This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know what to think

I don't know what to say

and that's all right

yeah that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello, welcome to factually. I'm Adam Conover

and, you know, we hear all the time that the brain is a computer, right?

And so, just like a computer, supposedly, you'll one day be able to download your mind,

actual self into the cloud, or maybe upload it into the cloud.

I'm not really sure which way it's supposed to work. And then you just use, I don't know, your

estate, the interest that comes off your investments to pay Elon Musk or whoever for

upkeep on the server farm where your brain will live forever and you'll achieve

immortality. Since your brain is hardware and your mind is software

according to this metaphor downloading our brains is just is

a software, according to this metaphor, downloading our brains is just a technical problem.

So with enough RAM and the right cable plugged into your cerebellum,

well surely you can just port yourself from your brain

right into a hard drive somewhere.

The same way you'd port Minecraft from a PC to your iPad, right?

Well, this brain computer metaphor is useful, but it's just a little bit short of being entirely

uh... true our brains are not really computers

and this metaphor is really deep in our culture. So I know it might be hard to believe, but let me try to break it down for you in a few different ways.

...