EP 01
The first episode of the fourth season of "Black Mirror" tells the story of an IT man who, due to interpersonal barriers in the real world, cloned the person who offended him into a copy of a game he developed by genetic duplication. In the game copy world, he acted as an omnipotent "god", established his own authority through extraordinary means, and established a totalitarian political world.
The setting of the game copy world is a spaceship in a long space. Colleagues in the real world, by taking genetic swabs (saliva, hair, etc.), extracted the DNA from the genetic swab, and cloned them into this virtual world together with all the memories of the original owner before the genetic swab left the human body. There are several assumptions in this: first, personal genes contain memory fragments; second, memory fragments can be electronically cloned through gene cloning; third, electronic memories can be uploaded to the cloud and evolved in the cloud New memories for cognitive extension.
Before this story, as early as 1981, Hilary Putnam described the "brain in a vat" in his book "Reason, Truth, and History" " hypothetical.
The experimental basis of "Brain in a Vat" is that "everything a person experiences must eventually be converted into neural signals in the brain". Suppose that under a certain circumstance, the brain leaves the human body and is placed in a tank filled with nutrient solution to maintain its physiological activity. If the signals sent out give the same feedback as usual, the world experienced by the brain is actually a virtual reality created by the computer. Can the brain realize that it is living in a virtual reality?
For example, if the electrical signal "you are rowing" is input to the "brain in a vat", the virtual entity of the "brain in a vat" will think that it is rowing, but in fact, this is just an electronic signal from the computer. Signals, not real experiences or experiences. This concept is also the theoretical basis of the hit movies "The Matrix" and "Inception". In the episode "Black Mirror", the game "Infinity" was also developed based on this. Stimulating the human brain through electronic signals to make people enter the virtual space may really be the development trend of games in the near future. From 2D to 3D, from stand-alone to network to VR to augmented reality AR, the experience expectations of the game industry can be infinitely close to the goal of "making people experience reality".
Going back to reality, if the "brain in a vat" hypothesis does exist, how can we be sure that the world we live in is real, or is it just the electrical signals the computer sends to the brain to induce us to believe? In fact, a more simple example is the dream. When we are dreaming, some of the environments we experience in our dreams are past memories, while others are completely imaginative, which may come from the input of film and television works or book environments, but in dreams, sometimes it is as real as we are experiencing Same. This is the experience that consciousness from the brain brings to us in free play. And in dreams, we sometimes can't distinguish between dreams and reality.
Taking it a step further, human actions are directed and controlled by the brain, but the consciousness of the brain is actually independent of the individual. That's why in dreams, we can experience a different life. In other words, the consciousness of the brain expands the breadth and breadth of life. And by electronically storing memory, in fact, it is possible to achieve a state of immortality of consciousness and immortality of thought . All cloud storage now is actually a similar process. And by converting consciousness into words, it can also achieve the purpose of permanent retention. The difference is that through electronic memory storage, it is a complete "memory clone", which allows consciousness to think that the body still exists. Through this, man can truly achieve eternal life. An episode of Black Mirror's third season was based on this concept.
The search for consciousness will never find a standard answer. One is that consciousness itself is infinitely variable, and the speed of consciousness change exceeds the speed of human reaction; the other is that consciousness precedes and exists independently of noumenon, so it is difficult to define and track. This is why there are always myths about the three major questions of philosophy: Who am I? where am i from? Where am I going? The ultimate meaning of science is philosophy, and perhaps it is precisely that science ultimately boils down to ideology .
Every day I look at the sleeping baby, I can't help but think: What kind of world is he experiencing in his dream? What was he like in the dream? Have you grown up, can walk and run, and are exploring the world alone? Maybe the reason why human beings keep evolving and progressing is because of this simple curiosity.
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