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Hello and welcome back to the Now We Consume podcast.
I'm your host Pip, joined by my co-host.
Hi, I'm Gibbs.
Gibbs! Hello!
So, hey there. So we want to bring you a very interesting episode today.
This is our third episode by which we want to give a shout out.
Thanks everybody that's been listening so far and commenting, give us great feedback.
We really appreciate it.
This is one that we teased in our second episode, but the title for this one is Life After Death, a Digital Option.
Now, we kind of sort of brushed on this a little bit in one of our previous episodes.
We really wanted to come back and do a full episode on it.
This is a topic that we both really we've discussed this over years, I think, because we've known each other for a long time.
And this is something we've always joked about.
Oh, yeah. We've known each other for a while.
Your therapist knows me by now.
Oh, you've kept my therapist in business for years now.
So, but we've talked about this idea of, you know, can the human consciousness be uploaded digitally?
Is there a way to preserve life? Is there a way to whether be conserved life in a way?
Is it still the same? Is it not kind of the whole debate discussion around that?
I know you have some opinions on it and I have some very strong opinions on it.
And we're both pulling from either various shows, various TV shows, there's even a couple of discussions I watched.
There's a lot of authors on this topic as well.
Famous things such like movies, Star Trek, TV shows, upload.
There's a bunch of stuff that's really been encompassing this for decades, really.
So I'm assuming it's a topic that a lot of people at home can kind of relate to or probably have thought about.
So I guess the the question becomes, do we want to start with the first the first kind of thought here of what exactly are we talking about?
What is the digital option? What what exactly are we reframing here?
So I know from my end, we're talking about the possibility of uploading either in its entirety or a part of the human consciousness to be able to work in a basically a fully digital state.
I know, obviously, there is the term of like cyborg where it's kind of like part and parcel where it's, you know, part human, part biological.
But worse, I know for this, we kind of want to start from more of the strictly digital, fully uploaded side.
So I know you kind of have some really big topics, really big discussions here.
What was your your first big point with this that you were trying to make?
So in doing this, does it offer the chance to live forever?
Is it a way to digitally cheat death?
Can can we do this and extend the human life to one hundred and fifty two hundred five hundred a thousand years? Ten thousand years or beyond.
But do we deserve to do that as humans?
Well, I guess deserve is a different.
That's the topic. Yeah, this this is a topic that's going to get really deep.
Yeah, I. So I guess the the crux of that point being when you're talking about living forever, I feel like that's the one that always jumps out to me as who the hell wants to live forever.
I mean, see, I think that's where you and I are completely different opposite sides of this.
I I really think back to there's a great quote in Marvel's Age of Ultron.
I know I was going to pull that quote. Yeah, I know.
It's another quote exactly where I'm paraphrasing, basically saying life is beautiful because it's finite, because it only has a short, short amount of time because it's not forever.
It gives your life meaning. And I know I wonder for a lot of people, I think this like this is a problem of kind of humanity where a life without purpose is not life.
And I know a lot of people struggle with a sense of purpose, even in the complexity of today's age.
So if humans had the ability to have an infinite lifespan or near infinite, you know, relatively speaking, that that would cause, I think, a lot of mass chaos just with people within themselves to be like, what am I doing?
Who am I? What can I do? What can't I do? And what are you as a person? If there's no limitations for what the person can be, then are you really hold that thought right there?
I think a lot of that comes down to we are confined so much by the physical world.
We have so many limitations in place right now that keep us confined to the lives that we have.
If you're able to go out and do something in one digital, let's just say realm or multiverse or portion of the multiverse, whatever that's akin to just changing servers.
Yeah, you know, I, I don't want to use a lot of gaming terminology because I don't know how many people listening are into games.
If you think of it as changing the disk in a game console, if it being as simple as that,
you can do literally anything in the digital realm.
Changing a website, changing a disk in a console, downloading and loading a new application on your computer.
Once you have digital access to an infinite digital universe, the limitations are gone.
But then also life is meaningless.
That that I guess that's that's the inverse of it is if you have everything at your fingertips, if you if you have the ability to learn anything, do anything.
If you have the ability to be the world's fastest race car driver, then also learn how to be the best pilot, then learn how to be the best painter because you have infinite time and you have infinite instruction.
I guess the question becomes, are you are any of those things really accomplishments or is anything really of your own doing our work when because you have infinite time and infinite resources.
Do any of these things even matter?
Do they?
Do they have any value?
Right. Because if everyone could be everything, then you're nothing.
That's that's the problem.
That's what sets humans apart.
Yeah.
Which you only have so much time to be able to specialize in something.
And that's why those people are celebrated because they took the time with a limited time they have to specialize in that thing.
I got you.
I mean, that kind of touches on a point that we can talk about later about uploading and downloading, you know, using the consciousness transfer as a way to maybe just get a do over at some point.
Have it limited in some fashion so that you just get one.
See, I do think in terms of like putting a limit in place.
Yeah.
Like for medical reasons, I feel like it makes sense.
I guess my my worries when you use it as an infinite idea.
That's right.
The problems with humanity become calm because while people are still going to keep reproducing, it's not only that, but some people are just shit.
Oh, I mean, let's face it.
That's a real nice way to sugarcoat that one.
That's great.
Let's be honest. Do we want a bunch of Stalin's running around?
No, we do not.
No. Do we want you want a bunch of many mustache gentlemen from Europe running around?
No, we do not.
You're not wrong.
But
pause.
Yeah, well,
we'll kind of go back on that a little bit.
