Mind reading

I was just thinking about this, and I thought I would tap the knowledge of the more learned folks on the board.Do you think mind reading will ever be possible?Will scientists ever understand the 'data storage' process of the mind in such detail that they will ever be able to output its contents?Is this theoreticaly possible?Seriously, I was wondering what the scientific rout would be to achiving this.

But seriously....how the heck is info stored in the brain?!

LOL, Thats hillarious!Some people have too much time on their hands

While not my goal in this thread, this does bring me to the root of this question.If I may wax existential for a bit...Well, I was thinking about death and about how there are certain things that once you die, are gone and lost forever. I mean, subtle memories, about feelings you had, secret places you were, the stories you never told, etc. Those are all gone forever.While this does lend a poigniant fragility to existance and the mind, it also seems like such a waste. So it got me thinking, how possible would it be, to 'backup' a human brain?Perhapse this will be the biginning of a sci-fi novel by yours truely But the thought intrigued me. The mind is a concept-based, data storage device. It uses neurons in a way that programmers would refer to as 'linked lists'. They hold hands and know their neighbor, and as a concept is presented it is pushed thrugh them at blinding speeds to recover a thought.While a gross oversimplification, I thought, "well gee, how impossible could it be?" so I asked.Anyway, if I could 'backup' my brain, I would. Even the dirty little secrets.... especialy those

WOW!Thanks sidelined. Maybe Ill pick that one up.It seems to have decent reviews. I have allways shyed away from pop-science for fear that I may be swayed to an opinion simply by 'false authority' syndrome. But This sounds like a neat read, and Ill keep my skeptic sense tingly Thanks again.

My interest is not in living forever, just to save those things that were so different about our existance. An archive of minds. Imagine having Einstein in a Jar I saw this fellow at a party. I was having a conversation with him and he mentioned that he was def. I said he was a very good lip reader, he then pointed to a small device with a wire poking into a jack in the side of his head. It looked like something out of a William Gibson novel.It turned out he was using an experimental hearing aid that wired into the audio-processing region of his brain. That was amazing to me! I couldn't belive a machine was interfacing with his brain.I dunno, jsut the ramifactions of it, the possibilities it brings up I think are amazing.

No, It was like magic!I don't think he had trouble with speach, since he could hear at one point.But he described it as like a phone. The very high tones, and very low tones are cut out. And the midsignal is a bit buzzy, but overal it's actually pretty good.Amazing stuff.

Dosn't mean we wont keep trying Seriously, maybe Im biased since I want this to happen, but I think one day we may crack it. I belive IBM has been investing in neuroprocessor reaserch for a while now. Where they are trying to develop a new computer architecture based on the way human neurons work.I had this very interesting article on it... don't remember where it is now

Ok this is my thread, and you moved me to start some off-topic musings:I don't belive in an afterlife per se, I do sort of have an idea that maybe we all return to the universe as some sort of "life energy". But I have no proof, nor do I expect any, it's just a personal belife hehehanyway... thats neither here nor there.Isn't it spectacular that a non-sentient, inanimete universe, over the cource of millions of years, essentialy spawned an eye to look back on itself thrugh us?I mean seriously, in a sense, we are the consiousness of the universe. This gigantic inky bubble of dust and nothing is staring back at itself and wondering "what the heck am I anyway"This thought blows my mind every time it crosses it.At the risk of sounding like some sort of new age hippy... it is this same sort of thing that causes me to think, "perhapse our own thoughts, imaginings, arbitrary ideas, are just as real as this phisical realm?"After all, if the universe is just an arbitrary existing "thing" then certainly all arbitrary existing things have just as much potential to house such unimaginable complexity. Once, a long time ago, I imagined, what if the universe was a dream of god?It was only later that I learned that hindus have a similar belife, and even more revelatory is the belife of australian aborigionees.They describe the world as the dreams of animals. The great snake went to sleep and dreamd of mountains, etc.Sleeping gods aside I seriously wonder how far these fancifull imaginings are away from actuall reality?heheh...Ok thats that.And no, I don't do drugs This message has been edited by Yaro, 07-21-2004 10:54 PM