谷歌工程师预言人类大脑意识2045年可上传计算机
People have always dreamed about going beyond the limitations of their bodies: the pain, illness and, above all, death. Now a new movement is dressing up this ancient drive in new technological clothes.
人类一直在梦想着要超脱肉体的限制：不受痛苦、疾病和死亡的威胁。而现在，在新科技的帮助之下，这一古老的渴求又向前迈进了一步。Referred to as transhumanism, it is the belief that science will provide a futuristic way for humans to evolve beyond their current physical forms and realise these dreams of transcendence.
这一技术被称为“超人类主义”，简单来说，就是科学技术将为人类提供一种未来派技术，使人们超越当前人类生理形态，并且实现“超然”的梦想。
Perhaps the most dramatic way transhumanists believe that technology will transform the human condition is the idea that someone's mind could be converted into digital data and 'uploaded' into an immensely powerful computer. This would allow you to live in a world of unbounded virtual experiences and effectively achieve immortality (as long as someone remembers to do the backups and doesn't switch you off).
超人类主义认为有很多方法可以改变人类的形态，而其中可能最戏剧性的方法就是能够把某人的思想转换成为数字化数据，然后上传到一个非常强大的计算机里。这使得你生活在一个无限虚拟体验的世界，并且获得了数字化永生。（只要有人记得做备份，还不会关掉你的话）。
Yet transhumanists seem to ignore the fact that this kind of mind-uploading has some insurmountable obstacles.
不过，超人类主义者忽略了一个重要事实，意识上传存在着一些不可超越的障碍。The practical difficulties mean it couldn't happen in the foreseeable future, but there are also some more fundamental problems with the whole concept. The idea of brain uploading is a staple of science fiction.
实际困难意味着它无法发生在可预见的未来，但是这个整体概念存在许多根本性问题，当前大脑意识上传仅是科幻小说情节。The author and director of engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, has perhaps done the most to popularise the idea that it might become reality – perhaps as soon as 2045.
谷歌公司工程部主管雷·库茨韦尔是超人类主义概念的积极推广者，他认为人类大脑意识上传到计算机最早将于2045年实现。Recently, the economist Robin Hanson has explored in detail the consequences of such a scenario for society and the economy.
近期，经济学家罗宾·汉森探索了超人类主义对未来经济和社会的影响。He imagines a world in which all work is carried out by disembodied emulations of human minds, running in simulations of virtual reality using city-size cloud computing facilities. It's a short step from the idea that our minds could be uploaded, to the notion that they already have been and that we are already living in a Matrix-style computer simulation.
汉森假想了一个世界，所有的工作都是由无实体的仿真人类意识来完成的，使用一座城市大小的云计算设备进行虚拟现实操作。从人类的思想可以被上传这个点子，到人类已经有了的概念、以及我们人类已经生活在一个矩阵式计算机模拟世界中的这一事实，并不遥远。Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk recently revived this discussion by arguing the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation was only 'one in billions'. Of course, this is just a technological revival of the idea that reality is an illusion, which has been discussed by philosophers and mystics for hundreds of years.
而著名科技企业家埃隆·马斯克表示，未来人类不存在于计算机虚拟系统的概率仅为“数十亿分之一”。当然，这只是从科技上对“现实是一种虚幻”这一概念的再讨论，在数百年的时间里，哲学家和神秘主义者们已经就这一问题展开了许多次的讨论。But there are some serious problems with the idea that we could upload our minds to a computer.
但是对于人类可以上传思维到计算机中这一想法仍存在着诸多问题。To start with, the practical issue: our brains each have trillions of connections between 86 billion or so neurons. To replicate the mind digitally we would have to map each of these connections, something that is far beyond our current capabilities. With the current speed of development of computers and imaging technologies, we might be able to do this in a few decades but only for a dead and sectioned brain.
首先，实际性的问题：人类大脑中有860亿左右的神经元，在这些神经元之间有上万亿个神经连接。为了复制数字化大脑，我们必须绘制出这些大脑神经元的每个连接，这远超出当前我们的理解范围。就目前计算机和成像技术的发展速度来说，我们可能在几十年后实现这一想法，但是对象只能是一个已经死亡了的大脑的切片。