So we can pick back up in
321.
But at the end of the day, you have to ask.
This is great to talk about. But is it even plausible?
I mean, is this something that is a long shot or is it somewhere
in between? Is this just a tech dream or is it something that can be done?
I definitely have the opinion that it's not possible.
I do not think using a binary system.
Now, I know quantum computing is something that's around the corner that might change this.
I'm not going to go into quantum computing only because we really haven't used enough.
It's so new. I don't really know the full capabilities of it.
Could quantum computing possibly map the synapses in the brain correctly and learn how to do it?
That I will concede. But in terms of as a binary system, as we have it now with computing,
there is simply no way for us to be able to accurately map and understand how the brain interacts with neurons,
because the problem is always going to be you might be able to learn some things.
You might be able to transfer some things, but there is no way you can ever transfer not only memories
and experiences, thoughts and emotions, but how are you going to also be able to translate a personality over?
How are you able to translate creativity over? It's like, sure.
There are things you can do. I would not be surprised if 10 or 20 years from now,
they can basically implant or take off memories or be able to read your mind as you see it.
I know there are some studies where they have somebody think about, let's say, a bridge,
and then they're reading the brain signals.
That way they could say, oh, so that correlates with bridge, and they ask them something else,
and they kind of map out so they can sort of see what they're thinking, which is already, by the way, absolutely terrifying.
But that already scares me alone for I know the neural thing we were talking about.
But to be able to figure out a way to map what makes people unique and human,
with our current technology, even if you had the best supercomputers all tied together with all the best sensors,
there's no way because that inherent biological interaction, I don't think can be replicated digitally until you get to quantum computing.
Right. So on that. And I promise there will come a day when I quit referencing this.
But there's a reason I wanted the stuff to be our first episode.
When you integrate AI into a consciousness scan, a high enough level of AI.
Yes. Think about that for everyone at home.
I didn't think about this beforehand, and I don't like this is his face right now.
No. So there's a there's a movie that came out.
I'd have to look it up to see. But a while back, it's a Johnny Depp movie.
It's called Transcendence. That's exactly what they did.
It is probably one of the movies that you think about after it's over.
And you you realize that, oh, shit, we're not that far away from that being able to be done.
I highly, highly recommend anybody listening. Watch that one.
You want a good a good mind fuck. Yeah. Watch that one.
Because you said that you're not sure about how plausible this is.
There's a lot of interest in this topic.
You've got a few different companies that are interested in this topic.
A few different companies.
Some of these you might have heard of Altos Labs and Unity Biotech are a couple of the bigger ones.
They're being funded by guys. You might have heard of this guy, Jeff Beasley Beasley.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
He owns a book company or something. Yeah.
Yeah. Someone else named Peter Stott file feel.
And yes, I know how to pronounce these names, of course.
Yeah, there is big money being poured into this.
They're trying to figure out if it could ever be possible to actually transfer from a body to a computer and even vice versa.
The vice versa is going to be the harder one going from the computer to the body because it's going to be a lot more involved in that.
But an uploaded person could control robots and even interact with the world from the digital side.
And there's a lot you could do from that point as well.
I was feeling that point. Would it even be cost effective?
Wouldn't be just cheaper just to make it a I than have people uploaded.
Well, when you get into the quantum side, I think.
No, because even the AI won't be able to add that human flair.
So so what I'm hearing is we're going to make a eyes and add in the human element.
It's a little spice, a little, little, little software spice, if you will.
Yeah. Break out the spice weasel with it.
That's that's scary because like all I can imagine is somebody getting like somebody coming at crime like you're getting a life sentence.
You're going to be uploaded and put into a robot working to a factory and just write.
And that's going to be your life sentence. Yeah, that's I don't know.
So on on that, there's there's another thing to think about this.
Instead of being sentenced, you could just be employed and work at a library.
Because as a digital version, you'll have a chance to preserve history, pass on heritage, pass on knowledge, pass on familial knowledge, things that.
As it sits right now, three generations, you're completely forgotten.
Yeah, I mean, that's it's kind of a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow.
Unless you're some kind of like an actor or you do something significant in the world where you go and make your mark, as it were, three generations, you're completely forgotten by the third.
You're barely even known. Yeah, I guess that that's kind of part of the human existence where you have to understand that your life being finite.
For the vast majority of all humans that have ever existed, your existence only has a meaning to you.
Right. And the immediate people, the people like immediately around you.
Yeah. You know, you have no effect on the history or humanity or anything like that, which I get.
I never thought about that because some people would struggle with that.
I think the the intriguing part is being uploaded to them, be able to be used later on for different jobs or tasks or be able to preserve knowledge.
I again, never thought of that. But that's not that's not the worst idea.
It's just the question of what would your existence be like doing something like that?
Yes, that's it depends on how well the virtual environment is built, because as far as like hardware and software goes, that technology doesn't really exist yet.
But it's probably not that far away because the basics you're going to need.
You've got to have a way to capture and digitize a person's consciousness. And like you already said, that's going to require mapping the entire brain.
We're really not that far away from that. That's probably going to be something in the quantum computing realm.
And again, it's kind of right around the corner. And once it's done, we've already done enough stuff with virtual reality where making a digital space is not that hard.
Making a digital space where you can interact with the Internet in almost like a physical manner. That's not that hard to do.
Right. So you tie that in with really powerful computer systems, basically server level systems for the people that you upload to process the data and combine that with the virtual reality system that's so immersive that it's indistinguishable from the real world.
