{"id":19259,"date":"2015-11-11T11:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T19:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/david-eagleman-can-a-computer-simulate-consciousness"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:24:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:24:50","slug":"david-eagleman-can-a-computer-simulate-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/david-eagleman-can-a-computer-simulate-consciousness","title":{"rendered":"David Eagleman: Can a Computer Simulate Consciousness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oj7FNCahWD8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Yes, conceivably. And if\/when we achieve the levels of technology necessary for simulation, the universe will become our playground. Eagleman\u2019s latest book is \u201cThe Brain: The Story of You\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/2IgDRb\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/2IgDRb\" rel=\"nofollow\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/2IgDRb\">http:\/\/goo.gl\/2IgDRb<\/a><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Follow Big Think here:<br \/> YouTube: <a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/CPTsV5\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/CPTsV5\" rel=\"nofollow\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/CPTsV5\">http:\/\/goo.gl\/CPTsV5<\/a><\/a><br \/> Facebook: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BigThinkdotcom\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BigThinkdotcom\" rel=\"nofollow\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BigThinkdotcom\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BigThinkdotcom<\/a><\/a><br \/> Twitter: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bigthink\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bigthink\" rel=\"nofollow\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bigthink\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/bigthink<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Transcript \u2014 The big picture in modern neuroscience is that you are the sum total of all the pieces and parts of your brain. It\u2019s a vastly complicated network of neurons, almost 100 billion neurons, each of which has 10,000 connections to its neighbors. So we\u2019re talking a thousand trillion neurons. It\u2019s a system of such complexity that it bankrupts our language. But, fundamentally it\u2019s only three pounds and we\u2019ve got it cornered and it\u2019s right there and it\u2019s a physical system.<\/p>\n<p>The computational hypothesis of brain function suggests that the physical wetware isn\u2019t the stuff that matters. It\u2019s what are the algorithms that are running on top of the wetware. In other words: What is the brain actually doing? What\u2019s it implementing software-wise that matters? Hypothetically we should be able to take the physical stuff of the brain and reproduce what it\u2019s doing. In other words, reproduce its software on other substrates. So we could take your brain and reproduce it out of beer cans and tennis balls and it would still run just fine. And if we said hey, \u201cHow are you feeling in there?\u201d This beer can\/tennis ball machine would say \u201cOh, I\u2019m feeling fine. It\u2019s a little cold, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also hypothetically a possibility that we could copy your brain and reproduce it in silica, which means on a computer at zeroes and ones, actually run the simulation of your brain. The challenges of reproducing a brain can\u2019t be underestimated. It would take something like a zettabyte of computational capacity to run a simulation of a human brain. And that is the entire computational capacity of our planet right now.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a lot of debate about whether we\u2019ll get to a simulation of the human brain in 50 years or 500 years, but those would probably be the bounds. It\u2019s going to happen somewhere in there. It opens up the whole universe for us because, you know, these meat puppets that we come to the table with aren\u2019t any good for interstellar travel. But if we could, you know, put you on a flash drive or whatever the equivalent of that is a century from now and launch you into outer space and your consciousness could be there, that could get us to other solar systems and other galaxies. We will really be entering an era of post-humanism or trans-humanism at that point.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/david-eagleman-can-a-computer-simulate-consciousness\">Continue reading \u201cDavid Eagleman: Can a Computer Simulate Consciousness?\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, conceivably. And if\/when we achieve the levels of technology necessary for simulation, the universe will become our playground. Eagleman\u2019s latest book is \u201cThe Brain: The Story of You\u201d (http:\/\/goo.gl\/2IgDRb). Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http:\/\/goo.gl\/CPTsV5 Facebook: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https:\/\/twitter.com\/bigthink Transcript \u2014 The big picture in modern neuroscience is that you are the sum total [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":377,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,41,47,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-information-science","category-neuroscience","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63722,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19259\/revisions\/63722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}