Markram tried to defend his own work by accusing his competitor of fakery. But actually he cast doubt on the whole enterprise. Anyone can simulate a huge number of equations and claim it’s like a brain. (You don’t even need a supercomputer these days.) What’s the proof? How do we know that Markram isn’t a scammer too?
His glitzy supercomputer should not distract us from a potentially fatal flaw of his research: the lack of a well-defined criterion for judging success. In the future, Blue Brain could be evaluated with the specific Turing test explained earlier, but this test only becomes useful when the simulation approaches the real thing. These purported mouse and cat brain simulations are not even in the ballpark yet. No “Mouse-tin Guerre” is going to fool you any time soon. The Turing test will tell us when we’ve reached our destination, but until that day comes, we need a way of knowing if we’re going in the right direction.
Are these researchers really making progress? The full text of Markram’s letter was too long to print here, so I’ll just summarize the science behind his vitriol. In short, Blue Brain is composed of model neurons that are highly sophisticated in their handling of electrical and chemical signals. They are more faithful to real neurons than are the model neurons of Modha’s simulation, which in turn are more realistic than the weighted voting model discussed in this book.
There is plenty of empirical evidence that the weighted voting model approximates many neurons well. But we also know that the model is not perfect, and can even fail badly for some neurons. Markram is correct that real neurons have many complexities that are not captured by simple models. A single neuron is an entire world in itself. Like any cell, it’s a highly complex assembly of many molecules, a machine built from molecular parts. And each of these molecules in turn is a minuscule machine made of atoms.
As I mentioned earlier, ion channels are an important class of molecule, because they are responsible for the electrical signals in neurons. Axons, dendrites, and synapses contain different types of ion channels, or at least have them in differing numbers, which is why these parts of neurons have distinct electrical properties. In principle, every neuron is unique in its behavior, owing to the unique configuration of its ion channels. This is a far cry from the weighted voting model, according to which all neurons are essentially the same. But it sounds like bad news for brain simulation. If neurons were infinitely diverse, how could we ever succeed at modeling them? Measuring the properties of one neuron would tell you nothing about another.
There is one hope for escaping the morass of infinite variation: neuron types. You may recall that Cajal classified neurons into types based on location and shape. You can think of these properties as being like an animal’s habitat and appearance. When a neuroscientist speaks of the double bouquet cell of the neocortex, it reminds me of the way that a naturalist speaks of the polar bear of the Arctic. The naturalist might also point out that polar bears, unlike brown bears, all hunt for seals. Likewise, neurons of the same type generally exhibit the same electrical behaviors. This is presumably because their ion channels are distributed in the same way.
If this is the case, then neural diversity is actually finite. We should compile a catalog of all neuron types, a “parts list” for the brain, and then construct a model for each type. We’ll assume that each model is valid for all neurons of that type in all normal brains, much as we assume that all resistors behave the same way in any electronic device. Once all neuron types have been modeled, we’ll be ready to simulate brains.
Markram’s laboratory has characterized the electrical properties of many neocortical neuron types through experiments in vitro. Based on this data, they have modeled each neuron type as hundreds of interacting electrical “compartments,” which is an approximation to simulating the millions of ion channels in a neuron. Markram deserves credit for the realism of the multicompartmental model neurons used in Blue Brain.
But Blue Brain is severely lacking in one respect. Since no cortical connectome is known yet, it’s not clear how to connect the model neurons with each other. Markram follows Peters’ Rule, a theoretical principle stating that connectivity is random. The accidental collisions of axons and dendrites in the tangled “spaghetti” of the brain lead to contact points. At every one of these, a synapse occurs with some probability, as if it were the outcome of tossing a biased coin.
Peters’ Rule is conceptually related to an idea introduced earlier, the random synapse creation of neural Darwinism. The ideas are not equivalent, however. Neural Darwinism includes activity-dependent synapse elimination, which makes the surviving connections end up nonrandom. Violations of Peters’ Rule have already been discovered. I suspect that many more will be found, and that the rule has managed to survive only because of our ignorance of connectomes.
As computer scientists like to say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If the neural connectivity of Blue Brain is wrong, the simulation will be too. But let’s not be overly critical. In the future, Markram could always incorporate information from connectomes into Blue Brain. Then wouldn’t his simulation become truly realistic?
To answer this question, let’s again consider the roundworm C. elegans. Its connectome is already known, unlike that of the neocortex. It may come as a surprise that only small parts of its nervous system have been simulated. These models have been helpful for understanding some simple behaviors, but they are piecemeal efforts. No one has come close to simulating the entire nervous system.
Unfortunately, we lack good models of C. elegans neurons. As I mentioned earlier, most of them don’t even spike, so the weighted voting model isn’t valid. To model the neurons, we’d have to measure from them, but this turns out to be more difficult for C. elegans than for mouse or even human neurons. We also lack information about C. elegans synapses. The connectome did not even specify whether the synapses were excitatory or inhibitory.