And you're said 15 years, probably maybe 20. And we're there at the current rate of technological adoption.
It's possible. But I guess the I guess that's kind of the craziest question is being able to live indefinitely doing something like that.
But would you then I guess we're at the mercy of whoever develops the software. That's the part that scares me the most is that you have to wonder like how much free will am I going to have? Are you going to be able to be let loose on the Internet?
Are you going to have restrictions? Where can you go? Where can you not go? Who you can interact with? How you can interact?
If there are too many limitations place, do you then have to give up your free will to be uploaded to exist? And I guess the question that comes back to which one I've already asked is, do you even have do you even exist if you don't have free will at that point?
You know what those kind of limitations. So and a lot of that crosses into the ethical realm of it.
Like, would it even be ethical to keep somebody confined in a digital system? I can't even begin to imagine the legal waivers that would have to be signed.
Even this there's no legal waiver waiver to be able to do that, especially when there's no guarantees as to what the system will be or how it will interact or what you'll be allowed to do.
The problem is, will you be guaranteed a certain amount of digital space or like literally hard drive hardware space? Because the other problem is, as technology improves, you have to also think about there are different softwares, different drivers, different things that basically interacting and cross interacting.
What happens if you are uploaded, let's just say 20 years from now and 100 years from now, they switched all quantum computing.
Are you are you going to be like a little literally legacy hardware that's no longer supported? Are they going to say like, oh, sorry, looks like your great grandpapa was uploading in 2047 and we haven't updated those servers in about 57 years.
So he's running on three gigs of RAM. Meanwhile, your brain's like struggling to figure out what an apple is because you have no RAM anymore.
It's like, ah, you can't get can't process things. I guess that that is the like the biggest concerning parts as technology improves. Right. Unfortunately, as we've seen with computers, when hardware improves, the software efficiency doesn't always improve either.
It tends to lag. Yes, because they don't have to be as efficient. It's crazy. They didn't like didn't. How much RAM did they have on the computer? But they landed the moon on wasn't so crazy, like 16 kilobytes or something like that.
It was kilobytes. Yeah. Yeah. And we we run in the gigabyte spectrum now. And the sad part is like the most basic, basic, basic programs now use hundreds, if not thousands of times that amount of RAM, even the calculator app on the computer uses way more RAM than what took us to get to the moon.
Yep. And that's the part that can that concerns is if you're uploaded, there is no guarantee that you'll have the same not only amount of digital space, but the quality of that space. And when you want to face, do you then have to buy space? You have to say, wait a minute, we're going to upload it. I have to buy a server and afford to be able to maintain that. Right. And who there's there's a lot that goes into this. I mean, it's not an easy, easy subject to go into it like the amount of back end paperwork that we have.
We have back end paperwork that will be required, like guaranteeing existence and hardware upgrades, software updates, patches, access, you know, uptime and not too much of backups as well. Power backups. Yeah. And then here, here's a question I've never thought about before.
Now, if they make a backup of your consciousness, is that consciousness also active?
It is not, but there there there's more ethical questions. So then the question becomes, can they make unlimited copies of you? And do you have the right to own digitally your own copy of your one own consciousness? But then if they copy you, can they incriminate you in crimes or other things? Can they use you to do it? It's limitless. That's the problem.
But if I can copy me, that's one hell of a party. We're all screwed. That's the problem. We we will need to copy therapists. That is the problem. Control C, control V on every therapist I know of in the upload. But initiating Freud.exe.
But I guess that's the if you can get the get somebody's personality, the whole consciousness once there's no reason why you can't copy it. So you'd have to own the right to your digital consciousness, which if we know anything about every single company in the in the country, really in the world, it's they take all of your they spy on everything, you know, they take all the information they can. I would not trust a single medical company.
That said, oh, yeah, we'll take your conscious. We only have one copy of it. No, I don't believe that. I'll be there for a second. The first the first great doctor or somebody that dies, they're just going to make a copy of it, make an AI with it, and they're going to start using it hospitals to save on labor costs. Let's be honest.
So, yeah, to know. Absolutely not. Although I would be willing to take baby possibly like, I don't know, Michael Schumacher's AI figure replace all the cars with it that that might help us out in terms of getting rid of accidents. But besides that, I don't know. I don't trust a single one of them.
Yeah. And, you know, barring even the ethical stuff.
A lot of this crosses over some touchy lines and this is a realm where I personally, I don't have a lot of weight to speak, but you cross into the spiritual and religious realms.
Because is that version of you in the digital realm any kind of a violation of religious rights and I guess it's predication is the right term. I'm not sure.
Are you still considered alive? Yeah. In that religion, do the rules still apply? Are you still a member?
I know there's also a lot of religions that would basically ban you from participating that in any way. Most likely. Yeah. You know, I mean, how the which one is it that you can take a photo of them? Was it the Amish or the other one?
Not sure. I know there's one of them where they don't like you being beyond cameras or on photos. I feel like it's part of their soul.
I was not one of the Indian things. Maybe it might be that too. I don't I don't remember. But the point is, I know there are religions and other things where if you take part in that kind of modern technology and stuff, they feel like, oh, it removes part of what makes you you.
Yeah. So I do feel like it would knock out a lot of people participate on that. And I wonder how many people would also struggle with that aspect of are you still the same person? Do you still legally legally, but spiritually qualify as the same person?
How much testing are they going to do to make sure that like if you're uploaded and they reupload you to a body and vice versa, are you still the same person still act the same way?
