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Comment by kansface | Hacker News Reader

I'd imagine the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem has something to say about a brain upload. Maybe an approximate copy is good enough?

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A copy is never good enough. I think the best approach would be to enhance the brain by attaching devices to it directly. This maintains continuity and doesn't raise as many philosophical questions. This also raises other interesting questions like how long can the brain live in a suspended solution and where would all these consciousnesses live...

Slowly replace organics with mechanics until you only have a machine left. If you keep it gradual, you never know when you stop being a cyborg and start being a full fledged android.

You might not be able to make a perfect quantum copy, but with iterative refinement you can get arbitrarily close. I think 99.9999999% or so would be good enough.

You might be interested in Greg Egan's [0] story 'The Jewel' [1]. [edit] To clarify, it's actually two stories "Learning to Be Me" and "Closer".

Greg Egan is one of my favourite modern sci-fi writers. He explores interesting and hard ideas about what it means to be human by placing humanity in thought provoking situations.

In 'The Jewel' we have developed an implant that learns how to 'be' the host. At some point your brain is removed and the jewel takes over your functioning. The thing is, what happens when something goes wrong... boom boom booooom!!?!?!

But really, read him if you are into sci-fi.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_(story_collection)

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