How to Live Forever: The Philosophy of Brain Uploads

When I was a kid it occurred to me that all this talk of uploading the mind was problematic. The map is not the territory! I don’t want a copy of me, I want true migration. Transference. So, kid-me reasoned that the only way to achieve this would be by gradually coaxing the working mind into grafted augments, until the original brain could be shut off like an obsolete appendix.

Like a hermit crab seeking a new shell, immortality may not really be about copying ourselves but about creating a process in which we slowly leave behind our current, biological homes and move somewhere more durable, a point made by Steven Novella, a clinical neurologist and an assistant professor at Yale.

It’s gratifying to read an article that finally addresses this — for the first time, in my experience. Kid-me knew.