Because I don't know. I wonder if that would really affect a lot of people's religion. Yeah, especially because, you know, a lot of people look at it as once the body dies.
You know, that's when a lot of the spiritual and religious stuff takes place. But if you come back in another body, doesn't that kind of nullify some of that?
I don't know. It depends on religion. Also depends on the body.
Like, that's a discussion I would really like to have with somebody who's like very, very well versed in different faiths, not just one.
Somebody who knows a lot about several. Yeah, like in detail. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there are several where again, like any religion, there's always ones that make exceptions and are kind of willing to bend and flex.
But there's quite a few of them that are more on the traditionalist side that would definitely have a problem with that. They'd have a serious problem with it.
And I understand why. I totally get it. But I don't know. I really don't think you'd be the same person. If you've been uploading, you come back.
I'd err on the side. Probably not. Probably not the same person. I guess the other question with this too comes before we do this, we'd have to establish what we talked about one of the previous episodes with the Internet and digital Bill of Rights.
Because the other question I think comes in here, especially if they're going to be different spiritually or different physically, we would have to then change the laws around you having equivalent rights.
If you're a digital person. Right. Because let me let me grab that point right there.
If it gets to a point where you can upload and download at will.
There has to be a way to make sure that the the body you're downloading into is yours.
Preventing some kind of digital impersonation would be paramount.
You didn't think about that, did you? No, I don't think about loading into someone else's body. No, I like what I got. I'm good. I'm happy.
God, that would be terrifying. Right.
Oh, man. Imagine you go to sleep and you upload. I'm sorry, Mr. Gibbs. We uploaded you into the wrong body. You're now Mrs. Gibbs for today.
No.
I mean, hey, if I woke up as Mrs. Pip, I'm I'm going to go exploring for a little bit.
But I don't know. I that would definitely mess with me.
You would get to experience life a little differently for a little bit, knowing that you could get it redone.
I mean, it opens a lot of doors and a lot of possibilities.
That definitely opens a lot of doors. We'd have to have an entire conversation at that point where human sexuality would then go in a very different direction.
Very weird direction. That would be a lot of weirdness.
But I never thought about the impersonating thing, though.
That's interesting because you could theoretically make a copy of someone's body using their DNA, you know, making a copy of them and uploading a different person into it.
So you would then have to have the right to also your body is almost like a schematic, almost like these proportions this way, this whatever this.
There you go. With this fingerprint. So then then the problem is in every way that you're unique, you can also be copied.
Yeah. And not only copied, then you have to worry about not just being copied, but being hacked.
Oh, God.
That is terrifying. Right.
It's all fun and games until the USB port in the back of your head gets plugged in by accident.
You know, Jesus Christ.
So is it going to be like all I can think of is the matrix or like when they lean back on the thing and the big needle that goes to the back of the brain or something like that.
The head probe. Yeah.
Imagine just being able to like be like, and you're not going to remember tonight could do and just, you know,
sticking that in just erasing their memories or uploading memories or changing stuff or being able to view like what they view from a live feed.
Because because you're going to have access to all of a person's senses.
If you could upload and download their consciousness and all of their experiences, you have to access all that information.
You you touched on on something right there.
Uploading and downloading somebody else's memories and experiences.
What if think about information extraction?
What if you put somebody through absolute hell and then you record those experiences and instead of doing it to somebody else, you just upload those experiences into their mind.
So as like a form of punishment kind of thing. Uh huh.
So I'm actually not 100 percent against that.
I liked there was a very specific episode in Star Trek where my just happened a couple of times in Star Trek or referencing one episode where somebody committed a crime on a planet.
So they actually had them re-experience the lifetime of somebody that had to deal with the consequences of that crime.
They experienced like 50 or 60 years, a whole life.
They had a family, kids and everything, lost everything, got put in jail, whatever.
It was extremely traumatic.
And the guy came out and had to go through therapy.
It took several months to be like understand what was going on again.
But I will say you're not going to reoffend if you experience something like that from the other end.
So it could have its uses.
However, it could also be used to traumatize people en masse or change people's spending habits, change their influence by all of a sudden.
Everybody in the country wants a big Mac. I don't know.
It could be endless.
That is concerning at the same point because all this is going to have to be some sort of Bluetooth or over the air capability because it's not going to be always cable connected.
Right. So that. Yeah. No, I'll take a pass.
And I mean, a lot of this has a potential, sorry, potential or too difficult today to even affect the political structure.
If we get a really good president in charge, maybe we want to keep him around for a while.
If we have a really good president that maybe gets assassinated, maybe we want to make sure he didn't die.
If we have a if we have a president that gets sick while in office, maybe we make sure that he didn't get sick or she or they then you are getting rid of the human actions, having consequences.
And I feel like that just becomes such a dangerous road because then we will end up in a world of where your votes mean nothing.
Your time means nothing. Your actions mean nothing.
You just exist no matter the consequence.
That is terrifying or turn it up with Richard Nixon in a jar like a drama.
That's that's the problem is we're going to end up with certain politicians that never, ever leave.
Right. You know, we've been ruled by the Pelosi's for 75 years.
I don't know. Well, that's just California.
And that's just because it's true. That's true.
Yeah. At that point, Mitch McConnell was ever leave.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
His always work runs on cocaine.
But I think what concerns me about all of this is the fact that all of these things we talk about are going to be available solely to the politically connected to rich before any of us see this.
Right. So that's going to be what's going to be the craziest thing besides all everything we've talked about is the fact that, oh, yeah, the ultra wealthy like the Bezos.
