Kamyar Navidan's Public Library

Blue Brain Project and computational issues

On June 6, 2005 IBM and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne announced the launch of a project to build a complete simulation of the human brain, entitled the "Blue Brain Project".^[2] The project will use a supercomputer based on IBM's Blue Gene design to map the entire electrical circuitry of the brain.

Serial sectioning

A likely method for mind uploading is serial sectioning, in which the brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen, sliced apart or ablated layer by layer

Nick Bostrom's argument




The philosopher Nick Bostrom investigated the possibility that we may be living in a simulation.^[1] A simplified version of his argument is:







i. It is possible that a civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence.




ii. Such a civilization would likely run many – say billions – of these simulations (just for fun; for research, etc.)




iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn’t know that it’s inside a simulation – it’s just going about its daily business in what it considers the “real world”.







Then the ultimate question is – if one accepts that points 1-2-3 are at least possible, which of the following is more likely?







a. We are the one civilization out there in the universe that will eventually develop the ability to run AI simulations? Or,




b. We are one of the billions of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)







In greater detail, his argument attempts to prove the trichotomy, that:







either








1. intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality; or
2. races who do reach such a level do not tend to run such simulations; or
3. we are almost certainly living in such a simulation.

Frank Tipler's Omega Point

Physicist Frank Tipler envisages a similar scenario to Nick Bostrom's argument: a hypothetical cosmological scenario where, as the Universe comes to an end in a Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the Universe is capable of increasing at a sufficient rate that this computation rate is accelerating hyperbolically faster than time runs out. In principle, a simulation run on this Universe-computer can thus continue forever in its own terms, even though the external Universe lasts only a finite time.

The implication of this theory for present-day humans is that this ultimate cosmic computer will essentially be able to resurrect everyone who has ever lived, by recreating all possible quantum brain states within the master simulation.