Page 132 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

The Cerebronauts

“There’s the deal. What could possibly go wrong? Don’t all
speak at once!” He scanned the table for secret snoozers. “Yes, I
know: it could go right, just like the movie. But you may come up
with some better ways for this surgery to proceed.”
“Well,” said Izzy Azimuth, taking the bit in his teeth. “You’ve
got a decision tree here—sorry, but that’s how my mind works. The
option of a successful copying of brain memory by nanobots can
itself have a binary value: what if the lost information is better off
lost, in terms of human survival? I mean, what if it’s the bad guys
doing the download on a captured good guy? So you have sabotage
as something to be desired or prevented, a good nail-biter. Another
possibility is suggested by the old joke about the operation being a
success but the patient dying: the nanobots, owing to imprecise
instructions, bad mapping or the subject brain’s own defense
mechanisms against revealing that top-secret data to anyone or
anything, copy the wrong thing—bringing forth, say, ‘Rosebud’
instead of ‘x37!q14##P1h9%2r8’. Boom! The scientists forgot to
consult the psychologists before they started. Other unexpected
occurrences could provide a surprise ending, if that’s your cup of
tea. But I know I’m not supposed go into great detail.”
“Aha! I like the sabotage angle.” Hydrargyrum Diggers had a
wide malicious grin. “As well as the possibility of Freudian
repression. Just how are mental bits and pieces supposed to be
located, Rutger? You said it was an assumption, and it seems
reasonable that the operation wouldn’t even be hazarded without
confidence in those coordinates. But that’s exactly where a hacker
could get into the system and change the nanobots’ target—say, to
something really embarrassing to the people sponsoring and
performing the insertion and download. Or even misinformation—
or serious destruction of parts of the brain necessary for life. If a
nanobot can get across the blood-brain barrier and dig through the
haystack to the needle, then it must be multi-talented. Any surgeon
can commit murder—accidentally, of course!”
“And I like the surprise ending in which something unforeseen
in the supposedly anaesthetized or on-ice brain thwarts the
interlopers.” It was Brad Razeberry. “So far you have granted free

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