And that type of Elon Musk, they would have access to the stuff long before us.
So it is very possible we will have a technological oligarchy that basically says, oh, yeah, like Bezos is going to be around for I could see that.
And we will not we will not get access to it until the point where it is.
It is outside limited so that, yeah, sure, we can exist.
But, oh, yeah, we need your consciousness for eight hours a day to do data mining and data sorting and other stuff that pays for you being able to be uploaded.
Right. That kind of stuff. I mean, you could employ the uploads as call centers.
You know what, though, at least then you may be able to change the accent to understand.
I mean, instant communication.
They could read every language translation. Yeah.
Real time translation. You'd never have a communication barrier again.
All right. We have we have that capability right now with those those new earbuds.
Are those any good? I've never looked into them.
I really want to get a set to try. Okay. Well, we'll talk about that later.
But that would be cool to be able to translate in real time. Yeah.
And have something to work no matter what the language, no matter what else you can be understood. Yeah.
That's where I am like, all right, I'm into that. Yeah.
So let me let me kind of circle back a little bit. We were talking about the uploading downloading of experiences. Yes.
Let me let me get real dark for a minute. How do you think it would affect the ability for people to keep secrets?
There'll be no such thing as secrets. Well, so let's just consider somebody who has not uploaded.
But now let's let's assume for a minute that we can upload and download it will. All right.
We're at that point. Alphabet Agency needs information from gentlemen a and he he hasn't uploaded and he's not cooperating.
So Alphabet Agency gets a hold of gentlemen a child and they upload the child.
And they put the child through all kinds of digital hell over and over and over.
And then they download that back into the body. And the kids never write again. Yeah. Or at least that's the threat.
But gentlemen a knows that they can do that. Well, they can even upload himself.
If it's a wireless technology, they can be able to upload you at any time. Yeah, it could be forced uploads.
Well, they could while you're sleeping upload you look through all your memories and then download you again.
You would never know depending on how the technology works. Yeah, potentially.
That just basically the in that idea, the FBI would just be a cyber crimes unit or cyber thought unit.
Did you ever see vanilla sky? No, I know it was on the list. I never had to see it.
Yeah. So for anybody listening, there was a small list for this episode.
Vanilla Sky Transcendence. Those are two movies that I cannot recommend enough for people to watch.
The TV series upload on Amazon Prime. The great series.
I know Gibbs is trying to get through some of that right now.
And then on Netflix, Black Mirror. That series in and of itself is great.
But for this episode here tonight, there are three episodes in particular that you want to watch.
Those episodes are Be Right Back, USS Callister and San Junipero.
All three of those episodes specifically touch on digital afterlife.
And all three of those show some different sides of what can go wrong, what can be done, what can be.
You know, some of it gets pretty dark. I'm not going to lie, but they're they're worth the watch.
Oh, yeah, I can highly recommend upload. I've liked the first few episodes that I've watched.
It's a great show. I would say probably one of the best about this topic, even though it has to do with an android.
But what makes a man is an episode from Next Generation where they talk about there's an android that sentient and Star Trek and the ideas.
Is he a living person or not? I feel like that kind of this whole the entire episode is basically a legal argument.
That really sums up the discussion we're going to have to have.
Kind of as a race at that point, when that when it gets to that point, whereas humanity, are we going to decide how these rights are going to be divvied up?
Are they not? Who is going to get what? Who's responsible for what?
And also, like, who is responsible for things like memories?
Who's responsible for your thoughts are our thought crimes?
Really a thing. But I feel like that is something anybody that has read, you know, George Orwell's
1984 Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
I'm really big into dystopian type novels and that type of stuff.
Those two really bring out as ones that really harped on the idea of the thought crime and with the ability to upload consciousness and be able to to be recorded,
analyzed and or policed.
That would be something that be readily available.
And I don't think I don't mean to be a pessimist, but I don't think for a second that our police forces would hesitate to use that against us.
Absolutely.
And unfortunately, it's so easy to manipulate that the thoughts could be implanted.
They could be removed. They could be taken out.
You could have people that commit crimes and they just delete the thought and then they're innocent.
Or what if they take some kind of a mind altering substance where they just physically cannot remember it?
Yeah, they have no memory of the crime.
Yeah. Well, the US government has been known to drug people do.
I can be a drug. Yep.
We're knowing that, but they released many.
I'm not going to get too deep into it because we have another episode that we're going to do at some point.
The US government, it's misdoings and you know, but they they release drugs into major cities to be able to get people to, you know, become dependent on them, be more easily manipulated.
It's been something that's been noted and they've really they've released these documents.
So if they did that back in the 70s and 80s, where there was a paper trail and people could be held accountable, we both know what we all know.
They would abuse that. Oh, and I'm not I'm not anti-police at all.
We just know how the government works.
Historically, the evidence is always there and tend to have power.
They will abuse it. So with this kind of tech,
there is not not only going to have to be so many laws in place and so many safeguards, the problem becomes who do we trust more to trust the government to trust private companies?
Is it going to have to be broken up between a bunch of different companies?
Yeah, it there's so many different layers to it.
Yeah, but if if the technology is handed out to private companies and it's for lack of a better word, policed appropriately,
then I think the technology does have some good of mankind benefits.
We can use the technology for applications like space travel.
I mean, we spoke in our last episode about going to Mars and the moon and whatnot.
Yes. You know, the issues of going to Mars or even further out into the solar system, you know, humans need food, air, water, all that stuff.
