – enhancing humans through new sciences and technologies –
often looks a rather pie-in-the-sky, science-fiction idea. But we have good
scientific reasons to think that in future we are going to change the human
condition significantly.

It is becoming more and more realistic that we will extend our life span.
I'm pretty optimistic that one day we will be able to upload our brains on
to a computer, which will give us a kind of immortality. We can already
simulate a brain bigger than an insect's.

A human brain is going to take a lot of computer power, but microscopy can
actually scan brain slices quite well. We don't yet know how to reconstruct
the function of neurons from the microscopy, but it seems that most people
think it is feasible, although with microscopy the brain is pulverised.
Francis Fukuyama said that transhumanism was the world's most dangerous
idea, but all ideas that suggest that we change ourselves or our society
have the potential to be dangerous. Transhumanism is really the continuation
of the classical ideas of humanism, but instead of improving the current
human condition through democracy or tolerance, you actually improve the
human condition itself.

One concern is that performance-enhancing and life-extending drugs and
technologies will create an enhanced elite, but technology gets much cheaper
over time, as with mobile phones or computers. Some technologies, like
taking modafinil to improve cognition, are inexpensive now.

Services will still be expensive – for example, if you have to go to
hospital to have your genes uploaded – but then education is a terribly
expensive kind of intelligence amplifier, although we persist in thinking
that it is the best thing since sliced bread.

It is people's right to control their body, so it is their right to enhance
it. It's more difficult with children; enhancement that reduces the range of
choices for a child would be very bad, but if it widens their choices, then
it is not. We can all agree on an enhancement that makes a child live
longer, but an enhancement that makes a child more religious narrows their
choices.

There is a risk that enhancement becomes an arms race, with people ensuring
that their children have the best skills to get the best jobs. Then nobody's
really well off, but that's not because of enhancement, but because of
people having a bad conception of what society is about. And it's such a
great opportunity.

--------------------------
James Clement, J.D., LL.M.



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