Pre-thesis — 4/7
Over this past week, I did some more research on transhumanism and possibly ways for humans to reach that compelling goal. While I was looking up more scholarly articles on the field, I decided to get specific and look into whole brain emulation, also known as mind uploading. This theory would allow humans to copy their consciousness onto a super computer, which could move onto another computer, and on and on; thus, humans may be able to reach a point of immortality. I watched a few videos and learned that one form of natural life on earth has already been uploaded into a machine. Seven years ago, scientists figured a way to scan the whole brain of a nematode, thus, allowing them to implement their consciousness into a robot. The robot moved on it’s own similarly to how an actual nematode moves. Scientists were easily able to do this because a nematode only has 302 neurons, meanwhile a human brain has exceedingly more, 86 billion neurons. While it may be a far stretch to scan the entire brain of a human, we may be closer than we think because last year scientists were able to scan the entire brain of a mouse which has about 70 million neurons.
After doing some research on whole brain emulation, I looked Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Aurora” and came across a Youtube video where he discusses his snippets of his book. One thing I learned from him, or was reminded about, is the Goldilocks Zone, which is the area around a star habitable for liquid water and possible life. He mentions the idea of sending humans to other planets around the Goldilocks Zone, but says it may be a multi-generational contribution. He claims about 2000 people may be able to travel and inhabit one of these planets, however, doctors, repair individuals, technologists, and teachers would need to be among these people to keep the travel steady. I watched one video where one individual, Azher Masud, directs how humans could reach space travel far more safe and facile by implementing transhumanist capabilities into astronauts. This would mean astronauts wouldn’t have to worry about zero gravity and no oxygen.
