Both technologies are probably a ways out but there is this current push, by some, to settle other worlds. One given reason for this is that we are running out of space here, trashing our planet. I don’t think a base on Mars will fix these supposed upcoming catastrophes. Downloading our brains (or contents therein) into a silicone net or computer would have a better chance at solving these.
But fundamental and geopolitical issues aside, and whether either of these would actually solve anything, which technology do you think would be ‘easier’ or more attainable for humans?
A silicon net is probably more useful than a silicone net.
I guess it depends on exactly what you mean by “colonize”, but we essentially have the technology to colonize a planet right now; it would just be very expensive. But we don’t have the slightest idea on how to download consciousness. So I’m going with the former.
Yeah, I think @markn_1 has it. One of the problems is reasonably well defined, at least in terms of the steps needed to accomplish it. The second is basically undefined, in that we don’t even know what consciousness is much less how to store it.
Exactly. We could colonize Mars right now if we wanted to. It’s a lack of political will, not scientific knowledge, that prevents us from doing so.
But let’s say we’re talking about another solar system. Even then, I think we could reach a planet in the Alpha Centauri system with a generation ship before we figure out a way to download human consciousness.
Just wanting to add a fly to the ointment, but as @Jas09 puts it, we have the issue of not being able to define consciousness, but lets assume we do, eventually define it. Then we have the issue with the terminology of the OP. If I “download” a consciousness, am I making a copy, a Cyberpunk-esque destructive download, or a simulation based on a an imaging of said download.
In the first, we have two “beings” that think they’re one person.
In the second, we have the transporter issue - did I just kill you and make a copy?
In the third, we have made an (insane?) AI in the image of a human, a la Daystrom.
The ethics, although that was NOT a question the OP asked, of downloads are going to be issues before and after the technology arises. But - while I won’t argue that the tech for colonization (note, I did not say terraforming) will arrive first if not already on the cusp (lots of wiggling as to whether we’re there yet, or the degree of self-sufficiency that is viable) but it will in any imaginable near future tech require nationstates at a minimum.
If we get to the downloading tech being viable, it’s a LOT more likely in terms of solo actors or small groups being able to enact it.
I think colonizing another planet is far likelier.
What goes on inside the brain is so impossible to read accurately that there would be no real way to do so. I assume you mean some literal thought-reading thought-displaying machine.
I’m not so sure. The few experiments where we have people cooped up in a sealed environment for a few years have failed spectacularly. And that is on earth.
Right now, we’d be lucky to get to Mars without the crew killing each other.
A trip to Alpha Centauri, with today’s tech, would be tens of thousands of years. So long, the people on the ship would likely evolve noticeably.
So, while we currently have zero clue on how to transfer consciousness (assuming it is even possible) we have a lot of time to work on it.
I think downloading consciousness is nothing but a conceptual confusion of both the characters of consciousness and computation, while colonizing another planet is at least in principle possible. But, right now I’m reading ‘A City on Mars’ by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (of webcomic SMBC fame), which makes me realize just how much I underestimated the difficulty of that endeavor, since I just thought it’d be hard to the point of infeasibility with any technology currently on the horizon.
Both are obviously daunting tasks, and both will be achieved. Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist and prognosticator on transhumanism, believes that whole-brain emulation will be achievable by 2045. Kurzweil may not be the final word on this, but the belief that mind uploading to a computational substrate is possible is shared by many neuroscientists.
Even if the 2045 prediction turns out to be wildly optimistic – which it probably is – “colonizing another planet” is almost immeasurably farther out. Consider that Antarctica is right in our own back yard compared to Mars, and is far, far more hospitable, and no one has even considered “colonizing” this wasteland. We just have a few research stations there. So the options for humans to occupy another planet come down to one of two things: somehow terraforming Mars to become Earth-like, or migrating to a habitable exoplanet that is likely at least hundreds of light-years away.
So which is more likely? Solving a problem that essentially amounts to information transfer from a biological to a silicon substrate, or either somehow transforming Mars into Earth or else taking thousands of hardy colonizers to an exoplanet hundreds of light-years away? I think the answer is obvious.
