Making a Mindclone of ourselves, is Steemit paving the way for Transcendence?

Sci-Fi nerdette in hiding

I've always entertained the thought of one day, living amongst Robots. Admittedly, I am one of the few people out of my female peers that take a bigger interest in technology, it's progression, and it's impact on our future daily lives. In-fact, I'm one of the only people that ponder these things in my friendship groups full stop.

I was introduced to the likes of Star Wars, Star Trek and other classic Sci-Fi movies / TV Programmes quite late, but I found them immensely fascinating and I'm secretly (not a secret anymore) a Sci-Fi nerdette. Although I prefer more thought provoking sci-fi movies than the overly produced CG variants.

It was by happenstance that I stumbled on Ray Kurzweil's book, "The Singularity is Near", admittedly, it was a gift from a friend who said I would love the book. At the time I did not know how impacting and popular this book would become - it was after all the size of one and a half Bibles and I never got round to reading that, however important that book turned out to be.

The one thing that made me read it was when I watched the movie Transcendence starring Johnny Depp. If you've not seen it, it's basically about the transcendence of humans from biological form to a non-biological higher consciousness. The movie asked some compelling questions, and offered some riveting examples of how technology is on the precipice of exploding exponentially upwards and what applications these new technologies could have both as a service to mankind, and as a detriment.

Of course, the transcendence to non-biological forms of life also pose some political, social, and philosophical questions which continue to draw a lot of discussion. Such as, if we some how were able to clone our minds into consciousness on a computer, would the fact that it's thoughts, reactions, emotions, memories, and personality match ours and thus be for all intended purposes be us? Alan-Turing's test did not require the AI to take on the same form as a human being, only that it conversed indistinguishably from one over a text dialogue.

Another interesting question would be what would happen if our organic body co-exists with our inorganic digital consciousness. Which one would actually be us?

Suppose we had a wooden boat, and for each piece of the wooden boat that aged, it was replaced, but the original part kept in a separate place. Continue this until all parts are placed with new parts. The old parts are then re-pieced together. Which boat is then the 'real' boat.

Isn't that what's happening all the time in our body anyway with cell reproduction?

Be Right Back, Science in action (Sort of)

I came across the thought provoking mini tv-series "Black-Mirror" which explored many repercussions of technology and it's darker potential impacts on society. One particular episode called "Be Right Back" was based on the theme of transferring the consciousness of the deceased to a computer. This time, through parsing the social media history of the deceased person, and recreating their personality with the information gathered.

Obviously, a person's social media activity is never enough of a data set to fully represent an individuals full in depth character, and in the short film, this was tragically apparent. However, given a more rigorous approach, perhaps prior to death, I do believe a better recreation could have been achieved. Martine Rothblatt argues that cloning the human mind is only a matter of decades away, and that it is perhaps even within our lifetimes, that we would be able to continue being with our next generations even when our organic bodies have longed turned to dust.

In her book, "Virtually Human" Martine Rothblatt talks about how in the near future, mindclones can be created which possess the thoughts, recollections, feelings beliefs, attitudes, preferences and values you have put into it. These mindclones are themselves made of mindfiles which are used like virtual disks by the mindware that has been specially designed to be the functionally equivalent replica of ones own mind. So, in her version of the future, it is entirely possible to capture sufficient amount of "data" in the form of these mindfiles to create doppelgangers of ourselves, and she even goes on to suggest that it is a better solution than battling the ethics of making organic clones as a means to extend our lives and consciousness.

Could Steemit be a Mindfile on Chain?

Writing allows us to slow down, it allows us to collect our thoughts, it allows us to structure our ideas the way we think we have them stored in our brain. While 250 char short form posts on twitter and facebook exude some aspects of your personality, they definitely express less than full form writing. One of the challenges of creating a self-aware consciousness on a computer is capturing the individual's qualities as a cumulative process of growth. Naturally, what we are today, is a result of what we did yesterday, and the day before and so forth, and those connections are important in establishing the precedence of knowledge built up over time.

If a party wanted to build my mindfile, bar sticking mental prongs into my head, I would honestly suggest parsing my blog at steemit over any of my other social media profiles, because of how much more personality and content about me can be used. Before the digital age, people emphasised a lot more of their time on documenting their lives, putting their thoughts to paper. With so many short form social media sites out there, it's actually rare for people to sit down and reflect on deeper aspects of their lives, let alone write it down.

The idea of having a mindclone of myself built from my Steemit blog excites me very much, and I honestly can't see why that isn't a possibility in the future. I relish and wish that I live to see the day that I get to say hello to myself.

If i'm you, and you're me, than who am I?