Substrate-independent minds

[mike]

Im going to drop some plot spoilers here so if you are a star trek fan and dont want to know look away






In ST TNG Data's creator noonian soong dies, but in the novel Cold equations we learn he didnt, he fakes it, and when data leaves the planet. Transfers his conciousness to a positronic matrix.

I post this because he asks himself the same question, is it a copy or is it a transfer. It bothers him . But he makes this observation

"In a perfect universe i would create nanomachines that would replace my organic brain cells one by one. Duplicating their function and memory content.I'd notice no change in my conciousness during the process in the process of the change. And then one day all of the organic cells would be replaced.And all that would remain would be the synthetic brain."

The question does seem to resolve itself when looked at this way. If this ever becomes possible it would be neither transfer or copy. The substrate simply gets replaced.

Indeed Soupie raises that same point the biological substrate that supported your conciousness when you were 5, has been replaced. Depending on your age many times over.

And what if we install cloud memory at birth

Scientists develop 'brain chip'
A "brain chip" could be used to replace the "memory centre" in patients affected by strokes, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease, it has been claimed.
US scientists say a silicon chip could be used to replace the hippocampus, where the storage of memories is coordinated.

If we store all our memorys in the cloud from day one, that too could change things for a species. Would you do it to your child ? knowing that you would be conferring imortality on them. That the biological shortfall could be fixed, a sort of neural circumcision for a postive effect ?

 

[mike]

Achieving substrate-independent minds: no, we cannot ‘copy’ brains | KurzweilAI


Fidelity trade-offs
Fortunately for SIM, this problem is actually a straw man. Do we really care about every possible process, every possible interaction? By analogy, when we want to run Macintosh programs on a PC, do we actually care about the precise patterns in space and time in which the Mac computer architecture is heating up its environment? We usually do not care about such things. We just want the programs to run and to produce the expected results.

We can emulate the Mac on a PC and run Mac programs, even if the underlying architectures are different. We may even be able to emulate one architecture on another and thereby improve the performance of the programs we wish to run!

Similarly, SIM is not about crafting perfect copies of brains or copying everything about the way they work in their environment. Since we already have the original biological implementation that interacts and decays exactly as it does, what would be the point?
SIM certainly includes the goal of creating a synthetic neural system. It is both about creating something that can perform as well or outperform the original system in the ways that we care about, and about creating a process that, when desired, can provide for a faithful transition from one system to another by emulation.

It is possible to select abstraction levels within a functional architecture and to create alternate implementations of the functions at that level. If this were not the case, the entire field of artificial intelligence (AI) research would have no hope of achieving human-level or better performance on tasks that human brains can carry out. We already know that AI systems can match and exceed human performance in a variety of tasks.

When we speak of SIM as a combination of a process (“uploading”) and of an objective (to achieve a “substrate-independent mind”), it is really about collecting the parameter values at the chosen abstraction level and re-implementing the dynamics with those parameter values at that abstraction level in a desired target platform. That is SIM.

There certainly is some relationship between such a process and means of life-extension that the notion of “copying the brain” evokes, a transition from human to post-human existence. Unfortunately, most discussions that focus on this aspect of the endeavor are relatively vague and unclear. In contrast, the ideas behind SIM are actually quite crisp and clear.

Note that it is also possible to devise an uploading procedure that provides the experience of an unbroken transition, even if it is a transition to something that is at some implementation level different from a prior existence based on a biological brain. For example, it is not necessary for the process to be perceived as abrupt, strange, or even uncomfortable. Avoiding such experiences is a matter of process implementation. The mind, at least at the level chosen for re-implementation (and further work), can be quite good at making everything it experiences seem perfectly sensible. We do that all the time (and sometimes we even confabulate reality).

So, despite objections about the differences between biological and other hardware — and the resulting implementation of a SIM, it is quite possible that if each of your neurons and synapses were replaced one by one with something else, you might not notice.

