Entertainment : Battle for the Last Post!

Sure, but I would still have to be able to access that information that is so efficiently stored and searched for, right? So what does that access look like? Does the information pop up in a HUD in the corner of my vision? I still have to read and comprehend and think it myself, so aside from the surgery, what's the difference from reading it on a screen? Certainly the speed and efficiency you refer to would have more to do with data structures, indexing markup languages, and search algorithms than the physical location of the storage media within my skull?

Or, have we converted the electronic signals of the database to be directly thought accessible, as in indistinguishable from my own thoughts? So that I'd have some sort of thought database that transfers the requested thoughts into my consciousness when requested? That'd be interesting, though it feels a little weird... like a little thought machine forcing thoughts into my consciousness. Would they be my thoughts? Like, I would previously have had to process the information to get it into the database (from my own thoughts to bits modeled on my thinking patterns) for recall? Like a computer-aided memory? I can read a book, comprehend it, convert those thoughts into bits, and now I can recall with computer-aided speed and efficiency the first full sentence on page 178 of The Golden Bough (Frazer, 1890):

We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name raw flesh. (Only, you know, instead of words/text, its whatever particular rhizomatic-rhebus image/emotional resonance structure my thoughts form when I think that sentence... so not even word-perfect recall.)

Which has certainly saved me the time and energy of pulling the book off the shelf and opening it to the desired page, or looking it up online from my phone, so I now have time to bring my bloodstained clothes to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, to be dry-cleaned.

Or would they be someone else's thoughts converted into bits? And when they get recalled into my consciousness, am I thinking someone else's thoughts? Could I record all of my thoughts into bits, and wrap the whole package into a worm program (Click here for the new Babymetal Album!) but instead of torrenting J-pop/speed metal, you get a copy of me. If you are thinking my thoughts... are you me? Do our consciousnesses have a Scanners/Lawnmower Man-esque battle to see who... wait, would two consicousnesses even fit in one brain? Would it be brain damage, or simply fry the processor? Would a fried processor cause brain damage?

Or would all our converted thoughts live as copies in a virtual database that we could all share and access whatever parts of it we wanted to whenever we wished... self-organized and more organic... where we could all read books for each other and share information and learn things together and I fucked op's mom! #umadborg? first!!1! Ayy lmao ...And my Axe! I don't know what the question is, but the answer is cyborgs. Over 9000!!!!

Yeah, I think I'd prefer the first one, but I don't feel a particular body dysmorphic fetish or pragmatic reason to implant my encyclopedic knowledge devices inside my flesh.

No, I don't really know much about how brains work, which is why I mostly asked questions. But I do know that for me, given that I don't have eidetic memory, there is a difference between reading a text (or listening to or watching something) and knowing the information in it. Like, I know Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. It's a piece I've played for the past twenty years. I also know things about it, it's a duple meter, it's in Ab, it has four sections, each of which are repeated before moving on to the next (except for a return to the first section after the second which is historically odd for both ragtime and all of Joplin's other work)... I know what it sounds like, both from my own and other people's interpretations, I know what it feels like in my fingers when I'm playing it, and I also know what the score looks like; given a couple measures, I could recognize it.

But I don't have a clear picture of the score in my head. I certainly couldn't reproduce it on paper from my own memory... even reproducing it with a piano is difficult as I can never quite remember how each of the repeats ends differently from the others and unless I've actually refreshed myself on it recently, I'll just skip the repeats because I can't remember them. And there's a lot about the score I couldn't talk about if asked, like what dynamic markings are there for the different sections, what kind of cadences end each section, what is such and such note or phrase in a particular measure on a particular page.

And this is something that has multiple layers of supporting memory layers to it; aural memory, and tactile memory, and tacit having spent many hours in front of a keyboard memory, in addition to having read the score itself many times. All the different types of memory support each other (which is why mind palaces work, or why if you study drunk, you should take the test drunk.) So if my memory of such an integrated thing as playing a piece of music is really hazy, imagine how my memory of some scribbles on a page I read once must be.

Now, if your cybernetic device worked in such a way that I could recall the score to Mape Leaf Rag, or the text of any given book I read, or a lecture I attended... as if I were in its physical presence, or had eidetic memory of it, then aside from the surgery, what is the difference to actually being in the physical presence, or looking it up online? If the answer is nothing, then as I said, I could go for this, though I have no particular need to insert devices into my skull to reproduce the effect of having a device in my pocket. I suppose my point being that we are already cyborgs, having externalized (or at least expanded upon) our memory to electronic devices... just ones outside of our skulls.

But image/text/audio in discrete recallable packages like a computer file is not how our brains work (or at least not how it works from within my own non-eidetic brain.) So when you say it'd be like adding a new wing on to a house, and it would work "like a brain" what do you mean? You know, for the sake of us who don't know how brains work.

A good theory of mind is by Paul Churchland, the book is Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of the Mind. 

oh

Zombie?

I think it's time we bring back the evil scientific mastermind hell bent on world domination. 

Okay, Jose wants me to come out of retirement...

4

Unlikely. 

Don't forget to vote for the story you like best in the battle between Renee Pickup and Jose Diaz....

That's exactly what I would do.

I downloaded them, but I didn't get to read them. Sorry.

--- Hillary Clinton

On another topic,

I still think Einstein was wrong.

But, you know, I never read the articles.

Wow! Where did you come from? 

How the fuck is Dwayne always winning this? It's total crap.

https://youtu.be/bLBSoC_2IY8?t=343

Too late.

I've been...I dunno. Working my day job, like, a lot.

Catch me up, e'rrybody. What's new in this place? It seems that those of ye olden days (or two years ago or so) have mostly moved on.

It's all over.

Moving sucks guys. I have no idea what I should do up here. 

You want to start a new thread for this? Get someone to delete it and just begin again?

And this one as well.

Please no more posts. This thread is dead.

So you're saying there's a chance?!

Exact opposite of attempted message conveyance.