We have created the Human Physical Immortality Roadmap to persuade people that radical life extension is possible within our lifetime. The only thing needed is larger scope of scientific research in favor of longevity. Here’s another part of the Roadmap for you.
Maria Konovalenko 
I’m guessing this is very much our least preferred choice for extended life. No body, no sensation, questionable assurance that whatever we download (if we ever get to that point) is ourselves and not a copy of ourselves…
I think most of us potential uploaders will definitely want a simulated body and sensorium. Regarding the “copy of ourselves” issue, personally I don’t think it’s even relevant. Identity is not in specific atoms.
Still better than the vast nothingness of death. Plus, I’m not sure that if the consciousness will be transferred to another substrate there will be no sensations and no body. It could be a whole new great life in virtual reality that is no different to one we are living in now.
I agree that if it was truly I that was transfered, and not some copy that no one could tell wasn’t me, then it still (hopefully) would be better than death. Easier to accept if sensations were assured, either return to biological body (people’s first preference, mine included) or the artificially created sensations you spoke of in your comment Maria. I could buy the possibility that those artificially created sensations could go beyond the natural ones.
I’m still not certain about why we would be assured that it wasn’t a copy.
If my brain dies, I’m gone. Whether or not a copy of my mind was created in a substrate able to hold it. How to we ensure a cut and paste rather than a copy and paste?
Hi Maria, thank you for the great work. We have shared the Roadmap at: http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/05/a-roadmap-to-immortality.html
Very cool! Thanks for spreading the word. The next parts are coming shortly.
This one is based on a wrong idea of how consciousness works, in my opinion. My bet is that the self is a real thing, made of quantum-entangled degrees of freedom in the brain, and not just a distributed classical computation that can run on any substrate. The latter idea seems to me dualistic, because you have the trillion independent physical parts, and then you have the single consciousness which is somehow tied to the trillion parts. For me it’s simpler to suppose that the single consciousness is a property of a single physical thing – a topological field structure, a quantum tensor factor, who knows. But we don’t yet understand such an aspect of brains, and so these visions of consciousness transfer focus on imitating the digital side of the brain, the discrete signaling of the neurons.
About this issue, I’m convinced that a way to ‘transfer’ our consciousness would just copy our brain and ‘simulate’ it in a synthetic body. I have some ideas, but they are in the science fiction field and I dont know if it can contribute in any way.
To me, this whole argument of quantum consciousness is grasping for straws, trying to attribute some form of cosmic magic as explanation to our souls. None of this makes any sense to me. Specially when you take in consideration that animals are also conscious beings in different levels and that all brains came about through evolutionary process. It’s entirely plausible that consciousness is just a product of an algorithm based on a very large network of neurons, and if that’s the case, changing it’s medium from biological to digital would completely preserve ones consciousness, if given a perfect reproduction of all key elements and their mathematical models.
I’m translating it to portuguese. Is it ok?
I’m sharing it in:
https://www.facebook.com/transhumanismocriogeniaeciencia
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