On Reconciling Atheism and Meaning in the Universe

[Jim__]

21. Interesting interview. It leads me to 2 main thoughts.

Speaking about the soul:

It could in principle survive death by using technology - if my brain has some fancy reconstruction technology to transcribe it into software on silicon. In principle this simulacrum could survive death and have aspects of the old me. Unless I have a backup code, my soul dies when my brain dies. End of game, unfortunately.

I'm not sure that even if we can preserve our brain structures, our self, or soul, survives death. Would a machine that has the same thoughts as me, be me? I don't think so. Whatever constitutes me, is more than just my thoughts, and when I die, even if some type of copy of my brain lives on, I don't believe that I do.

And on Mindscope:

We've started with a very large donation from Paul Allen, who is very interested in trying to understand the cortex. It's one of the most complex systems in the known universe. This 10-year project called MindScope has enormous resources - between 200 and 300 scientists and engineers - all focused on trying to understand the cortex, particularly the visual cortex. We want to understand its complete wiring and the structure down to the level of a single neuron. Some people call this the connectome. The Allen Institute for Brain Science is somewhere between a university and a biotech company, where we can focus all our resources to try to understand the cortex.

I hope I live to see what happens with that project.