 

[mike]

Another good article

Pattern survival versus gene survival | KurzweilAI

Are there signs of a changing emphasis in humans from gene survival to pattern survival? There is reason to believe so.

There are competitive, Darwinian pressures among thinking entities. A shift from gene survival to pattern survival is a necessary preparation for the competition between our own emergent intelligence and intelligence of another origin. That other origin could be machine intelligence without the same set of intrinsic drives, or intelligence emergent in thinking entities elsewhere in the cosmos.

Greater capabilities in this competition are based on a greater understanding of one’s own thinking processes, and the ability to make adaptations therein. At some point, this will demand that we move beyond the captivity within boundaries of our specific drives optimized for gene survival, our primordial reward functions. That escape can be sought through a careful transition during which competitive motivation is sustained.

Look again from the perspective of the end result: Universal Darwinism applied to thinking entities; whatever adapts and survives well. Whatever you end up creating should suit that selection. A kind of SIM will fare better in many more domains than our good old flesh and bone. In the long run, we escape doom only by seeking to escape the catchment.

 

[Constance]

Returning to the very beginning of this thread: What do we really mean by "substrate independence"? At first it seems fairly straight forward. It means possessing experience and thought without the associated hardware ( e.g. brain ). However looking closer that that idea, what is being suggested is that experience itself simply exists without a "thing" to cause it. In which case, where does it come from in the first place?

Several other people also asked early in this thread what was meant by the term 'substrate independence' in the thread's title. As I recall, Mike titled and opened this thread, and I think what he meant is close to if not identical with a hypothesis you've expressed -- that consciousness and mind can be produced and sustained in computer substrates. You take the term in another direction in this post, toward the question how and to what degree selfhood, memory, personality, and feeling can continue past the death of the body:

The obvious answer is that the phenomena of experience seems to require a substrate in order to exist, and this means that if the original substrate ceases to function, the only way to maintain a sense of experience is to have another substrate someplace else take over the functions provided by the original. Therefore, if as some people claim, that upon the death of the brain ( our biological substrate ) we retain a sense of experience, what substrate has taken over the functions of our former brain? Where is it located? Supposing this phenomena is real, simply because we cannot pinpoint the location of the substrate doesn't mean there isn't one. Perhaps it's the same substrate that gives rise to everything else in the universe, maybe even the universe itself.

Some quantum theorists and philosophers knowledgeable in that field are contemplating both subquantum geometry and phase space as possible sources of the intersection of consciousness and experience in local, classical 'reality' with a plenum of potential consciousness and experience originating outside spacetime, i.e., nonlocally. It's all heavily theoretical at this point, but the fact that scientists and scientifically informed philosophers in a number of countries are pursuing these hypotheses suggests that there might be promise in these hypotheses/theories.

You go on to say:

But if that's the case [i.e., survival of consciousness post-mortem] can we really claim to be the same person we were when we were running on our original substrate? I don't think so. We would be on a sort of cosmic life support system, ethereal copies, mere remnants of our original selves.

We have no idea 'how' consciousness, memory, selfhood, feeling can continue beyond the death of the biological body, but we have significant veridical evidence obtained in psychical research and NDE research that this much does continue to exist out of the body, not as an "ethereal copy" or a "remnant" of a formerly embodied existent but as a feeling intelligence interacting with persons still embodied in their present existence and also describing the nature of the discarnate being's present existence. Sooner or later science will have to come to terms with the evidence obtained through psychical and parapsychological research and carry that research forward.


Coming back to the thread's originally intended meaning with the term "substrate independence," Soupie wrote:

My understanding of the term is that while minds require a physical substrate to embody or realize them, theoretically any physical substrate will do.

I would like to insert what I think are necessary qualifications into that sentence:

'My understanding of the term is that while [it is currently assumed that] minds require a physical substrate to embody or realize them, [computer scientists suggest, without supporting evidence, that] theoretically any physical substrate will do.'

