And as we know, there are some serious limitations on what we can do with the brain.
Yes, but imagine not only that we have complete access to the brain’s source code, but that the brain is digitally implemented and any component can be changed at whim. What could we achieve? At the very least, some very helpful things, if not superintelligence:
We already have examples of drugs and diseases that boost cognitive performance. Personally, I’ve been hyperthyroid before. The cognitive boost at the peak was very pronounced. This can’t be sustained in wetware (at the moment) for various reasons. None of those reasons, as far as I’ve seen, would matter in silicon. Sustainable hyperthyroidism via alterations to my ‘source code’ alone would make me 5 times more productive.
Once a mechanism of action is understood, it’s likely it can be increased, at least a little. For instance, nootropes (such as piracetam, huperzine a, modafinil) work via chemical pathways. It seems reasonable to expect that bypassing the chemical aspect and directly tweaking the code should provide better results. If nothing else the quality and quantity of the dose can be regularized and optimized much more efficiently. This isn’t even mentioning all the drugs that can’t cross the blood-brain barrier but which could be directly ‘injected’ into individual neurons in a simulation, which is a tiny subset of all the ‘drugs’ that could be tried from directly changing the way the neuron works. Many nootropes, too, either diminish in effect over time (for chemical reasons) or tax the body in unsupportable ways, as with hyperthyroidism: neither of these would pose a problem for a silicon brain, which could be permanently pumped up on a whole cocktail of crazy drugs and mood modifiers without worrying about the damage being done to the endocrine system or any other fragile wetware.
In short, an uploaded human with access to its source code and an understanding of neurology and biochemistry, while probably falling short of superintelligence, would have a hell of an advantage over meatspace humans, even without hardware acceleration.
Yes, but imagine not only that we have complete access to the brain’s source code, but that the brain is digitally implemented and any component can be changed at whim. What could we achieve? At the very least, some very helpful things, if not superintelligence:
We already have examples of drugs and diseases that boost cognitive performance. Personally, I’ve been hyperthyroid before. The cognitive boost at the peak was very pronounced. This can’t be sustained in wetware (at the moment) for various reasons. None of those reasons, as far as I’ve seen, would matter in silicon. Sustainable hyperthyroidism via alterations to my ‘source code’ alone would make me 5 times more productive.
Once a mechanism of action is understood, it’s likely it can be increased, at least a little. For instance, nootropes (such as piracetam, huperzine a, modafinil) work via chemical pathways. It seems reasonable to expect that bypassing the chemical aspect and directly tweaking the code should provide better results. If nothing else the quality and quantity of the dose can be regularized and optimized much more efficiently. This isn’t even mentioning all the drugs that can’t cross the blood-brain barrier but which could be directly ‘injected’ into individual neurons in a simulation, which is a tiny subset of all the ‘drugs’ that could be tried from directly changing the way the neuron works. Many nootropes, too, either diminish in effect over time (for chemical reasons) or tax the body in unsupportable ways, as with hyperthyroidism: neither of these would pose a problem for a silicon brain, which could be permanently pumped up on a whole cocktail of crazy drugs and mood modifiers without worrying about the damage being done to the endocrine system or any other fragile wetware.
In short, an uploaded human with access to its source code and an understanding of neurology and biochemistry, while probably falling short of superintelligence, would have a hell of an advantage over meatspace humans, even without hardware acceleration.