I don't know if you've read Permutation City by Greg Egan, but it's a really cool story.
Do I believe we can upload a human mind into a computing machine and simulate it by executing a step function and jump off into a parallel universe created by a mathematical simulation in another computer to escape this reality? No.
It's a neat thought experiment but that's all it is.
I don't doubt that one day we may figure out the physical process that encodes and recalls "memories" in our minds by following the science. But I don't think the computation model, alone, offers anything useful other than the observation that physical brains don't load and store data the way silicon can.
Could we simulate the process on silicon? Possibly, as long as the bounds of the neural net won't require us to burn this part of the known universe to compute it with some hypothetical machine.
Do I believe we can upload a human mind into a computing machine and simulate it by executing a step function and jump off into a parallel universe created by a mathematical simulation in another computer to escape this reality? No.
It's a neat thought experiment but that's all it is.
I don't doubt that one day we may figure out the physical process that encodes and recalls "memories" in our minds by following the science. But I don't think the computation model, alone, offers anything useful other than the observation that physical brains don't load and store data the way silicon can.
Could we simulate the process on silicon? Possibly, as long as the bounds of the neural net won't require us to burn this part of the known universe to compute it with some hypothetical machine.