Also, do not forget how the body influences the brain. Just look back on what happened to you during puberty, when sex desire overwhelmed you, making you impossible to remain calm. This happened thanks to chemicals, but it’s still very interesting to see how a single chemical can have a huge influence on your consciousness.
This sometimes falls by the wayside in discussions of whole brain emulation, but I think it’s really interesting. I talked to a transgender person once, who said that she felt like a different person while taking hormones vs. not taking them, to the point that her memories of times she was off her medication felt like someone else’s memories, or a past life. Brain emulation can probably simulate this somehow, and it’s probably also more configurable than stuff within the brain.
Which opens up some interesting possibilities. People with emulated brains would have better control over this sort of thing than today’s bio humans do. They could adjust the chemical inputs to be the best (in their opinion) version of themselves—energetic, focused, patient, and never craving caffine. And then maybe they’d want to experiment with more unusual chemical settings, and end up with a very different personality than before. Are they still the same person, after going from gloomy to peppy, or from iritable to serene? Does having this much control make them less human-like?
This is further complicated by the possibility of improvements in hormone and psychiatry medications for bio humans. If everyone could and occasionally did change their daily supplements in ways that made them feel like a different person, would we be less “human” while still biological?
This sometimes falls by the wayside in discussions of whole brain emulation, but I think it’s really interesting. I talked to a transgender person once, who said that she felt like a different person while taking hormones vs. not taking them, to the point that her memories of times she was off her medication felt like someone else’s memories, or a past life. Brain emulation can probably simulate this somehow, and it’s probably also more configurable than stuff within the brain.
Which opens up some interesting possibilities. People with emulated brains would have better control over this sort of thing than today’s bio humans do. They could adjust the chemical inputs to be the best (in their opinion) version of themselves—energetic, focused, patient, and never craving caffine. And then maybe they’d want to experiment with more unusual chemical settings, and end up with a very different personality than before. Are they still the same person, after going from gloomy to peppy, or from iritable to serene? Does having this much control make them less human-like?
This is further complicated by the possibility of improvements in hormone and psychiatry medications for bio humans. If everyone could and occasionally did change their daily supplements in ways that made them feel like a different person, would we be less “human” while still biological?