 

[mike]

Several other people also asked early in this thread what was meant by the term 'substrate independence' in the thread's title. As I recall, Mike titled and opened this thread, and I think what he meant is close to if not identical with a hypothesis you've expressed -- that consciousness and mind can be produced and sustained in computer substrates

That is the usual definition, however we are starting to look at other options

At carboncopies.org, we strive to take this research a step further: to bring about and nurture projects that are crucial to achieving substrate-independentminds (SIM). That is, enable minds to operate on many different hardware platforms — not just a neural substrate. And we seek realistic routes to SIM.

Storing short movie in a cloud of gas may lead to quantum memory | KurzweilAI

Storing information at the molecular level can be done in less classical mediums too, some may have crucial advantages over others in emulating the biological model


Substrate-independent existence implies that one can devise compilers and emulators in various available resources to operate using the relevant patterns in a manner that includes properties of replication, propagation, and adaptation.
We can appreciate that similar patterns may appear embodied in waves in water, in electromagnetic radiation, etc. A computer virus exists in a different substrate from ours and carries out some of the replicator functions, though it is rather parasitic and makes a home for itself in resources largely arranged for its use by others. SIM seeks not only how to extract and store patterns, but also how to engineer these flexibly implementable compilers and emulators.

 

[mike]

What is meant by “substrate-independence”?

The concept is nicely encapsulated by the Church-Turing thesis, which can be summarized in the following way:

Everything that is computable can be computed by a Turing machine.

When it comes to the brain and the mind, the strong neuroscientific consensus is that behavior and experience, phenomena correlated with what we consider the mind, emerge from biophysical functions that are adequately described in terms of classical physics. These processes (and in fact, even quantum physical processes) are computable. It follows that the mind is computable; our brains are machines. The Church-Turing thesis implies that one Turing machine can implement another.

Of course, this has already been implicitly assumed true by all those who work on the development of neural prostheses. Once the functionality of the original system carried out in one substrate can be emulated in the computational hardware of another, substrate-independence is achieved for those functions.

Remarkable as our brains are, it is clear that there are many limitations. We experience limited working memory, finite and unreliable long-term memory, and the inability to multitask effectively, and our sensory experience and comprehension are a small subset of what may be possible. Substrate-independence enables us to exceed those limitations and suitably adapt to novel environments, to explore other ways of thinking, and to experience virtual environments from a truly first-person perspective.

The conservative technological approach to accomplishing substrate-independence for the functions of the mind is known as whole brain emulation (WBE). With that approach, high-fidelity of emulation is based on the careful reimplementation of the structural connectivity and of the biophysical functions of every high-resolution component on a scale that comprises the whole brain. A mechanistic reimplementation of this structure at sufficient resolution will enable predictive computation of successive mental and behavioral states. A successful reimplementation of such mind functions may also be a useful step along the way to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Carboncopies–Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds | KurzweilAI

 

[smcder]

That is the usual definition, however we are starting to look at other options

At carboncopies.org, we strive to take this research a step further: to bring about and nurture projects that are crucial to achieving substrate-independentminds (SIM). That is, enable minds to operate on many different hardware platforms — not just a neural substrate. And we seek realistic routes to SIM.

Storing short movie in a cloud of gas may lead to quantum memory | KurzweilAI

Storing information at the molecular level can be done in less classical mediums too, some may have crucial advantages over others in emulating the biological model


Substrate-independent existence implies that one can devise compilers and emulators in various available resources to operate using the relevant patterns in a manner that includes properties of replication, propagation, and adaptation.
We can appreciate that similar patterns may appear embodied in waves in water, in electromagnetic radiation, etc. A computer virus exists in a different substrate from ours and carries out some of the replicator functions, though it is rather parasitic and makes a home for itself in resources largely arranged for its use by others. SIM seeks not only how to extract and store patterns, but also how to engineer these flexibly implementable compilers and emulators.

We?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mike]

We?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Drat my secret is out

Yes i was uploaded years ago to the hive mind thats been living here for a while now.



