Ellery Newton 18 Dec

Hi Carboncopies,

My name is Ellery Newton. I am an undergraduate student in Connecticut.

It is my understanding the overarching goal is to ”equip a mind upload with a prosthetic brain in a robotic body to a fully embodied and physical robotic scenario.” Your ideal customer is a “physicalist, functionalist, and patternist.”

“The largest hurdle is still the matter of extracting detailed information from the brain: structure of the connectome + parameters that can be used to reconstruct physiologically functional components in that connectome, such that the resulting activity is a close emulation of the original activity. It's a problem of technology development, more than it is a problem of scientific understanding.”

If the *right* question to ask is:

How do we ”create the tools to record data from the brain at the resolution and scale that would give insights to achieve Substrate-Independent Minds”?

Then, let’s email every neuroscientist/engineer/philosopher in the world (contacts listed on their school websites) a bit of context and the same question.

We could also set up a worldwide competition (similar to Elon Musk’s hyperloop competition) with a financial sponsor(s) from scientifically trained billionaires. (Data about billionaires is found on Wealth X and partners at billionaire family are listed on the website Trusted Insight.) Maybe then send out a blast email to the presidents of all universities, CEO’s of Fortune 500’s, and we go on the Jimmy Kimmel Show to tell the public.

A third option is to use “Lucene” Machine Learning to web crawl the internet regarding the technology development challenge and then have the AGI algorithm explain the next steps.

Here’s a website that displays live mortality in America: https://www.romans322.com/daily-death-rate-statistics.php or this one about stats on Earth: http://www.worldometers.info/

If you or someone you know hopes to turn this dream into reality in 1-2 years, please message me or share your thoughts below.

Thank you so much for your time.
Kind regards,
Ellery

Comments

/1/ Randal Koene I applaud Ellery's enthusiasm and I hope his proposed P.R. blast has a positive net result. Please keep in mind that the stated question is already clearly in the minds of neuroscientists and has been addressed in review form (which is what Ellery is proposing here) several times, including through the incredibly thorough publications spearheaded by Adam Marblestone. To avoid duplication of effort it would be wise to check the literature first. A competition is always a nice addition. As noted, that would require sponsors. There are several types of sponsors: Government and Private. So far, government has continued to sponsor relevant challenges through a series of DARPA projects (they are still ongoing). Very select private sponsors are also willing to invest philanthropically, such as the late Paul Allen. Most private individuals with capital and interest in this field have chosen to attempt for-profit startup approaches to the problem, which is a very delicate thing given that projects demanding early stage research don't often lend themselves to for-profit enterprise. Again, it would be useful to do some research first to see what has already been done, but it probably can't hurt to ask those private potential philanthropists again (or see if there are new ones).

Not surprisingly, one of the biggest hurdles to all of this that we've come to understand after years at the Carboncopies Foundation is that it is simply hard to find the necessary volunteer hours for many of these projects/proposals when those of us who want to do this also have a living to earn and families to support. ;-) I know, what a silly non-transhumanis problem to have, but there it is.

/2/ Peter Rothman Well, I can't really comment on your efforts because I don't know anything about them.

However, the fund raising and lobbying efforts of other transhumanist orgs with which I am familiar are laughable. Weak, amateurish, ineffective or simply non-existent.

Hire someone that knows what they are doing and you might see different results.