So Blue Brain lacks a connectome, while C. elegans lacks models of neuron types. Both elements are needed to simulate a brain or nervous system. Thus the earlier claim should be revised to say, “You are your connectome plus models of neuron types.” (Let’s assume that a connectome is defined to specify the type of each neuron.) But the models of neuron types are likely to contain much less information than the connectome, as most scientists agree that there are far fewer neuron types than neurons. In this sense, “You are your connectome” would remain a very good approximation. Furthermore, we assumed above that all neurons of one type behave in the same way in all normal brains, just as all polar bears hunt seals under normal circumstances. If we uploaded multiple people, all the simulations could share the same models of neuron types. The only information unique to a person would be his or her connectome.
It’s worth noting that the balance of information content is quite different in C. elegans. Its three hundred neurons have been classified into about one hundred types, which is not that much smaller than the number of neurons. Essentially every neuron (along with its twin on the other side of the body) is its own type. If every neuron ends up requiring its own model, the total information in all the models might exceed that in the connectome. So “You are your connectome” would be a terrible approximation for a worm, even though it might be almost perfect for us.
To put it another way, the C. elegans nervous system is like a machine built from parts that are all unique. The individual workings of the parts are just as important as their organization. The opposite extreme would be a machine built from a single type of part. (You may be old enough to remember old-fashioned Lego sets, which contained only one type of Lego block.) The functionality of such a machine would depend almost entirely on the organization of its parts.
Electronic devices are close to this extreme, as they contain only a few types of parts, like resistors, capacitors, and transistors. That’s why a radio’s wiring diagram determines so much of its function. The parts list for the human brain is longer, so it will take many years of effort to model every neuron type in the human brain
. But the parts list is still far shorter than the total number of parts. That’s why the organization of the parts is so important, and why “You are your connectome” may turn out to be a very good approximation.
There’s one more important aspect of connectomes to include in brain simulations: change. Without it, your uploaded self would not be able to store new memories or learn new skills. Markram and Modha have included reweighting using mathematical models of Hebbian synaptic plasticity. But it’s also important to include reconnection, rewiring, and regeneration. In general, our models for the four R’s are much less refined than those for electrical signals in neurons. It will be possible to improve them, but it will take many more years of research.
These are all important caveats, but models of neuron types and connectome change still fit into the overall framework of connectome-based brain simulation. Is there anything about the brain that is fundamentally incompatible with the framework? One difficulty is that neurons can interact outside the confines of synapses. For example, neurotransmitter molecules might escape from one synapse, and diffuse away to be sensed by a more distant neuron. This could lead to interactions between neurons not connected by a synapse, or even between neurons that do not actually contact each other. Because this interaction is extrasynaptic, it is not encompassed in the connectome. It might be possible to model some extrasynaptic interactions fairly simply. But it’s also possible that the diffusion of neurotransmitter molecules in the cramped and tortuous spaces between neurons would require complex models.
If extrasynaptic interactions turn out to be critical for brain function, then it might be necessary to reject the hypothesis “You are your connectome.” The weaker statement “You are your brain” could still be defensible, but this would be much more difficult to use as a basis for uploading. We might have to throw away the abstraction of the connectome and descend still further to the atomic level. One could imagine using the laws of physics to create a computer simulation of every atom in a brain. This would be extremely faithful to reality, much more than a connectome-based simulation.
The catch is that a huge number of equations would be necessary, since there are so many atoms. It seems absurd to even consider the enormous computational power required, and is completely out of the question unless your remote descendants survive for galactic time scales. At the present time, it’s difficult to simulate even those modest assemblies of atoms called molecules. Simulating all the atoms of a brain is almost beyond imagining. Limited computational power is not the only barrier. There is also the difficulty of obtaining the information to initialize the simulation. It might be necessary to measure all the positions and velocities of the atoms in the brain, which is far more information than in a connectome. It’s not clear how to collect that information, or how to do it in a reasonable amount of time.
So if you’re an uploader, your only hope is a connectome-based strategy. Over the coming years, we’ll find out whether “You are your connectome” is true or at least a good approximation, through the types of research discussed in Part IV. Such scientific research will be focused on more near-term goals, but it will also give us some idea of the chances that uploading will actually work.
As humans, we have long believed—or wanted to believe—that there is more to life than material existence: “I’m more than a piece of meat. I have a soul.” As a dream about escaping the body, uploading is no more than the latest iteration of an enduring wish.
