LASER USF talk: Why and how to transition from wet-ware to substrate-independent minds, by Randal A. Koene, 12 September, 2011

Randal A. Koene gave a talk at the LASER event at the University of San Francisco on 12 September, 2011.

Presentation slides are attached at the bottom of this page.

The mission of the LASER events is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of the Bay Area and to foster interdisciplinary networking. Every LASER has four presenters (from four different disciplines and as unrelated as possible), plus time for socializing and discussion. These audience is generally composed of audience of artists, scientists and generalists.

Representing carboncopies, Randal A. Koene will present from a general perspective the basic concepts and reasons for advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (SIM). He will explain why SIM is fundamentally possible, and seek to make explicit the notion that the wetware of our brains is specific machinery, which, according to the Church-Turing thesis, can be emulated in other sufficiently complex machinery.

Randal A. Koene will describe the paramount reasons why we seek to accomplish SIM, why we seek to create intelligence with the kernels of human minds, "upload" or devise substrate-independent minds.

Recent issues in the field may also receive cursory attention, as time permits. The primary objective for this talk is to convey the fundamentals of what SIM work is about, who is carrying out this work, and why.

For information about attending this event, please contact Piero Scaruffi at p@scaruffi.com.