You’ve come to the right place; I agree (and I think most here would) that such a thing is possible. However, I think it’s also quite unlikely. There are many better things to worry about, including in the domain of brain upload downsides.
This really sounds like you’re suffering PTSD from your migraine experience, and projecting that fear into the future.
You have plenty of time to decide whether to do a brain upload, should one become available. If and when you get a chance to decide that, you can decide what probably different failure modes have. I think you’ll decide this one is incredibly unlikely.
I think you should be seeking treatment for PTSD. I don’t know what the best current forms of treatment are. I’d start looking into that if I were you.
This should not play much role in your thinking, because you should be thinking about more realistic things, particularly addressing your PTSD. But if you were an accurately simulated brain with no sensory inputs, you would fairly quickly start to hallucinate sensory inputs. Sensory deprivation produces dreamlike hallucinations fairly quickly despite people being awake. There are deep reasons for this; you still have the primary sensory cortices, they don’t like to stay quiet, and they and the bidirectionally linked higher brain areas will form patterns similar to the ones you’ve learned from experience. That’s what dreams are, the default behavior of the brain without sensory input. Theoretical reasons aside, that’s what empirically happens when people reduce their sensory inputs for a half hour or so while remaining awake.
But the plausibility of such a thing happening is not the crux of this problem, because even if that was the brain’s behavior, that failure mode would be incredibly unlikely. PTSD is the root of your problem, almost certainly. Debunking this belief for yourself rationally is part of the solution, but not the whole thing. Get that PTSD treated, and not just by the first suggestion you happen across. It’s a big deal, it’s worth simultaneously pursuing several routes to treatment. It’s not something I have much knowledge of, so I’m not going to suggest anything in particular; but treatments are available.
You’ve come to the right place; I agree (and I think most here would) that such a thing is possible. However, I think it’s also quite unlikely. There are many better things to worry about, including in the domain of brain upload downsides.
This really sounds like you’re suffering PTSD from your migraine experience, and projecting that fear into the future.
You have plenty of time to decide whether to do a brain upload, should one become available. If and when you get a chance to decide that, you can decide what probably different failure modes have. I think you’ll decide this one is incredibly unlikely.
I think you should be seeking treatment for PTSD. I don’t know what the best current forms of treatment are. I’d start looking into that if I were you.
This should not play much role in your thinking, because you should be thinking about more realistic things, particularly addressing your PTSD. But if you were an accurately simulated brain with no sensory inputs, you would fairly quickly start to hallucinate sensory inputs. Sensory deprivation produces dreamlike hallucinations fairly quickly despite people being awake. There are deep reasons for this; you still have the primary sensory cortices, they don’t like to stay quiet, and they and the bidirectionally linked higher brain areas will form patterns similar to the ones you’ve learned from experience. That’s what dreams are, the default behavior of the brain without sensory input. Theoretical reasons aside, that’s what empirically happens when people reduce their sensory inputs for a half hour or so while remaining awake.
But the plausibility of such a thing happening is not the crux of this problem, because even if that was the brain’s behavior, that failure mode would be incredibly unlikely. PTSD is the root of your problem, almost certainly. Debunking this belief for yourself rationally is part of the solution, but not the whole thing. Get that PTSD treated, and not just by the first suggestion you happen across. It’s a big deal, it’s worth simultaneously pursuing several routes to treatment. It’s not something I have much knowledge of, so I’m not going to suggest anything in particular; but treatments are available.
Good luck to you.