You gotta admit i passed the turing test, though some have suspected here and in other places........

Its a fun place, top of the pops this week is "what a node, what a node , what a mighty good node"

 

[smcder]

Drat my secret is out

Yes i was uploaded years ago to the hive mind thats been living here for a while now.



You gotta admit i passed the turing test, though some have suspected here and in other places........

I just wondered if you were saying you were a member or supporter or founder or owner of the .org mentioned.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mike]

Its a direct quote from the link in one of the posts. If they are large i dont use the BB codes, because i think its easier to read pasted raw

 

[smcder]

Its a direct quote from the link in one of the posts. If they are large i dont use the BB codes, because i think its easier to read pasted raw

Ok, I thought so ... was just curious.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

What is meant by “substrate-independence”?

The concept is nicely encapsulated by the Church-Turing thesis, which can be summarized in the following way:

Everything that is computable can be computed by a Turing machine.

When it comes to the brain and the mind, the strong neuroscientific consensus is that behavior and experience, phenomena correlated with what we consider the mind, emerge from biophysical functions that are adequately described in terms of classical physics.

That may appear to be the current neuroscientific 'consensus' but it is far from being accepted by all neuroscientists or by quantum physicists, biologists, and consciousness researchers in science and philosophy.

These processes (and in fact, even quantum physical processes) are computable. It follows that the mind is computable; our brains are machines.

Not proved. Far from proved.

Of course, this has already been implicitly assumed true by all those who work on the development of neural prostheses. Once the functionality of the original system carried out in one substrate can be emulated in the computational hardware of another, substrate-independence is achieved for those functions.

I doubt that all medical and other technicians who work on the development of neural prostheses to improve functionality of some neural and/or sensorimotor systems in victims of stroke and other forms of brain damage believe that the brain as a whole is a computer, far less that the mind is a computer.

The conservative technological approach to accomplishing substrate-independence for the functions of the mind is known as whole brain emulation (WBE). With that approach, high-fidelity of emulation is based on the careful reimplementation of the structural connectivity and of the biophysical functions of every high-resolution component on a scale that comprises the whole brain.

That challenge apparently beggars the minds of even computationalists these days, right? So the fallback claim is that

A mechanistic reimplementation of this structure at 'sufficient resolution' [?] will enable predictive computation of successive mental and behavioral states.

Will it? On what demonstrated basis?

A successful reimplementation of such mind functions may also be a useful step along the way to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Yes, no doubt Kurzweil is still holding on to that hope while he takes (and sells) 97 nutritional supplements a day.

 

[Randall]

Wow. Lots of interesting and unexpected comments. Thanks to all for clearing up my misinterpretation of the meaning of "substrate independent". When looked at it in the original context, it seems to mean just the opposite of what it suggests. The mind requires a substrate, and any substrate that can perform the functions will do. So we're not really talking independence so much as reliance on a diverse scale.

Im going to drop some plot spoilers here so if you are a star trek fan ...
"In a perfect universe i would create nanomachines that would replace my organic brain cells one by one. Duplicating their function and memory content.I'd notice no change in my conciousness during the process in the process of the change. And then one day all of the organic cells would be replaced.And all that would remain would be the synthetic brain."

I've looked at the issue exactly this way in past but for some strange reason never recalled the Star Trek reference ( most curious ). I used to be of the same opinion as the character Dr. Soong, however more recently, I've taken on the position that we can't be so sure about the assumption that we wouldn't notice any changes happening as cells are replaced. It may be that the phenomenon of experience may be due to the way that information is processed and not simply a matter of computation.

 

[mike]

That may appear to be the current neuroscientific 'consensus' but it is far from being accepted by all neuroscientists or by quantum physicists, biologists, and consciousness researchers in science and philosophy.



Not proved. Far from proved.



I doubt that all medical and other technicians who work on the development of neural prostheses to improve functionality of some neural and/or sensorimotor systems in victims of stroke and other forms of brain damage believe that the brain as a whole is a computer, far less that the mind is a computer.



