2.7 KiB
[EDU] How to create a virtual body for your uploaded mind (Kinja)
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Author: u/None *
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URL: http://io9.com/how-to-create-a-virtual-body-for-your-uploaded-mind-1681815968
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Score: 0
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Created: 2015-02-01T15:37:54
Post:
Comments:
u/Anakiri [+3] (a day later)
This article kind of annoys me, really. It seems to oscillate between saying things that are blatantly obvious (Hormones affect how you think!) and saying things that are very stupid (Without an environment, there can be no subjective awareness!).
Every example they cite is sensible, and things like facial feedback and microbiota effects might be interesting if you hadn't heard of them before. But the overall theme is that you can't have a mind upload without virtual reality. Not just that the mind won't be healthy, but that it just can't be done. Dumb.
Also, while I'm pretty okay with posting everything that might he tangentially interesting to people, officially this subreddit is for rational fiction specifically. That may be why you're not getting much response here.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
Thanks for your feedback! I'm writing a short story about a girl who gets her brain uploaded, and I'd actually never considered the possibility of how the brain really needs a body (virtual or otherwise) in order to be healthy. So I thought it was interesting, and wanted to post it as a resource for anyone else pursuing that same thought path.
u/Anakiri [+1] (2 days later)
Honestly, I expect that nothing here would be a problem for an upload, for one simple reason: We can dream. Our brains are fully capable of just inventing their own virtual bodies that can do everything here. In fact, we can't not dream. In total sensory deprivation, we start hallucinating in minutes. Along with confusion, paranoia, introspection, loneliness, depression, jetlag, sleep disorders of all kinds, degradation of attention, memory, and reasoning skills... Sensory deprivation is scary.
A bodiless upload will probably have a pretty bad case of phantom limb pain. More than half of amputees do, and the upload just had their everything cut off. So you've got the laundry list of issues above, plus your body is twisted like a glitched out ragdoll in a video game, and it's exactly as painful as it looks. You're going to have a lot worse concerns than occasional slight emotional numbness. But you'll surely go on thinking, body or no.
u/None [+1] (21 hours later)
Downvotes? Feedback?