The Brain and its Transcendence

In From Split-Brain, to Meta-Brain, I introduced a key aspect of Theory of Algorithms:

It’s what I call the ability of our brain to examine itself, essentially to function as a mirror for itself.

When I meditate, for example, I reflect on myself meditating, and ‘watch’ calmly as thoughts pass my mind and gradually slow and settle down.
 
It’s the ability to step back, and take a ‘helicopter’ perspective, so things can be considered more holistically and completely.  Beyond the divisions of the brain hemispheres, beyond the simplicity and dichotomy of more conventional view of things.
 
This is like lifting ourselves from walking on the forest floor, and looking at its entirety above the treetops.  

The Meta-Brain is also able to reflect deeply on things. To see what lies below the surface, to see things that are not so visible or discernible.

Enter, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku:

Isaac Asimov was my favorite science fiction writer and his favorite science fiction story talked about an era far in the future when our bodies would be in pods and we would mentally control beings, beings of pure energy that would go flying around the universe. And, of course, it was science fiction but here's the idea. Mind without body. Pure consciousness roaming across the universe faster than any rocket ship. It turns out that that's actually a physical possibility. First of all the Obama administration and the European Union are pushing the Brain Project to delineate all the pathways of the human brain. This means that one day we might have a CD ROM called Brain 2.0. That is every single neuron encoded on a memory disc, your personality, your memories, who you are, the essence of your soul would be incorporated in this disc as pure information. Even if you die your consciousness, in some sense, may live on.

Now you as an organic being will have died. That means that your neurons will turn to dust. But the configuration of neurons that made your thinking process possible can be put on a disc in which case, in some sense you become immortal. Not only immortal but this could be the most efficient way to explore the galaxy just like Isaac Asimov predicted in his short story. Let's say I take your -- not your genome but your connectome, put it on a laser beam -- in fact in the book I actually calculate how big a laser beam will be required to put your consciousness as pure photons -- shine it into the heavens. You're now shooting consciousness into outer space at the speed of light. Forget booster rockets. Forget asteroid collisions. Forget radiation dangers and weightlessness and lack of oxygen. Forget all that. You are riding on a laser beam at the speed of light and then at the end there's a relay station.

A relay station which takes the laser beam and then puts into a surrogate. That is all the neural networks encoded into laser beam can be manifested as a robot on the other side of the galaxy. So in other words, it's like staying at a hotel. If you're a businessman you go from hotel to hotel and relax. The same way you'd be on a laser beam going from relay station to relay station and when you go to the relay station you take the robot body of a super human. You become superman on the other end of the rainbow. So is this a physical possibility? Yes. When might we have it? Well let's be honest. It would take perhaps a hundred years or so before we have a complete understanding of the connectome that is all the neuropathways of the brain. Perhaps another century beyond that before we have relay stations on which we could then shoot our consciousness into outer space. Is it mathematically and physically possible and the answer is yes.

It's a breathtaking notion that, in some circles, is positively transcendent.  It is what Yogis, Buddhists, or other spiritualists imagine, that is, something beyond our corporal, organic selves.  Except Kaku is a scientist imagining pure consciousness, cosmic bodylessness, super humans, and speaking about turning science fiction into a possible reality.

What Kaku speaks to is, in my language, meta-brain physically-split off from the body.  If he is right, then humankind is two centuries away from such a reality.  But it is clear that we can deploy our brain outward, and not just imagine that future, but also conceptualize it and practicalize it.  Meta-brain is an ability to conceptualize pure consciousness and to reflect it back on that pure consciousness.  In other words, just as we can imagine an (outward) exploration of the vast cosmos, so too we can imagine an (inward) exploration of ourselves.  We become purely conscious of our pure consciousness.

Also, reference: The Golden Age of Neuroscience has Arrived and Interview with Ray Kurzweil on Singularity.

Why is this so important?

If we are to solve the more entrenched issues and the wide-ranging problems we face as humankind, it will take much more than we know right now and much more than we can do right now.

It's astounding to me, for example, that with the wealth of economic gurus, brain thrusts, and Nobel Prize Laureates on the planet, we would plunge into a complex, severe economic downturn.  The worst in a generation or two, they said.  The simple, perhaps simplistic answer is that their best is sorely lacking.

To solve the more entrenched issues and the wide-ranging problems we face as humankind, it will take something along the breathtaking lines of pure consciousness and meta-brain.