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Tag: What if no time was there and only eternal now?

  • What if we could upload our consciousness into a machine and live forever in a simulated existence?

    What if we could upload our consciousness into a machine and live forever in a simulated existence?

    Imagine never having to fight, or be in fear of dying. No more pain or obstacles ever again, while retaining the memories and mental abilities you have now. We call that concept “transhumanism“. It’s a way of life that looks to make eternal life possible by uploading your consciousness into a machine. But, you may not have ever imagined what would happen if we could upload our consciousness into a machine and live forever in a simulated existence.

    It sounds fantastic, but there are major concerns surrounding it, including whether the process will lead to an intelligence explosion and create “supermen” that could not only imagine but also create new worlds for themselves before us.

    Can you upload your mind into a machine and live forever?

    Upload mind into machine and live simulated

    Well, it is not as simple as it sounds.

    The brains of humans and many animals store information in a way that allows it to be recalled at will. That kind of information is called “proto-memories”(where “proto” refers to “original or primitive”). The brain then starts to develop additional memories: a new generation of proto-memories, the next level, until you end up with what we consider “consciousness”: remembering everything.

    However, there is another type of memory that we know very little about yet. The memories are in our genes and do not generate any conscious memories. These memories are likely stored in clusters within each neuron, making up so-called epigenetic memories.

    Related Post:
    The relation of our brain with space-time

    Perhaps, that is why it has been hard to find a way of uploading these memories into a machine; one of the bottlenecks so far has been finding a way to remove the unwanted epigenetic memories from the process. Uploading a mind into a machine would involve sending the contents of a person’s memory and consciousness into an advanced computer system or another human body or even an entirely new virtual reality.

    Maybe uploading our minds into machines will enable us to achieve immortality; but that is not what most people would consider to be living forever.

    It could give the recipient superhuman abilities. Such abilities include being able to create worlds within computers and alter them at will. It is also possible that it could have disastrous results by creating “supermen” that could manipulate other people’s epigenetic memories and possibly even modify their genetic memories as well, leading to conflicts with our regular minds.

    Therefore, it remains hard to say whether the process will eventually lead to eternal life. It’s because many issues are still under debate; we do not really know where our consciousness comes from.

    Does being able to upload consciousness into a machine mean living forever?

    That is a difficult question to answer since it depends on what we mean by “living forever”.

    If by “living forever” you mean the idea of creating a backup of your mind and loading it into a machine, that is not necessarily true. It would be easy to prove that this process does not lead to eternal life in reality; just ask someone whether they are still the same person after loading their memories into a machine.

    But does being alive mean what we think? Do we have control over our lives? Maybe uploading our minds into machines will enable us to achieve immortality, but that is not what most people would consider living forever.

    Everything aside, uploading our thoughts into machines is a cool concept. Although no one knows for sure whether human intelligence in the future could develop such a technology or not, one thing is for sure technological advancement is an unstoppable phenomenon – at least until some sort of world-ending catastrophe.

  • Does our universe have an exact center, or is it evenly distributed throughout the universe?

    Does our universe have an exact center, or is it evenly distributed throughout the universe?

    It’s a widespread thought the universe is evenly distributed throughout. That’s likely because if our universe did have a center point, that wouldn’t make sense for most of our life. If that were true though, we would notice it all around us.

    What’s interesting about this question is how much it makes sense to assume the universe has an exact center point or not have one at all. It depends on your theory. Let’s go through some examples of how two theories might work out!

    Theory I – The Universe has an exact center

    This is a very well-known theory, the big bang. It suggests that the universe was once a single point before expanding outwards. This theory also works with the idea that our universe has an exact center point. Here’s how this theory could work:

    Universe center
    • The Big Bang happened but then released super-massive amounts of radiation, and unbalanced gravity, and I dunno something else. It eventually was able to slow the expansion down so fast that it’s evenly distributed today.
    • Due to the effects of time, we can’t see the exact center point because that would take us billions of years into the future. So it’s still there just very far in the future from where we are today.

    Read:

    Pros: This theory is widely known and accepted as a fact in astrophysics (if you don’t believe me, ask Neil deGrasse Tyson). It works well with proven facts about our universe as well.

    Cons: It’s also very reliant on a few assumptions, making it hard to comprehend.

    Theory II – The Universe has no exact center point

    This is where things get really interesting! Many theories do not just simply accept the big bang as truth but base their big bangs on other theories such as inflation or string theory.

    • The universe is all connected through space and time. That means if one event happened in the past, it will eventually happen again in the future. When it comes to our universe though, we can’t see everything that happened before us. We only see what our universe looks like now because of everything that came before us.
    • If our universe came out of an explosion, we can’t see the past explosion because that would mean that that very explosion happened in the future. We would have to wait until then with some form of “time travel.”

    The entire Universe is not the center of everything, but rather it’s all just part of that one exact center point.

    Pros: This theory is incredibly unique because it’s unique, to begin with. With no exact center point, our universe would be a lot different. It might mean we wouldn’t know how the universe began and will eventually end (hence no afterlife).

    Cons: This theory is entirely based on assumptions.

    Our opinion – Does our universe have an exact center?

    In our controversial opinion, the Earth is the center of the Universe. What we mean by this is that the Earth is the only planet in the Universe with life so far, and ours is the only star system with habitable planets circling it. It’s in the habitable zone.

    It’s just the only one with life. Common sense suggests that extraterrestrials do exist. But if there was life somewhere else, they should have visited us already. If they have not visited us, they simply do not exist. I am not uncomfortable claiming that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and the rest of the cosmos is secondary.

    And talking about the center of the Universe without being philosophical, whether or not the Universe has a center, is a synonym for whether or not the Universe is finite. If it’s finite, there’s a center point. If it’s infinite, there’s no way it can have a center. And if it’s finite, what’s beyond the Universe?

    There must be something. But what? It’s not possible to imagine, at least for our human brain.

    Conclusion

    We are choosing the easy way, to believe that the Universe is infinite. The entire Universe is not the center of everything, but rather it’s all just part of that one exact center point.