I choose Valhalla

"Why so serious?" Ugh, let me rephrase it to: lets use our imaginations to come up with some fun after-death situations!

But, if you're still game for some serious business, how's about this: would it be possible to build something close to heaven? Since the computer is a giant organic brain, could scientists of the future use their knowledge of neuroscience to create a computer capable of containing a human mind? If the brain is just matter, it shouldn't be impossible to convert that brain into data. Then, they could build a medium through which these minds could communicate with one another or with living humans. It wouldn't be a perfect life nor eternal, so it wouldn't be heaven, but it would be an afterlife.

Yes. And lots of SF writers explore it. Banks' latest Culture novel that I mentioned dealing with Heaven and silly goose, Surface Detail is exactly about this.

I can't believe I used to despise you. XD

Hm...
Dealing with morality, would this be a good thing? I could see a lot of good coming out of it, but I could also see it being abused. In the wrong hands people could start passing judgment on the dead by creating not just an afterlife but a "heaven-and-silly goose" where anyone they deem "evil" is placed in a computer and subject to mental torture indefinitely. Yikes!

We aren't far from uploading our brains as it is.

I wonder what would happen if you uploaded a chickens brain..

silly goose is the most monstrous and horrific idea ever fucking conceived. Anyone who sincerely believes in silly goose is worse than a god damned silly goose. That's the entire point of the book. The civilizations running silly goose's are facing pressure and possible war in the Real from the civilizations which have the decency to realize eternal torture is not something anyone deserves, ever.


You've said a lot of stupid things over the year or so, but this easily takes the cake.

I kid you not. I found some news article saying this. Said something about this being possible by 2030. I realize it doesn't mean it's true but still... I felt like I'd share it regarless.

EDIT: Found it. 2040, my bad.

When you say "believe in silly goose" do you mean "support the idea of silly goose" or "believe silly goose exists?"

Regardless, that's my own fear as well. We can't rely on the human race as a whole to oppose silly goose, even if we as individuals know it is wrong. But then again, powerful judgment falling into the wrong hands is not new on Earth (see: nuke).

What is it that makes animals react to "spirits" more than humans? Can they really sense the presence of a spiritual being? Or is it thAt animals have a closer relationship to the spirit world. For those who believe could it be that there is no other world and they are forced here, we just can't sense them. Evp have evidence of voices. And infared videos show apparitions. Why is it soo hard to to connect to them and understand more about the subject?

Given current virtual-brain software (running on super-computers) is predicted to only be able to simulate a human brain in around ten years, and assuming that by the time home computers have the power to do that, brain scanning has reached an advanced enough level to recreate the brain virtually in perfect detail, an optimistic projection for brain uploading is 2060 or 2070. I'd say 2100 or 2110 are more likely, to be honest. And I'm also assuming that we've worked out how to feed sense data into a human brain and extract movement data by then, which is another extremely complicated thing to do. So I think my latter projection is more likely.

How exactly is 100 years 'not very far'?

Nah 100 years isn't too far at all, especially if you live to be 100 whoa. Then again we'll be wiped out by then.
Sign me up for this brain upload thing, I'm all in.

whats the point of uploading ur brain anyways

I would be willing, considering I live that long. I won't have anything to lose.