Well, what if it's the digital consciousness you send and you only have to worry about providing power?
We've gotten pretty good at making power now.
So we could do that if we can get the technology down to grow bodies while they're in route or just store the bodies in some kind of a stasis.
Then a hibernation state, even we could drastically reduce the requirements that the ships would need to get people to and from distant planets and eventually distant star systems.
And that's assuming you don't just use cybernetic bodies at that point.
Right. You also have the option, again, if we have the upload and download technology, even you could download that consciousness into a robot body where you don't have to worry about spacesuits or the environment that they're going into.
You know, you can put them on the moons of Jupiter that don't actually have atmospheres, but we can still get things done.
So there are benefits that this technology could offer.
But again, it could be abused very easily.
It's going to be the fundamental reoccurring theme.
No matter what. Oh, yeah.
Then he was anything in science. I know. But especially this.
This will be the next big push in humanity, especially when it comes to the intersection of medical and science and tech.
Right. It's going to be the biggest race that we have. You know, AI is big. Don't get me wrong.
But this will be the thing after once we get AI fully established.
Unfortunately, so as the naysayer, the group.
Yeah. Yeah. Not either this or the war. Yeah.
The Skynet War. Yeah. No, thank you. I am good.
I will. Robot overlords, please don't hurt me. I think I gladly accept you.
Wink Wink. But yeah, I don't know.
I've been I've been thinking a lot about this since we spoke about it.
And I guess I'm just a very negative headspace about the whole thing.
I see it being more abused than anything.
Like, don't get me wrong, I 100 percent see the potential of it happening, but I'm kind of more in the headspace of me personally.
I want to stick around and see what humanity does.
Like, I'm excited to see what becomes of everything.
Yeah, that's true, because we'll never know. Yeah.
And that's the thing. I like learning things I want to know.
That's always the problem is like if you could be a viewer.
You just kind of view humanity through that.
That might be like if there was limitations properly put on, then sure. Yeah.
But sorry, my phone keeps blowing up. Bitcoin hit one hundred and five thousand a bit ago.
So wow. Yeah. We'll have to do a crypto episode.
Yeah, I'm good with that. Yeah.
But why that's the list because we got a long list. It keeps growing.
I can I can understand why there's a lot of potential for it to go the wrong way.
And just given the tendencies of humanity, I I can see why.
You know, we tend to fuck things up pretty bad and for the wrong reasons.
Just saying, I mean, we've we've done some pretty bad stuff in our existence.
But I think there's a lot of good left out there, too. Oh, absolutely.
The only way I think it could work is if we did kind of like in the show upload where basically you die,
you retire to a nice life, you know, in an uploaded state.
Yeah, that's kind of that's kind of dreams, you know, which fine that I'm OK with.
Right. That's kind of the last like big point I wanted to make on this is if it's done.
Air quote, right.
Then you can kind of confine the digital consciousness that's uploaded to essentially a retirement community.
You don't have to give it full access to the Internet.
You can give it, you know, its own network with its own whatever, maybe limited access to the outside world or something.
You know, stream in, but nothing goes out or limited out, nothing more than like a video call.
You could confine the whole thing and and still let people have some kind of a meaningful existence digitally.
To where they could go on as long as they want.
And when they're when they're done, when they're just, hey, I don't want to do this anymore, you know, I'll go to sleep tonight.
And when when the update hits, I don't update.
We can also even it won't be that hard at that point to do a simulated Earth where wonder if they could do they could just take another copy of Earth and just basically say just make it all the good stuff.
Just have it put it on a nice positive trajectory.
Have it so eventually all the world's problems are solved.
Everything else. And it looks like a fax. It looks like just like a copy.
But so basically where the 2012 divergence didn't happen.
Exactly. That's what I'm getting at.
You know, Hiram is still there. We didn't lose her.
We didn't lose her. Exactly. We didn't lose Kobe. You know, all that stuff.
Exactly. No, Kovac, none of that stuff.
And the idea is maybe looking in the positive way you could exist in an Earth where everything passed, you know, 2012, 2014, went in a nice, positive direction, nice and smooth, nice progress.
And that way you could live to see, you know, us going to Mars and going to the planets, doing interplanet interstellar travel, but purposely make it so you never really have any major conflicts.
No big issues. People can enjoy a nice retirement for as long as they want.
And maybe people can opt in to say, hey, maybe I want to check in. How is the real Earth doing?
How are things really going? Because also look out and see the dumpster fire.
Oh, I regret looking. But also at the same point, I think the other thing is we're admitting the fact that there could be multiple servers where the idea is what kind of experience do you want to have?
Oh, yeah. How do you want to do so? For example, if you're a big Star Trek fan, do you want to have like the holodeck experience where you could just do whatever the frick you want and have whatever you want?
And that's cool. Do you want to have something more like where it's kind of curated for you or maybe you have fewer choices, but they're the ones you get a really nice, really pleasant.
You know, do you also want to have your family there as a just you do want to start a new family? Do you want to start a new life altogether from the ground up?
However you want it, if it was done in a way in which it is detached from the rest of, you know, physical biological beings, then I can see a way of it working.
But there has to be a disconnect at some level that is meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. Server farms, I think, would be the way to go with that.
Because you can just have subsets cordoned off to where, you know, this is the vacation side. This is the space travel. This is the yeah.
Pirates of the Caribbean life, you know, whatever, because humans are still naturally going to want to work collaboratively with other people.
And no matter how good I is, I do feel like at some point humans would need somewhere to do somewhere to go. So why not just put humans in different groups? Like, all right.
