I'd upload my brain if it meant I could live in a simulated world or something but as far as using it as a tool to live in this world forever then no.

Yeah but I wouldn't download a car.

I'd upload my mine in a heart beat, not something I'd have to think much about.

Living in a virtual world would be sweet, but I'd also be happy getting turned into a robot, and not just for the sake of living forever, but casting aside the weak and high maintenance fragile human body for something a little tougher, stronger, with missile launchers.

Last time I heard it's not possible with our current mathematics

Well, it would allow ones conscious to exist far longer in a virtual world then in the real one, wouldn't it? But what does 'existing' mean? I mean obviously you wouldn't have any need of eating,drinking,sleeping,sex,etc. What about your emotions? Would one's personality change in a virtual world?

I could maybe see some people choosing this method of existance once they reach old age & their physical body begins to decay or they get ill and can't recover. Maybe they want to spend a little more time with their family, so they'd upload themselves to a brain-in-a-way (kinda creepy if you think about it). I mean the only thing you could do then is to think & watch the world since you couldn't really do anything else. Now if your brain was to be uploaded into some sort of killer cyborg body, that might be very interesting indeed..
I don't really know, it seems like there might be both positives & negatives with this sort of thing. Pros: essentially living forever until you choose to terminate yourself from sheer boredom. Cons: not being in a living, breathing human body that you were used to would suck (unless you're in a cyborg body)

One cool thing would be to upload my brain into a robot once I'm close to death, maybe live for some time observing the earth and its eventual demise, then get blasted out into space and float through the universe listening to music & watching all the cool shit around me as I drift through space. Then, when I'm right about to get sucked into a black hole I'd blow myself up or something (unless the tidal forces don't rip me apart and I somehow end up in Gensokyo)

>>5726
>Then, when I'm right about to get sucked into a black hole I'd blow myself up or something
Why not just go through the black hole?

>>5727
Because he controls his own destiny, man.

Your consciousness wouldn't be uploaded, though. It would be an exact copy of your mind, but it wouldn't be you. I might do it anyway just for fun, but I wouldn't be expecting immortality.

The human brain is not adapted to work in an environment without auditory/visual/somatic stimuli, so you're just not gonna be able to live in a "virtual world" by turning your brain into kilobytes. Everything you think even right now is derived from the sensory cues you experience and memories connected closely to them (and memories connected to those memories, etc.). If you shut off your senses you'll fall in a coma/dreaming state, the basic idea of falling asleep is this (your neural system gradually shuts your senses off once there's no alarming sensory cues to react to). In simplified terms, the whole "consciousness", in all species, is just the sum of evolutionary behavioral reactions (including memory and its processing) to sensory cues from the environment. Having your brain transferred to a cyborg with identical senses to a human could technically work though, but by the time we would have that, five-sense virtual reality and anti-aging science would be so developed that nobody would even want it anymore.

So like, there'd be a virtual me. Great for him I guess, I'd still be stuck here!

If my mind would just be copied, there's not really much point to it, it'll just create another being and grant it a perfect world. But if my own mind would be connected to a Matrix-like world, then I wouldn't even think for a blink of an eye. I'm pretty positive that even simple models for this won't be produced in my life time, but the ideal would be something like this; a virtual world that stimulates at least five senses, I don't exacly know how it would be but additional ones and updates to our available senses -such as being able to see outside of our current visible spectrum- would be pretty cool. And it doesn't need to resemble our current 3D world. A 2D one, or perhaps 4D? Well, living in a 1D one would probably be boring, but it might as well turn out to be a decent experience. Another important aspect is interraction between the world and our mindes. It should definitely be a dream-like state, our imagination should be able to directly effect the reality of this world. If this function is not present, then it would be just like our shitty world with some pleasing updates. But what I seek is not some bullshit developement, but an entire revelation. But for the purpose of the individual's sanity, I think this should be a choosable feature.

But the most important part is, this world grants the right to choose. As an example you can still interract with people if you please, but you sure don't have to put up with their bullshit. If you want you can go ahead and continue to follow your morals or mass-murder an entire planet while raping countless women -or being raped by countless futanari girls as I would choose to do-. Well, you wouldn't do these to actual people. But the whole point of this world is not invading other people's freedom, but to fulfill every desire of an individual without any restrictions. It would be a paradise, and not just for people like us, but for everyone.

And since we're talking about highly-advanced technology, we can just let the factories do their job and provide us with enough energy so we can live in this utopia.

Well, it's a little sad to think none of these will happen. ever.But, we can dream, right?;_;

If it means there's a possibility I could upload my mind into the 2D world where my waifu lives, then I don't need my body anymore.

Like someone said it's near impossible given our understanding of things. But then again, all our minds are is flesh, water and electricity. I'm sure all technology we take for granted these days would have been unthinkable at the time. Space flight? People thought playing God and launching into the stars would screw things up, but here in 2011 we already have private spaceports and spacecraft, not to mention a space station orbiting our planet.

In all reality you're more likely to live to see some very extreme anti-aging technology develop. In the early 20th century your average life span - if you were lucky - was 45 or so, and these days you can hit 90+. Imagine how long people are going to live given another 50 years of medical advancements, as well as our cultural concepts of beauty when it comes to anti-aging.

It does make for great sci-fi stories though.

Thanks for the replies.
Btw, I agree with >>5742 the most.

I used to say uploading was impossible, because the upload wouldn't be you. Since then, I realized identity is not a physical property, but a subjective judgement, thus there's no objective answer for the possibility of uploading. There's no reason why you couldn't make a detailed model of yourself, put him in a virtual world of your choice, then believe "he" is essentially "you", despite the change of substrate. This is quite a leap of faith -- one I couldn't make -- but maybe someday, some people will be capable of such. As of yet, I can't.

Also, advocates of uploading never mention why the essence of a person is located in their neural patterns, and not anywhere else. Why wouldn't a mere behavioural equivalence between the upload and its original suffice, which could be easier to implement? If we don't need a neuroscan to model someone, there's no reason we couldn't get working on uploading today. I'll look into this.

Furthermore, I used to think about whether if someone uploaded himself and fixed some of his unpleasant properties in the process, would be the upload still him. I think yes, all what matters is if the original agrees whether the upload is successfully done.