I know some humans who have done that.
We have become a superorganism thanks to the connectivity of the internet.
Perhaps (I would like to believe) we are seeing the next step of human evolution.
I read a book where a group of humans flew to a planet where the people had left the flesh and bone behind and were living as simulations in computers in huge underground bunkers.
The story was how the humans tried to communicate with them but were unable to comprehend this society.
If you have watched “The Matrix” where the machines had given humans an entire similated world in exchange for a powersupply, the narritive would totally change if humans were not just a battery but the millions human brains are actually the processor of The Matrix computer.
That would make Morpheus and the other disconnected the bad guys, ot as agent Smith calls them: “A disease, a cancer of this planet”
Replicating those properties is not what computers can do at the moment. The complexity of a slice of human brain makes the most modern computer chip look very primitive. Computers can produce some limited output that mimics human output. Since we do not know how a thought emerges (fMRI imaging is wonderful but imprecise) it would seem likely that consciousness emerging out of AI is going to remain in the realms of science fiction for a while yet.
i think that we are limiting ourselves (as Thomas Hobbes explains on his Leviathan), to the type of future that we can imagine, built based on bits and pieces that are known to us.
Let’s assume that one day we can finally control energy – which we don’t today- in such a way, that we do not depend on matter (i.e. bodies & brains) to exist. After all, our brain is nothing more than ‘stored, organized energy’ (and very inefficient and expensive one). What if, in the future, we don’t need to ‘download’ (or upload) our thoughts, experiences and memories to a device, but we can ‘contain’ it on some type of ethereal confined energy - no cables, no data, no pain, no body… that’s my theory about the future in let’s say 300 years . So we might very well be surrounded, in the universe, in the galaxy, in our own solar system, and even here in earth, by our own descendants – but they just don’t ‘need’ to have a human form…
wow! someone as old as me 
ay! there is sooo much more than what meets the eye! 
1 Like
Consciousness embedded in the very fabric of Space time able to Control all Energy; isnt that the prerequisit for a god?
Perhaps if some ancient species has Figured out how to do this, then perhaps the gods do exist. Or one, or all.
The saying is that any Advanced Technology is indistinguishable from magic, then why should a species that far Advanced Not be indistinguishable from a god?
indeed – the very early definition of Theos! But, if this form of embedded conciousness has also the capabilities (i didn’t say ‘power’) of moving across time (which, according to some astronomers, it is possible), wouldn’t our early ancestors recognize it with these very same characteristics?
“Embedded consciousness” " moving across time"? Stay with the bees, please.
Well how would you know? Afterall your own personal consciousness is embedded in chemicals; i e. water, fat, carbs and sugar and salts.
So as we dont yet even know for certain what constitutes consciousness what is to stop a consciousness embedded in sub atomic particles?
1 Like
Well take it a step further and imagine that the endpoint of human evolution are beings or a collective entity embedded in the fabric of space time.
What would stop them/it, whatever to go to the beginning of life on earth and add something spicy to the postulated primordial soup fully knowing that they will be the end result, meaning they created themselves and we are just the temporal larval stage.
Take another step and imagine that they must then have the ability to simulate or even map and recreate the consciousness of everybody who has existed throughout time and when you die your self is embedded into the same specetime they themselves exist in.
They would have the possibility to reincarnate your self into another caporal body until such a time when your mind has developed enough to join them in specetime forever.
And now with this undisputable fact… prove me wrong… I am going to found the church of Slammer, your ascent to ST comes in bronze, silver and gold with the black platinum fast track option and payable in easy installments.
Currently reading “Fringe Worlds Series” by Ryk Brown; one of the subplots involves a military that can clone their bodies and copy their brains.
Before they go into battle, they make a brain dump. If they die in battle, they animate a pre-stored clone and load the brain dump; the same deal when they get old, so they are effectively immortal.
hmmmm you started strong, but the end of your diatribe sounds very much like hinduism… although not very plausible (if you have the possibility of coming back to the past, meaning time is a loop (or elastic), why would you have to re-encarnate ‘until your mind has developed enough’…? you could do it at once… Basically, you say we are the endless skins of Xile Topec …
We need to finish the story in a higher note, but my rational brain refuses to advance (probably because I slept 3 h last night)
Then I suggest “The eternity brigade” by Stephan Golding. You will love that.
1 Like
Good question. To stay with the computer path Imagine a Dennisovian “soul” for want of a better word being being born into the 21st century.
Imagine every birth, life and death as a kind of firmware upgrade.
On quite a few systems you may be able to jump ovef the sub versions but not over, say version 2.6 to version 8.5 without implementing version 3 to 7 first as steps in between.
Perhaps this only makes perfect sense to me in my own head and perhaps the Hindus had it right all along.
Consciousness is not embedded. Of course a structure is needed, but the process is dynamic. The brain (conscious/subconscious) consumes around 20% of our resting energy requirements. To copy paste you would have to mirror that dynamic. SF is fun, but in the end the majority of it remains fiction.
Perhaps the 20% is needed to keep the wetware alive and all that you need to run a consciousness in a computer are two AA batteries and the solar cell from a pocket calculator.
I know its scifi but it is fun simply to run with the discussion.
If however we keep within the realm of reality then, just as we knew that flight is possible due to watching birds and insects, it should be possible to create a mind or a 100% copy of a mind that does not know that it is a construct.
Perhaps you are such a construct, how would you be able to tell?
Well! Come to think about it. There are those days where I do feel like a nobody.