Randal Koene (Round 2)
Mapping The Brain, How The Pandemic Has Affected Neuroscience, & Choosing Your Own Adventure
“[Whole brain emulation] is in principle the same thing as neural prostheses, except applied to the whole brain.” - Randal Koene
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Intro
In this episode of Auxoro, Zach spends time talking with Randal Koene. Randal is a neuroscientist and neuro-engineer, as well as the co-founder of carboncopies.org. This organization supports scientists who are working towards whole brain emulation. Zach and Randal discuss several topics in this episode, including whole brain emulation, mind uploading, the process of mapping the human brain, the metaphysical questions that arise in pursuit of whole brain emulation, and the complexity of the human brain.
Key Takeaways
Randal gives an overview of what he does:
Randal is a computational neuroscientist, and he’s most known for whole brain emulation.
4:33 – “[Mind uploading is] this concept of being able to somehow transfer your mind into something that isn’t your biological brain, think of say, a robot or a giant computer cloud that has you running around in a virtual reality, or something of that nature.”
Randal shares the only way to accomplish something like this is to emulate the whole brain, with all of its data and functions.
The current efforts are aimed toward creating neural prostheses, using a computer to create a replacement for parts of the brain that aren’t working correctly.
Randal has personally read and likes the novel The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke as a way to learn more about the concept. Another way to get an idea of what mind uploading is like, is to watch Battle Star Galactica.
The Pandemic’s Impact on Randal and His Work:
Randal had just returned back from the Orcas Islands right before the pandemic hit. Since he was still in the process of reconnecting with people and trying to set up meetings, the pandemic has slowed down his work.
There is a place for how whole brain emulation could benefit society in future pandemics.
12:59 – “Having, at least, a good sort of brain-machine interface available, could be a way, for example, for someone to care for a patient at a distance, not expose themselves to a virus, and make their expertise available in a hospital setting, even if they themselves cannot go to the hospital because they have to isolate themselves. That’s all true and that could be very useful.”
Randal emphasizes that this virus points out how fragile we are as humans, and that the struggle of our fragility is constant.
What Experiences Set Randal Apart:
Randal shares that the community of people thinking about and working on whole brain emulation has grown since it began, and he has been there from the beginning, and he is older in comparison to other people in the area of study.
17:17– “When you’re there at the start, then you’re automatically a pioneer.”
Something Randal really values is just having fun with what he does, and this is something he feels other engineers and creators share.
A lot of coincidences have allowed Randal to be where he is today and have the experiences that he is in this field.
Randal’s Expectation of the Timeline and Future of Whole Brain Emulation:
Randal still believes, if this pandemic is not the start of the apocalypse, that it would be possible to have the human brain fully mapped in the next one hundred years.
22:38– “I would just be surprised if the sciences we have today, would not be able to figure out how a brain works, even if it’s just the brain of a fruit fly, or the brain of a worm, the C. Elegans Nematode, within the next few decades to figure out how that works and to run that in a computer.”
The only reasons Randal foresees that could prevent this from happening, is an unforeseeable “showstopper”, the crumbling of society, or laws being put into place that prohibit the work being done.
Randal explains that to deny the possibility of ever achieving whole brain emulation, is to really be considering hypotheses about the brain and what it means to exist and be human, as well as technical issues, or metaphysical issues.
Funding for Whole Brain Emulation:
Randal shares that the work and projects within the field are all funded differently. Some projects are funded privately, but others are funded by government money.
It is very rare for money to be set aside specifically for the work of whole brain emulation, and more common for the work to be funded and furthered by different supporting projects that are contributing to the overall goal of whole brain emulation.
33:34 – “Carbon Copies is an organization that is exceedingly cash poor, for that reason, and the only way that we do get projects going is by creating projects that aren’t directly about, ‘we want to make whole brain emulation’.”
This way of receiving funding is fairly common in most fields of study and work that is being done.
Along with a lack of funding, there is also a lack of artists who are willing to create designs and art that help people understand whole brain emulation.
How Randal’s Position and Beliefs Have Changed Over Time:
39:24 – “One set of beliefs that has changed, in the last, I’d say maybe five years, but maybe it’s ten years, is the hope or belief that there is one best way to work on an ambitious project like this.”
There is no one solution on how to work on an ambitious project, but it’s instead best to vary the approaches with various smaller projects.
Each approach, such as a startup, has advantages and disadvantages. While startups have great excitement and can get people with a lot of talent, as well as morph and change as they need to, the focus is often on quickly producing results and this is not the best approach for certain areas, or fields of study.
Over the last five years, Randal shares that he’s become less concerned about the metaphysical aspects of whole brain emulation, in regard to gradual retrieval or scan and copy processes.
47:47 – “There are oodles of finicky, sort of thought experiments, that you can go through for these metaphysical questions.”
One approach that Russel and others are trying, is to create a type of “choose your own adventure” process to walk someone through these metaphysical questions.
What Randal Wants Policy Makers to Know and What He Finds Interesting About the Brain:
1:05:04– “[Whole brain emulation] is in principle the same thing as neural prostheses, except applied to the whole brain.”
Brain emulation research is just done on a larger scale than neural prostheses, it still fits within conservative neuroscience.
Randal shares that if you really look at what is going on in the brain, then you are able to understand more about who we are as humans.
The brain is a complex system and can only be fully understood by looking at the separate pieces.
Full Transcript, Click Anywhere To Play
Connect with Randal:
Resources mentioned:
“The City and the Stars”: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250024.The_City_and_the_Stars
“Battle Star Galactica”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407362/