If this is your interest, cool. You do your thing and get with your buddies and your friends and make some friends and go sail the ocean or go to other places.
That brings up another another potentiality.
Think about the different science and medical researchers. Let them continue their work, especially in a space where, you know, you don't have to worry about safety issues.
You have to worry about other things. I would not be against that. Right. You know, let the engineers still develop is one of the big problems we have, at least in the 21st century.
There's a fact of safety. Yeah, but only that. But sometimes scientists not being told, no, that's the other half of the problem. Well, yeah, it becomes the Jurassic Park line.
You know, they were too worried about whether they could. They never stopped to think about whether they should.
And I feel like this would get rid of that gray area entirely where it's like do what you want.
You know, if you want to try to make the Manhattan Project in your basement, you are welcome to try. You're not going to make it work, but you are welcome to try.
That's fine. You need a bigger basement.
I do not, sir. You have seen my basement. I have a bigger basement. That is true.
You're basically the house in your basement. It's great.
But if you get where I'm going with that, that way, the human creativity can still be cultivated and we could still make breakthroughs, even with people that, you know, have been uploaded and have the consciousness doing other things.
Now, here's my other question.
Would we then use consciousness or human conscious or uploaded people to then basically make crypto farms to where the idea is their consciousness in order to pay for this part of their consciousness is used to mine crypto.
That way they say, don't worry. We'll give you a spot. We'll upload you for free. You can have whatever you want.
But the limitation is for so many hours, a certain amount of time, you are basically a crypto mining machine and you don't even have to be conscious for it.
But you're still utilized, even in death, you can still serve and still do something.
That's that's the angle I've always thought about where I wonder if they would kind of find a way.
You know what? I would be OK with that.
Yeah, as long as I'm not like Minecraft, like crypto mining, where I have to actually mine shit and like put it in a box and craft it.
No, as long as it's like, all right, I have to go to bed.
It's been 12 hours on the server and I go to bed and I wake up and I'm like, oh, I guess I went crypto mine last night.
I earned zero point zero zero three Bitcoin. Cool. I paid for my stay.
Like, you know, wouldn't that be kind of funny if it was based on like the IQ of the person? Oh, man. Oh, no. Oh, that'd be rough.
That would be rough. That'd be rough. I get 16 bit afterlife.
I'm truly stuck in the mind forever. You're really on my cross.
That would be my hell. You get some people who get like cyberpunk and other people who get Minecraft. Yeah.
It's like, oh, well, above 130 IQ, we can make $20 an hour with this guy. Forget throwing the cyberpunk.
It's like, oh, this guy's an idiot. All right. You know, he gets Mario Brothers. Oh, no.
This would get started. Valley, that would be cool.
At least it's like aesthetically pleasing. Yeah.
But yeah, there's so many options with the uploaded thing where I bet you this can be in the future, probably 20 years from now, there's going to be so many different ways to monetize it.
And I wonder how many people will choose to just like end their life early, but I'll just be uploaded. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it could be, you know, there are issues with like euthanasia.
Yeah. Maybe that could be an alternative. Here's who have debilitating diseases and whatnot like talking. Exactly.
I'm going to call it right here. I just had a brainwave. Uh huh. What's going to happen is people's consciousness is going to be uploaded.
They're going to mine crypto for enough to where they can afford a new body in a new life.
What will happen is it will become basically an interim stay like, well, I've run out of money. I've run out of options, guys.
I'm signing the paperwork next week. I'll be uploaded. I'll see in 80 years.
And then you just spend the next 70 years crypto mining, putting money away because they get part of it and you get part of it.
Also, 70 years later, it's like, yeah, I've saved up a few million dollars.
I know I want to be, you know, 22 years old with a six pack, six, six foot three, you know, built like hell.
And then you come back and you restart again. I wonder if that will become a thing where your afterlife really just becomes like an interim stay where you just run out of money.
Would would that be more like. Ethical, though, because you just take all the homeless people and you're like, oh, you guys don't have a home.
OK, we'll give you one zap. They're uploaded. Is it ethical? No.
You know what? It would clean up the streets of San Francisco. No more pool everywhere.
Digital poo just goes away. It's fine. They think whoever they want is digital.
It's OK. Doesn't worry about it. Just leave a smell.
You know, we'll just go if it does. If it does, it smells like pumpkin spice.
Oh, no. Well, John, your poo smells great today.
Thanks. It's called poo. Pari.
Is that a hint of oregano? I just I don't know.
That's the beauty of it. Do you have any great poop on?
You might not be able to get that reference.
No, but there was a time back in the day where you could pull up somebody to stop light and ask them if they had mustard.
And it was funny.
What? Why are you asking strangers that they have mustard?
Who cares? Everybody is listening to this. Who's like under 35 is so confused right now.
Yeah, that's me. Why are you asking strangers for mustard?
Yeah. Was mustard very expensive back in the day? I don't know. I'm not that old.
Nope. I'll just leave that for a conversation starter.
Yeah. Now I'm just confused for the rest of the episode that you're leaving me confused.
Like most times we talk, you're leaving me confused.
All right. So were there any points that we missed on this episode with any of the last minute?
Oh, my. Concerns. Thanks. So I honestly thought this would go a lot longer than it did.
Well, we said we sounds like a you problem, buddy.
But we did touch upon a lot of topics pretty quickly and we didn't go like super, super in depth.
Some of them, which we could have at the same point that was going to get like I say nauseating, but just the level of detail is going to get annoying.