Over the past few centuries, science has shaken our belief in the soul. First we were told, “You are a bunch of atoms.” According to this doctrine of materialism, the universe is a gigantic pool table, and atoms are like billiard balls moving and colliding according to the laws of physics. Your atoms are no exception to this rule, and obey the same laws as all the other atoms in the universe. Then biology and neuroscience told us, “You are a machine.” According to this doctrine of mechanism, the parts of your machine are cells or special molecules like DNA. Your body and brain are not fundamentally different from the artificial machines manufactured by humans, only much more complex.
But computers have forced us to reexamine the doctrines of materialism and mechanism. “You are a bunch of information,” uploaders believe. You are neither machine nor matter. Those are just means of storing what you really are—information. In our everyday experiences with computers, we have learned to distinguish between information and its material incarnation. Suppose I take your laptop computer and, overcome by a murderous rage, hack it to pieces. You retrieve its carcass and manage to pull out its hard drive, which is still in good shape. You don’t have to mourn long. Just transfer the information to another laptop, and we can go about our lives as if nothing ever happened.
Uploaders don’t see a fundamental difference between humans and laptops. They think it should be possible to transfer the information of your personal identity into some other material form. The uploader chides the materialist by saying “You are not your atoms, but the pattern in which they are arranged.” The uploader rebukes the mechanist with “You are not your neurons, but the pattern in which they are connected.” Although a pattern requires matter for embodiment, it belongs to the abstract world of information, not the concrete world of matter.
Indeed, the uploader might say that your new laptop is the reincarnation of your old laptop. The transmigration of your laptop’s soul occurred when you transferred the information in the hard drive. And so we are led to the idea that information is the new soul. We’ve come full circle, returning to the idea that the self is based on a nonmaterial entity, something that is ghostlier than matter.
The analogy is not perfect. Unlike the soul, which is usually regarded as immortal, information can be lost permanently. The nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle has defined the concept of information theoretic death as the destruction of the information about personal identity stored in the brain. Returning to our laptop example to illustrate his idea, suppose that the original hard drive from your damaged computer is recovered, but that its motor was damaged during the rampage. It’s beyond your technical capabilities to transfer the information to your laptop. But someone with superior nerdly powers might be able to fix the motor so that you can perform the transfer. On the other hand, if I were really mean, I could have passed a powerful magnet over your hard drive, instead of chopping up your computer. This would have erased the information on the hard drive, which is stored in a magnetic pattern. In that case, no technology, no matter how advanced, could recover your information. It’s fundamentally impossible.
Merkle’s definition of death is of more philosophical than practical importance. To apply it, we need to know exactly how memories, personality, and other aspects of personal identity are stored in the brain. If this information is contained in the connectome, then information theoretic death is nothing more than connectome death.
All efforts to achieve immortality can be viewed as attempts to preserve information. Most humans would like to have children before they die. Some of the information in their DNA will survive in their children’s DNA, and other kinds of information will survive in their children’s memory. Some humans try to achieve immortality by writing songs or books that will be remembered by future generations. This is yet another attempt to embed information about themselves in the minds of others.
Cryonics and uploading seek to preserve the information in brains. They can be viewed as part of a broader movement called transhumanism, which seeks to transform the human species. We no longer have to wait for the glacial course of Darwinian evolution, say the transhumanists; we can use technology to alter our bodies and brains. Or we can discard them completely, and migrate to computers.
Transhumanism has been ridiculed as the “rapture of the nerds.” Some find it strange to fantasize about eternal life in the future when so many dire problems threaten the world today. But transhumanism is the inevitable and logical extension of Enlightenment thought, which exalted the power of human reason. Embol
dened by their successes in mathematics and science, European thinkers sought to establish law and philosophy on principles deduced from rational thought, rather than appealing to tradition or revelation from God. The philosopher Leibniz even believed that all disagreements arose from mistakes in reasoning, and suggested that they could be resolved by formalizing arguments with symbolic logic.
But in the twentieth century the limitations of reason became painfully apparent. The logician Kurt Gödel proved that mathematics is incomplete, because there exist statements that are true but cannot be proved. The physicists who pioneered quantum mechanics discovered that some events are truly random and cannot be predicted even with infinite information and computational power. If reason fails even in mathematics and science, how can we expect it to succeed elsewhere? Indeed, many philosophers have become convinced that morality cannot be derived from reason; they call attempts to do so the “naturalistic fallacy.”
Transhumanists no longer believe that reason can answer all questions. Yet they still believe in its supremacy, because of its power to continually create more advanced technologies. Transhumanism resolves a major problem of the Enlightenment, which was based on a scientific worldview that deprived many people of the feeling of purpose. If physical reality is just a bunch of atoms bouncing around, or genes competing to replicate, then life may seem meaningless. In his book on the Big Bang, The First Three Minutes, the theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg wrote, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” This viewpoint was expressed more poetically by Pascal in his Pensées:
I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.
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