Michio Kaku: This is Your Brain on a Laser Beam | Big Think

Michio Kaku: This is Your Brain on a Laser Beam
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One day, your personality, your memories, who you are, the essence of your soul may be incorporated on a disc as pure information. Even if you die your consciousness, in some sense, may live on.
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MICHIO KAKU:

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Michio Kaku: Isaac Asimov was my favorite science fiction writer and his favorite science fiction story talked about an era far in the future when our bodies would be in pods and we would mentally control beings, beings of pure energy that would go flying around the universe. And, of course, it was science fiction but here’s the idea. Mind without body. Pure consciousness roaming across the universe faster than any rocket ship. It turns out that that’s actually a physical possibility. First of all the Obama administration and the European Union are pushing the Brain Project to delineate all the pathways of the human brain. This means that one day we might have a CD ROM called Brain 2.0. That is every single neuron encoded on a memory disc, your personality, your memories, who you are, the essence of your soul would be incorporated in this disc as pure information. Even if you die your consciousness, in some sense, may live on.

Now you as an organic being will have died. That means that your neurons will turn to dust. But the configuration of neurons that made your thinking process possible can be put on a disc in which case, in some sense you become immortal. Not only immortal but this could be the most efficient way to explore the galaxy just like Isaac Asimov predicted in his short story. Let’s say I take your – not your genome but your connectome, put it on a laser beam – in fact in the book I actually calculate how big a laser beam will be required to put your consciousness as pure photons – shine it into the heavens. You’re now shooting consciousness into outer space at the speed of light. Forget booster rockets. Forget asteroid collisions. Forget radiation dangers and weightlessness and lack of oxygen. Forget all that. You are riding on a laser beam at the speed of light and then at the end there’s a relay station.

A relay station which takes the laser beam and then puts into a surrogate. That is all the neural networks encoded into laser beam can be manifested as a robot on the other side of the galaxy. So in other words, it’s like staying at a hotel. If you’re a businessman you go from hotel to hotel and relax. The same way you’d be on a laser beam going from relay station to relay station and when you go to the relay station you take the robot body of a super human. You become superman on the other end of the rainbow. So is this a physical possibility? Yes. When might we have it? Well let’s be honest. It would take perhaps a hundred years or so before we have a complete understanding of the connection that is all the neuropathways of the brain. Perhaps another century beyond that before we have relay stations on which we could then shoot our consciousness into outer space. Is it mathematically and physically possible and the answer is yes.

Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton

[Memento_Mori_Music]

Anybody else fascinated with this but fearful at the same time?

[reyhalili]

This man built a particle accelerator in his garage when he was in high school.

[PirexianStalker]

I wish I had a teacher like him back in highschool, college, etc.. education level needs to rise up overall in the world.

[DesertGardenLV]

Who was Michio boxing before this video? His knuckles got rocked!

[booJay]

Mind blown.

....as a laser beam into space.

[thecanadianfood]

I hope this happens before I die. (said everybody ever in the history of ever.)

[Eric_Malkav]

I think I'd prefer keeping my brain alive instead of copying all my data to a computer.
The copy wouldn't be me. I'd end up dying with a copy of myself roaming around experiencing all this stuff, but I myself wouldn't be around to experience it.
This might sound selfish to some, but that's how I feel.
Maybe some people would want to do this. Scientists and philosophers to be sure might want a crack at it so they can potentially have infinite time to progress their work to better humanity...
But someone such as myself wouldn't have any reason to do something like this...

[agamil]

Science.. It's beautiful beyond imagination.

[aawillma]

These are cool concepts but he missed the opportunity to reference a few things.
One: The Asimov story he is referring to is AMAZING and worth the read. The mind separate from the body part of it is not the best part. It is called "The Last Question" and can be found online for free if you google it.
Two: I recommend Joss Whedon's Dollhouse for an interesting look at the brain on a hard drive concept. I think both seasons of this recent TV show is on Netflix.

[theshazman]

I saw Michio in the thumbnail on my inbox, I stopped doing everything I was doing and headed over here to watch what he had to say. So glad I did..

[AA-ezcn]

the person who is reading this right now is a completely different person than the one they "remember" being 10 years ago. Every cell and atom in your body has been replaced since then. You could say that you are not the 'you' from ten years ago; you are just a copy. The original 'you' died little by little and now only a copy lives on - also slowly being replaced. There is no distinct 'you'. It depends when you ask.

[zub]

Just some problems I thought of on the fly:
1) You would actually have to go to the "receptor point" and build that station, so you can't exactly just forget all about the booster rockets, space ships, etc.
2) You wouldn't exactly be experiencing all the galaxy while in transit, as- theoretically, seeing as we don't exactly know a whole lot about travelling at the speed of light- you would be going too fast to see anything.
3) While you would still be travelling insanely fast, it most certainly wouldn't be instantaneous; the trip would take about 4 years even just to reach the nearest star, and about 200 million years to the nearest galaxy, and that's at the speed of light! Trying to install a receptor point travelling sub-light would take a ridiculous amount of time. And even if we discovered a way to easily travel super-light speed, that would pretty much negate the point of sending your "brain map" across the galaxy.

I apologize if I sound like I'm patronizing the idea, as it is really an interesting one! I just feel that it would be more effective used on Earth/ the solar system/ nearby systems. There are still numerous problems with keeping your connectome as data:
1) Ethnical problems, of course, are a big one. Regardless of if the idea of practically immortalizing "yourself" (more on that later) fazes you one bit or not, you will still face strong opposition from those that it does bother; many religious groups, I imagine, will not take kindly to the idea of having a copy of someone that can live forever without a soul.
2) Due to the lack of knowledge in the area of consciousness, we don't know if that would even really be "you", per se; what's to stop anyone from creating multiple copies of you, and you might even still be alive? Which one would truly be you, especially after you died? While you might still practically exist to everyone else, you yourself would not!
3) What would you actually do to make that data usable? It would require much more research in biological fields to be able to synthesize neurons and perfectly allign them.*
4)To be honest, this one is more of a question, not a problem, but anyway: If the data was not intended to be used in, say, a blank brain, how would you actually change the neurological patterns to store memories and things of that nature?**


*I know almost nothing about neurology, so take that with a grain of salt
**Once again, I know pretty much nothing about that stuff, so take that with a whole salt shaker

Note: This was typed by a freshman, so sorry if some of the things I've said are wrong, as I've not even taken most science courses yet.

[OiYaPrick]

Michio Kaku is so hip and curious. It makes no sense that he hasn't been curious at all about psychedelia. 

[CyDoneTV]

Anyone else wondering why Michio Kaku has like 3 band-aid's on his right hand?? 

[Sharkiuli]

Michio Kaku is the reason why I subscribe to BigThink !!!

[villevn]

Well that was refreshing. Pity that the ideas are gonna take so long to realize, so many possibilities out there...

[hyeforlife]

Michio kaku is one of the best theoretical physicists on the planet I could watch this man for days

[boyeverjoy]

GAWD DAMMIT! i was born 200 years too early!!. lol

[hazandthej]

We are going to look back at this and go, "Pfff, Compact Disk? How adorable."

[xrosexredx]

Man, I was hoping for laser drugs. But instead I get the hope of transcendent consciousness and virtual immortality. Bunk!