"If singularitarians were 19th century engineers, they’d be the ones talking about our glorious future of transportation by proposing to hack up horses and replace their muscles with hydraulics. Yes, that’s the future: steam-powered robot horses. And if we shovel more coal into their bellies, they’ll go faster!"
This is very true. Having been peripherally involved in a project to slice up and image just a cubic millimeter of ferret brain, I think I can safely say that we are not going to be able to accomplish anything remotely like reading out the state of a human brain anytime in the foreseeable future. Just reconstructing the 3D geometry of the neurons and synapses in that 1 mm cube turns out to be a gargantuan feat, much less recording all the other stuff that you would need to record.
Sure, things like this are fun to think about, and I have nothing against fun. But any thoughts of being able to actually do this, fall into the realm of Science Fiction. There's no point in putting any serious effort into figuring out how we might accomplish this goal now, as by the time we are able to actually do it, as the OP pointed out, our knowledge will be much different. And any ideas that we have now--like dated Science Fiction--are just going to be thought of as having been terribly quaint.
"If singularitarians were 19th century engineers, they’d be the ones talking about our glorious future of transportation by proposing to hack up horses and replace their muscles with hydraulics. Yes, that’s the future: steam-powered robot horses. And if we shovel more coal into their bellies, they’ll go faster!"
This is very true. Having been peripherally involved in a project to slice up and image just a cubic millimeter of ferret brain, I think I can safely say that we are not going to be able to accomplish anything remotely like reading out the state of a human brain anytime in the foreseeable future. Just reconstructing the 3D geometry of the neurons and synapses in that 1 mm cube turns out to be a gargantuan feat, much less recording all the other stuff that you would need to record.
Sure, things like this are fun to think about, and I have nothing against fun. But any thoughts of being able to actually do this, fall into the realm of Science Fiction. There's no point in putting any serious effort into figuring out how we might accomplish this goal now, as by the time we are able to actually do it, as the OP pointed out, our knowledge will be much different. And any ideas that we have now--like dated Science Fiction--are just going to be thought of as having been terribly quaint.