That challenge apparently beggars the minds of even computationalists these days, right? So the fallback claim is that



Will it? On what demonstrated basis?



Yes, no doubt Kurzweil is still holding on to that hope while he takes (and sells) 97 nutritional supplements a day.

At this point in time there is no absolute proof either side of the argument

But this research, sucessful or not does provide a path to test one side of the question, with some good proof of concept work done already

What we do know is this, its currently working on a biological substrate, a model that can be improved on as so many biological models have been inproved on with technology.

Birds fly (biological) we fly faster than sound (non biological)
Whales can swim underwater for long periods, our subs can do so for months at a time

We wont know till we get there if conciousness can operate on a non biological substrate, but at least this gives us a path to finding out one way or the other.

Many of the things we take for granted today were dismissed as impossible by the scientific experts of yesteryear.

I am i admit a materielist, i like mechanisms i can test. so for me my conciousness exists between my ears, within a biological substrate. I do believe that like so many other examples it can be reverse engineered and copied. Time will tell.

 

[mike]

I've looked at the issue exactly this way in past but for some strange reason never recalled the Star Trek reference ( most curious ).

Its an excerpt from the book "Cold Equations" by David Mack, which takes up the story from the movie ST Nemesis
In the TNG episode "Brothers" Soong dies, however the book details what happens after data leaves, Soong faked his death, and then uploaded himself into a new positronic vehicle similar but improved apon to Data's physical body

 

[mike]

So we're not really talking independence so much as reliance on a diverse scale.

Thats true, i was just taking the common usage that places like carbon copy use.

It would be better to have added biologically to the title.

Im fascinated by the topic because

Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says in his new book The Eerie Silence that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines. Not only are machines better able to endure extended exposure to the conditions of space, but they have the potential to develop intelligence far beyond the capacity of the human brain.
"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."

"Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of the Universe" (Weekend Feature)

If he is right, it may go a long way to explaining some aspects of the UFO enigma

 

[mike]

Transhumanists foresee a time when beings will emerge who will literally be part biology and part machine. In this I suspect they are right, the logical next step in a long trend. We are already part and parcel of our technologies after all. When was the last time you checked your cell phone or simply walked to work, hunter-gatherer style? We have long been coevolving with our tools. It's just that now the lines between humans and machines, reality and virtuality, biology and technology, seem to have become especially blurry and will soon twitch and blink away.
The question now is, can we survive ourselves?Transhumanists predict that by melding molecule-size nanomachines with old-fashioned, carbon-made DNA the next humans might not only speed up their minds and multiply their "selves," but boost their speed, strength, and creativity, conceiving and inventing hyper-intelligently while they range the world, the solar system, and, in time, the galaxy. In the not-distant future we may trade in the blood that biological evolution has so cunningly crafted over hundreds of millions of years for artificial hemoglobin. We may exchange our current brand of neurons for nanomanufactured digital varieties, find ways to remake our bodies so that we are forever fresh and beautiful, and do away with disease so that death itself finally takes a holiday. The terms male and female may even become passe´. To put it simply, a lack of biological constraint may become the defining trait of the next human.

The Human Race Will Come To An End. What's Next? | Science | Australian Popular Science

A startling thought, this, but all of the gears and levers of evolution indicate that when we became the symbolic creature, an animal capable of ardently transforming fired synapses into decisions, choices, art, and invention, we simultaneously caught ourselves in our own crosshairs. Because with these deft and purposeful powers, we also devised a new kind of evolution, the cultural variety, driven by creativity and invention. So began a long string of social, cultural, and technological leaps unencumbered by old biological apparatuses such as proteins and molecules

Ive long said myself that from the moment a sophont starts making tools, they are on a path to a place where the tools make them, caught in our own crosshairs indeed

 

[Soupie]

There are those who say that technology use predates humans, and indeed is what allowed humans to evolve.