Terraforming Mars is very unlikely. It would take a stupidly long time and probably require throwing icy boulders at it from the Kuiper Belt (which is further than Pluto and we’ve only barely been there). And that sounds dangerous to the earth (what if a boulder misses Mars?).
Almost certainly any colonization of Mars would be in domes we could live in (or sealed underground bases).
I am going with colonizing Mars which is extremely difficult but at least we understand the underlying science and technology and could plausibly do it at some moderate scale over say 100 years. When it comes to consciousness we barely understand what it is let alone how to upload it. Possibly we will develop the technology to upload a human’s thoughts and emotions though even that is not remotely well understood but for all we know that will only create a digital copy rather than upload consciousness itself.
Colonizing another planet as long as it’s Mars. As others have pointed out, we at least understand how to do it in theory, although there are still engineering challenges and it is exorbitantly expensive.
Downloading consciousness or colonizing an extra-solar planet we have no idea how to do that outside of maybe some abstract mathematical equations and science fiction.
The idea of a generational ship is mostly nonsense. It would require building the largest, most complex machine ever invented in one of the harshest environments imaginable and have it safely run for a time period longer than machines have actually existed.
Echoing the colonization of a nearby planet is more likely. In the movie Total Recall Ahnold gets to experience both Mars colonization and portable memories.
And yes, I agree, although cool ideas, neither would solve any of our big problems. Our inbred savagery toward one another and our environment is likely to end our time here long before these concepts come close to bearing fruit.
Correct. Simply leaving humans on Mars, totally dependent on supplies from Earth to survive is barely colonizing. The idea of humans able to produce their own food, recycle water and oxygen to survive is a pipe dream far beyond our capabilities. As it is the effort to do that will leave people dead in space and on the surface of Mars.
Downloading consciousness does nothing either unless everybody is willing to die and stop reproducing. Despite the popular appeal of this notion downloading your consciousness does nothing for you. You don’t keep living in that form, if it works that will be somebody else. People aren’t going to download their consciousness to create a new consciousness and then no longer want to live and off themselves.
I think the notion is it could be a form of immortality. Either download into a new body or download into a computer and live a virtual life. Or like in the TV show “Altered Carbon” where you can download your consciousness as a backup in case you die.
Perhaps “removing” a persons consciousness, putting it somewhere else?, leaving an empty brain case, compost the body, voila!!!
I think colonizing a moon or mars might be feasible if some new form of energy could be applied. Transform rock into water, oxygen etc.
Both these scenarios pretty far fetched, maybe in a few thousand years. Be nice if we could repair this place.
So that’s an interesting one. We fundamentally know about what’s involved in colonizing another planet, and its really really hard, far beyond what we can do now, or in the lifetime of anyone alive now. On the other hand we fundamentally don’t know what is involved in consciousness, so we don’t even know how hard it would be to download it (though it will likely be very hard indeed).
So I’d say colonization is more likely for that reason.
But you won’t be immortal. Some other entity that is not you might be immortal, or at least exist for centuries or longer, but you won’t. You’ll die within the time limits of your biological body and then be gone. I don’t personally see how some other entity that was based on my consciousness is any advantage to me. Not that I think anything will guarantee this concept of immortality either. Something has to maintain this system of artificial consciousnesses and however that is done is just as subject to fallibility as our bio forms. The net will be littered with dead consciousnesses, and the rest will be fighting for resources just as we do now.
Same here, darn you! When am I going to find the time to read all this?!?!? Eeeerrrr… I mean: yeah, thank you.
But would it still be you, and perhaps more importantly: would it feel like you to you, the subject to whom this procedure is applied? How would this consciousness react to sensations, like, for instance: an LSD trip, alcohol, the smell of sex, hunger. Is that really still you?
My answer to the OP: Both technologies are absolutely unlikely. But the consciousness thing is not even thinkable. Perhaps some day we will build a machine that exhibits all the caracteristics of consciousness or fools us into believing that it does, Turing style. But it ill not be my, your or somebody’s consciousness, it will be the machine’s. Transfering consciousness from one being to another one is absurd.