Mind Uploading - Is That Really You?
About my new story in the Take Me There Anthology
For an author, it’s always gratifying when a reader finds pleasure in your work. For an indie author in particular, it’s greatly gratifying when a professional editor likes one of your stories enough to buy it.
So I was greatly gratified recently when Storyletter XPress Publishing issued their anthology Take Me There, which includes one of my science fiction stories.
I was especially pleased because I found Take Me There such a fine collection, containing a wide range of intriguing tales. Here’s a brief review I wrote on Goodreads:
On a deep space settlement, an android with legacy human memories longs to reconnect with his human family. In ancient Greece, a poor shop owner shares drink with a local poet, who dies on the spot, or does he? Orbiting Mars, a team using remote-control robots to prepare a lush human habitat unknowingly thaw ancient Martian life.
These are just a few of the fantastic ideas explored in this anthology. The 24 stories range from hard science fiction through fantasy to borderline horror. Each is unique, surprising, and entertaining. If you enjoy speculative fiction, you will find much to love here, from a range of new voices in the field.
What About Mind Uploading?
What does all this have to do with mind uploading? Well, that’s the subject of my story in Take Me There. Or part of the subject.
The story is titled “A Marriage of TruMinds,” an oblique reference to one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. But this marriage of minds takes place hundreds of years in the future, on a city-sized space habitat orbiting near Earth and Luna.
In this future world, human life spans have been extended by artificial means. But no biological body can last forever. That’s where mind uploading or “whole brain emulation” comes in. If a human consciousness could be uploaded to a computer, it could theoretically live forever.
I first came across this idea back in the 1980s, from reading futurists such as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil. The theory was controversial then and, of course, still is. Even with the radical advances in AI in the last 40 years, we are still a long way from creating a computer substrate capable of storing a human mind. Then there’s the little problem of the actual uploading. For an excellent overview of the subject, check out this article (and the referenced ones) on Wikipedia.
But Is That Really You?
Even if we do develop technology capable of uploading and storing a working copy of a human brain, would the upload really be that person? This is perhaps the main philosophical quandary raised by mind uploading.
In “A Marriage of TruMinds,” the quandary remains unresolved:
Again, the “true identity” problem: Was the upload really the person? Did a human’s identity reside in the pattern of firing neurons—which Ebsen believed equated with consciousness and could be duplicated—or did identity reside only in that spongy lump of flesh inside the skull? It was a question philosophers could argue over forever, and engineers never solve.
And What Would You Do with Yourself?
And there are other questions as well.
If a mind is successfully uploaded, that means it will be conscious. It will have a sense of itself and its experience. And, most likely, these experiences will go on into an indeterminately long future.
What will they do with all that time?
Probably, I think, they will dwell in virtual settings and seek out simulated experiences. As described in the story:
Transcendents typically spent most of their existence driving body constructs through virtual environments. These VRs could be generated from their memories, chosen from menu options, or a combination of both. One of Dendritecs’ selling points was its vast library of virtual settings. Having evolved in a physical world, human consciousness needed a simulated body and sensory environment to function. Very few minds chose to just sit in the dark and think.
Why Not More Than One?
Still, given an indefinite amount of time, simulated experiences, no matter how exciting and exotic, are likely to pall. Imagine sitting on your couch alone forever, just watching TV and playing video games.
I do think alone may be the key here. Loneliness might be the great downside of digital immortality.
But if one mind can be uploaded and function as software, why can’t two or more be uploaded and merged? That is the ultimate theme of “A Marriage of TruMinds.”
To solve the loneliness problem—and more importantly, preserve the life of his terminally ill wife—scientist Jon Ebsen designs a process to merge two uploaded minds, yet simultaneously preserve their separate identities.
Will this Marriage of TruMinds succeed?
To find the answer to this, and 23 other intriguing questions, check out Take Me There from StoryLetter Xpress Publishing edited by Winston Malone.
Thanks for your comment, Nick. I have not read Accelerando, but will definitely add it to my TBR list.
Fascinating questions! There was a great Black Mirror (Netflix) show that explored this theme.