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mwengler comments on Stupid Questions December 2014 - Less Wrong
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Is it possible even in principle to perform a "consciousness transfer" from one human body to another? On the same principle as mind uploading, only the mind ends up in another biological body rather than a computer. Can you transfer "software" from one brain to another in a purely informational way, while preserving the anatomical integrity of the second organism? If so, would the recipient organism come from a fully alive and functional human who would be basically killed for this purpose? Or bred for this purpose? Or would it require a complete brain transplant? (If so, how would neural structures found in the second body heal & connect with the transplanted brain so that a functional central nervous system results?) Wouldn't the person whose consciousness is being transferred experience some sort of personality change due to "inhabiting" a structurally different brain or body?
Is this whole hypothesis just an artifact of reminiscent introjected mind-body dualism, not compatible with modern science? Does the science world even know enough about consciousness and the brain to be able to answer this question?
I'm asking this because ever since I found out about ems and mind uploading, having minds moved to bodies rather than computers seemed to me a more appealing hypothetical solution to the problem of death/mortality. Unfortunately, I lack the necessary background knowledge to think coherently about this idea, so I figured there are many people on LW who don't, and could explain to me whether this whole idea makes sense.
The task you describe, at least the part where no whole brain transplant is involved, can be divided into two parts: 1) extracting the essential information about your mind from your brain, and 2) implanting that same information back into another brain.
Either of these could be achieved in two radically different ways: a) psychologically, i.e. by interview or memoir writing on the extraction side and "brain-washing" on the implanting side, or b) technologically, i.e. by functional MRI, electro-encephalography, etc on the extraction side. It is hard for me to envision a technological implantation method.
Either way, it seems to me that once we understand the mind enough to do any of this, it will turn out the easiest to just do the extraction part and then simulate the mind on a computer, instead of implanting it into a new body. Eliminate the wetware, and gain the benefit of regular backups, copious copies, and Moore's law for increasing effectiveness. Also, this would be ethically much more tractable.
It seems to me this could also be the solution to the unfriendly AI problem. What if the AI are us? Then yielding the world to them would not be so much of a problem, suddenly.
I would expect recreating a mind from interviews and memoirs to be about as accurate as building a car based on interviews and memoirs written by someone who had driven cars. which is to say, the part of our mind that talks and writes is not noted for its brilliant and detailed insight into how the vast majority of the mind works.
Good point.
I suppose it boils down to what you include when you say "mind". I think the part of our mind that talks and writes is not very different from the part that thinks. So, if you narrowly, but reasonably, define the "mind" as only the conscious, thinking part of our personality, it might not be so farfetched to think a reasonable reconstruction of it from writings is possible.
Thought and language are closely related. Ask yourself: How many of my thoughts could I put into language, given a good effort? My gut feeling is "most of them", but I could be wrong. The same goes for memories. If a memory can not be expressed, can it even be called a memory?