It's been a few years and I've considered many things, including Dr. Michael Newton's work on "Life Between Lives", and actually believed that presented evidence of something after this life but every few months I find myself doubting it strongly. Digging a little deeper there are some problems:
1) Where did he earn his PhD?
2) Where was his practice?
3) Has any of his (or others) work provided any solid evidence?
The "tell me what's in the box" test is my holy grail for evidence of anything "out of body". Should be simple enough but to date nobody has done it. Fail
So then, that leaves us with the only remaining option to avoid oblivion when our number is up... technology. The human brain is highly adaptable. Not adaptable enough to repair itself but adaptable enough to explore new pathways presented to healthy tissue. Expose our brains to a network of sufficient complexity with an interface of sufficient bandwidth and we can expand or enhance our minds. Plug something like this into your brain and you'll slowly explore it and add it to your awareness. People keep wishing for the futuristic "mind downloading" into some computer for digital immortality but the likely reality will be a slow awareness of the new environment, like an octopus exploring a bottle for the first time. Eventually the octopus is entirely inside the bottle, likewise our consciousness may very well choose to "reside" inside the new artificial construct, preferring it to the original biological tissue.
This technology may begin with artificial enhancements to our physiology, repairing damage and extending life. However I believe eventually we will discover migratory consciousness. Enough so that we can discard the original biological brain entirely. Consider the neural interfaces to artificial limbs. Notice how the patient learns to use this technology... a gradual awareness and learning. Eventually these people can drink from a cup unaided, using their artificial arm operated by their minds via a direct neural interface.
To achieve a neural network of sufficient density, a breakthrough beyond silicon and copper must happen. Moore's law has to extend into the next 30 years before such networks can have any hope of being achieved so you and I can benefit from them neurologically.
Our consciousness? I realized today that it's the "runtime environment" within the network of your entire brain. Compromise any parts of the network and your personality changes. If you were spirit/soul whatever, then that would not be the case. Drugs/alcohol/trauma/disease/etc all change the network and your personality. What is your consciousness if it isn't your personality? What do you hope to salvage beyond death? What do you wish to preserve? What damages this?
So if you were to make an exact copy of your brain, you would have an exact copy of you but it wouldn't be you. This is the hard part.. where throngs of people chime in explaining it by so much esoteric unproven spiritual theories. What would you remove from your brain and install into the new brain to transfer you to the new brain? You would have to assimilate the "runtime" into the new brain. "Don't turn off your computer until the upgrade is finished" sort of thing. It would likely take days of exploration and getting familiar with the bottle so to speak.
How would the architecture look for this new neural network? Beyond the current state of computer technology and framework, but not very far beyond. Adaptive pattern recognition neural voting sort of network cores, much like the brain with specialized or adapted cortexes networked together. (We can do this now but to a limited capacity). Okay, build one and switch it on, boot it up, and presto, AI. You've just built someone that you have to either kill or siamese to adapt your personality into it. Well, not entirely so. It will take time to develop its own neural networks between cortices which, if interfaced to your brain will be personally adapted to become you. How would you write software for such a device? Interfacing it to your brain will be coding it with an OS... your own personal OS. Leaving it to its own devices will be like watching a baby learn. How to get around the ethical issues? Introduce a cortex to your mind one at a time, allowing your consciousness to control the framework of your own network and adapting it into your own personality. Your personality will change. You will be enhanced. You might just live forever.
I can feel the blog-trolls already warming up their torches for a good flaming but this is only a speculation of how we would deal with such a technology. This exercise however serves a purpose... if we know how we need to adapt to something, then we will design that something to adapt. The whole "mind downloading" angle just can't happen. As long as people keep thinking that way, we'll never get off the ground. Expanding our personal neural networks I believe is the way to do this. The faster we realize this as a species, the sooner we can start living forever.
Oh, and if you can tell me what's in the box, please don't hesitate to speak up. The James Randi foundation still has a million dollars waiting for you.