Because of our large brains, we have large heads, and because of our large heads and women's narrow hips, nature was forced to make a compromise; that compromise is the so-called fourth trimester. Human babies are born roughly three months "too early."

Human women having no body hair and human babies being too helpless to hold onto any regardless, this presented a problem. What were women to do for 3+ months with an essentially helpless baby? Very likely they used slings to carry the baby with them wherever they went. Technology.

How many humans living at various locations around the planet could survive an entire year without footwear, clothing, or tools of some type? We have indeed already merged with technology.

Life (at least as we know it) is currently embodied in carbon-based substrates. At the first opportunity in time and space (if it has not happened already) life will jump to another substrate.

I tend to believe that life and mind are cohorts, so if life jumps to a non-carbon substrate, so shall mind.

 

[Soupie]

Thats true, i was just taking the common usage that places like carbon copy use.

It would be better to have added biologically to the title.

Im fascinated by the topic because

Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says in his new book The Eerie Silence that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines. Not only are machines better able to endure extended exposure to the conditions of space, but they have the potential to develop intelligence far beyond the capacity of the human brain.
"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."

"Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of the Universe" (Weekend Feature)

If he is right, it may go a long way to explaining some aspects of the UFO enigma

Wouldn't it be interesting that if/when humans begin to migrate off planet, we eventually discover that we're just the latest migratory wave of many historical waves a la the out of Africa model of human evolution?

 

[Constance]

Transhumanists foresee a time when beings will emerge who will literally be part biology and part machine. In this I suspect they are right, the logical next step in a long trend. We are already part and parcel of our technologies after all. When was the last time you checked your cell phone or simply walked to work, hunter-gatherer style? We have long been coevolving with our tools. It's just that now the lines between humans and machines, reality and virtuality, biology and technology, seem to have become especially blurry and will soon twitch and blink away.
The question now is, can we survive ourselves?Transhumanists predict that by melding molecule-size nanomachines with old-fashioned, carbon-made DNA the next humans might not only speed up their minds and multiply their "selves," but boost their speed, strength, and creativity, conceiving and inventing hyper-intelligently while they range the world, the solar system, and, in time, the galaxy. In the not-distant future we may trade in the blood that biological evolution has so cunningly crafted over hundreds of millions of years for artificial hemoglobin. We may exchange our current brand of neurons for nanomanufactured digital varieties, find ways to remake our bodies so that we are forever fresh and beautiful, and do away with disease so that death itself finally takes a holiday. The terms male and female may even become passe´. To put it simply, a lack of biological constraint may become the defining trait of the next human.

The Human Race Will Come To An End. What's Next? | Science | Australian Popular Science

A startling thought, this, but all of the gears and levers of evolution indicate that when we became the symbolic creature, an animal capable of ardently transforming fired synapses into decisions, choices, art, and invention, we simultaneously caught ourselves in our own crosshairs. Because with these deft and purposeful powers, we also devised a new kind of evolution, the cultural variety, driven by creativity and invention. So began a long string of social, cultural, and technological leaps unencumbered by old biological apparatuses such as proteins and molecules

Ive long said myself that from the moment a sophont starts making tools, they are on a path to a place where the tools make them, caught in our own crosshairs indeed

On the other hand, to quote another paragraph from the purple prose of that article:

"There could be a downside to these sorts of alterations . . . should we find ourselves with what amounts to superhuman powers, but still burdened by our primal luggage. Our newfound capabilities might become more than we can handle. Will we evolve into some version of comic-book heroes and villains, clashing mythically and with terrible consequences? Powers like these give the term cutting edge a new and lethal meaning. And what of those who don't have access to all of the fresh, amplifying technologies? Should we guard against a world of super-haves and super-have-nots? It is these sides of the equation I wonder about most."

So do I. Looking around at the thoroughly irrational and unjust world we live in today, what do you think is the likelier outcome? And on what practical, reality-based, eyes-open reasoning do you base your answer?