Yeah. If you went too far with it.
I feel like we so basically to bring it back to the original, the original question of is it plausible?
Is it a long shot or is it somewhere in between?
I have the opinion of where we're kind of somewhere in between where unfortunately I say that because I would really rather us not go down this road personally.
That's just my opinion. But I do think it's inevitable in some capacity.
Yep. The question will be cost versus time versus tech.
Versus civil rights and versus if we have a make it another 20 years, that's the other thing. But if everything goes well, it is possible.
Do I versus probably some kind of an output that you get from it, like you were saying with the crypto mining and whatnot.
That's that's I think the most plausible method, but I think I idealistic probably not. It's going to be somewhere between.
What about you? Yeah, I am going to take kind of a cop out on this.
I'm going to say we are plausibly in between.
The hell does that mean?
Just give the state of current technology the way that it looks like it's progressing.
I feel like we most likely will get there.
Whether or not we actually take the steps to develop it. I don't know.
I think we probably will be capable of it before we start trying to do it.
But I think there's going to be a lot more issues raised more along like the ethical and the rights side, like human rights, digital rights, whatever.
That's going to get raised and probably prevent it and put the kibosh on it long before it's ever done or even attempted.
I think wouldn't you just love getting your brain hacked, getting uploaded, be stuck in like the perpetual one hundred cars for kids ad just forever for the rest of your existence.
Dear Lord, I hate that ad to the point I slam my radio off every time it comes on.
Just imagine hearing that for eternity.
One eight seven seven cars for.
No, that's it. Stop.
Yeah, I know. I feel like that would go so wrong and especially because we live in a relatively wealthy country.
If there's any problems or issues, it would be it would be this country first.
Us in Europe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Maybe China. Maybe China, depending on how their economy does.
You know, they're reaching a breaking point soon. So, yeah, we'll see.
You know, we we didn't even touch on the military aspect and possible military applications.
I'll just let people head game that out, think back to everything we talked about and then put the military application side on that.
There you go. I don't like that thought.
Infinite meatbags. It's just you kill them and they upload and they read.
Oh, no, no, no, I don't like that.
No, because a bad point. Why bother having training? Well, because you still have to get people to that point.
No, just send them out. If they die, just reupload them.
You still got to get some people to that point, though.
It'd be far cheaper to just have them go out and learn if they die.
Oh, well, especially in a simulated environment.
God, especially if a simulated environment like you can speed up or slow down time.
So, you know, five years worth of training in a matter of days, you lose track of your kid for one day and they come back a master assassin.
What the fuck? Sorry, they've been uploaded to special forces.
You have been selected for. Yeah, just oh, God.
Not Jimmy. What if it's like the Matrix where they just upload skills to you?
See, I'd be OK with that. Yeah. Until they until you get like skills that are either incredibly, incredibly overpowered or incredibly useless.
Then you just become Neo. That's the rich, though, you know.
Elon Musk stopping bullets. Oh, my God.
The last thing I'll say on it is if you've ever watched Ready Player One, I'm pretty sure you have you have the possibility of instead of the virtual reality device.
Maybe that's just what it becomes. I just don't like that thought.
Does that it's just going to be like Master Chief with tits out and just weird shit going on and furries everywhere.
It's going to be weird. It's going to be a lot of weird.
It's just going to be freaky.
And not that it wouldn't be entertaining for a while, but like if it was really like Ready Player One.
God, the amount of people dressed as Mario.
Or currently Luigi.
That's a good one. That's a good one.
That's as close as we could touch to talking about that topic.
Oh, man. Yeah, I think that's a basic armament, a jacket and a suppressed pistol.
We are. We are not touching that topic any more than that.
Nope. For illegal reasons, we are not discussing that at all.
Between that and the drones, we got enough recent stuff to talk about.
Oh, God, the drones. We're going to we're going to touch those intimately soon.
You had to break out the saxophone. Oh, no.
And the lube, we're going to we're going to touch and go deep on those.
Could you make it any weirder? Oh, I could. It's not a challenge.
No. Yeah, I feel like that kind of wraps up anything else you had for this topic.
I know we kind of keep saying, oh, yeah, I think we're done.
We keep saying stuff. But just one of those one of those weeks.
I think we're I think we're all wrapped up for life after death, a digital option.
So definitely let us know in the comments how you guys like this episode.
If any questions, comments, concerns, you know, any criticisms or anything like that.
I know a couple of times you probably kind of tease what our next episodes are going to be.
Feel free to leave us in the comments section. Any other topics you guys have watched to discuss?
I know we're definitely on that when you're saying comments, the socials are still in progress.
The YouTube channel is able to have comments put on it.
If you want to go there and leave some or you can send us an email.
Now we consume it. Gmail dot com.
We'd be happy to get back to you there.
But until the socials go live and we have the discord put out for everybody to use,
it will probably be launched on YouTube along with the socials first.
And then once everything else is live, we'll tell you here.
Absolutely. And that's my fault for socials being a little bit later. I did a whoopsie.
So well, that and the validation verification process is broken.
So, yeah, that was really weird. It's been a pain in the butt for whatever reason.
And I don't know why. Yeah. But we'll figure that out.
But yes, we'll get there. Oh, absolutely. But yeah, we'll have socials up soon.
We have everything else up soon. You know, feel free to let us know where you're watching from.
If you have any problems, any issues, any questions, comments, concerns, constructive criticism, let us know.
And thank you all so very much for listening. And we will catch you next week. See you then.