OK, warning, medical/science content past this point 
I have been reading about something called BlueBrain today, I know people involved in the feild and I was posed these questions today.
BlueBrain is modelling something called Cortical colums. These are the functional units of a brain. Each of these consists of 10,000 - 50,000 brain cells (nurons) and in just 2mm long. Diameter wise we are talking fractions of a mm. BlueBrain uses an IBM supercomputer that lives ina specially designed room, full server room setup and can emulate just 1 of these right now. Aint that lump of goo behind your eyes great?
Now the question relates to the next step. by 2015/2020 they think they will be able to functionally model a whole human brain. By this he means a complete human brain, concious, self aware and by any definition, alive.
So
Do you then loose the right to turn it off/stop the simulation? Is turning it off murder as in theory thats the death of a concious entity?
What happens if you 'suspend' the simulation, does the entity experience this as death, sleep or frozen time?
If itsasimulation of a human brain, is it human? What defines a human?
All good questions, curious to see what you guys make of it. The scary thing is these questions will need to be answered in our life time.

I have been reading about something called BlueBrain today, I know people involved in the feild and I was posed these questions today.
BlueBrain is modelling something called Cortical colums. These are the functional units of a brain. Each of these consists of 10,000 - 50,000 brain cells (nurons) and in just 2mm long. Diameter wise we are talking fractions of a mm. BlueBrain uses an IBM supercomputer that lives ina specially designed room, full server room setup and can emulate just 1 of these right now. Aint that lump of goo behind your eyes great?
Now the question relates to the next step. by 2015/2020 they think they will be able to functionally model a whole human brain. By this he means a complete human brain, concious, self aware and by any definition, alive.
So
Do you then loose the right to turn it off/stop the simulation? Is turning it off murder as in theory thats the death of a concious entity?
What happens if you 'suspend' the simulation, does the entity experience this as death, sleep or frozen time?
If itsasimulation of a human brain, is it human? What defines a human?
All good questions, curious to see what you guys make of it. The scary thing is these questions will need to be answered in our life time.
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