Talkin' 'bout My Degeneration
- Dec 18, 2025
- 7 min read
As I mentioned in my piece Hello Again, “I have many ideas of topics I might cover in further writing, leveraging my musings during my time away: topics broadening beyond my Autism, but also how my brand of Autistic experience has influenced my outlook, my personal philosophy, and my assessment of the state of the universe.” I call these excursions, armchair topics because in them I will go beyond what I am an expert in: me and my experience as an autistic child and adult. I will be an armchair philosopher, an armchair neuroscientist, an armchair technologist. In this particular piece, I also lay the groundwork for some future topics I may expand on.
I have a neurodegenerative disease—Parkinson's Disease, to be specific. I’m told one of the side effects of a medication I am taking (to try to compensate for the increasing loss of dopamine-generating capacity in my brain's neurons) is risk-taking. An often-documented example is a propensity to engage in gambling. I don’t have an inclination to gamble, but I am taking an even bigger risk here by venturing into topics where I can claim no expertise: merely decades of reading, listening, and musing.
There will be times I expose myself even further by speculating on what might come to be in these subjects—if ever—with decades of proper, professional attention by those who are schooled and practiced in these pursuits. This, then, is that.
Discussing the future may seem to contradict what I briefly noted in my last piece Secure Alone. There, I mentioned I am not fond of what I call subjunctive thinking—imagining what might have happened under different circumstances. Covering what might come about in the future may seem to be another sort of subjunctive thinking (people are lousy at predicting the future—likely more so than predicting the altered past). But I speculate about the future here, now, because I must. I can’t wait for the experts to create what is to come. I must contemplate what might happen. Forgive me. I don’t have the time I once thought I did.
In this case, I speculate about escaping a failing brain: a philosophical and technological projection into what might lie ahead. I was triggered to pursue this train of thought by a conversation between Max Hodak—Founder and CEO of Science Corporation—and David Eagleman on Eagleman’s Inner Cosmos podcast. They were discussing the future of brain–computer interfaces—not using implanted electrodes (such as pursued by Elon Musk’s Neuralink venture, an organization Hodak once presided over)—but by taking advantage of synthetic neuron-like materials that integrate seamlessly with human biology.
Rather than just providing a means of direct communication between brain and computers, as implanted electrodes do, these materials might allow an expansion of the brain, as the materials massively integrate with the original natural neurons on one side and, on the other, into computer-based neural circuitry. This expansion would not occur in one step. It would leverage the incremental, gradual process of neuroplasticity, akin to how a brain forms new circuitry—say, in response to a stroke.
I imagine a scenario where I might be in a position to be connected in such an interface. I would experience a slowly progressing transition from my current failing brain into one augmented—and eventually replaced—by computer neural circuitry. Happening slowly, this scenario would allow for a Ship of Theseus-like continuation of my identity.
The Ship of Theseus Paradox is a philosophical thought experiment arising out of Greek mythology. King Theseus returned to Athens after overcoming the Minotaur in the labyrinth of King Minos of Crete. The ship he voyaged in was long revered by the Athenians, who kept it in working order.
If a plank from the ship rotted, it was replaced to maintain the integrity of the ship. Eventually, one by one, over the years, every board comprising the ship was replaced. The philosophical conundrum, then, is at what point—if any—the ship ceased to be the ship of Theseus? There’s no completely satisfactory answer to this puzzle. Opinions vary widely. I prefer an interpretation where the ship retains its identity.
Through mechanisms analogous to the maintenance of the Ship of Theseus, then, my perception of self—a reflection of consciousness—would be retained throughout the expansion of my brain into the connected medium. And yet, the continuity of self is an illusion applying even to brains not artificially enhanced.
We perceive ourselves—without questioning it—as the same person we were at earlier stages of life or as the same person who went to sleep last night, but this doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. We are subject to ongoing modification at the molecular level, as our neurons receive nutrients and exercise their metabolisms, and also at the emergent level of thought, memory, and consciousness, as our experiences continue through life, altering who we are. We are not the same as we were moments ago, even though it feels continuous.
This speculation necessarily involves the subject of consciousness—a topic I have long thought and read about. Opinions are numerous. Going back to René Descartes, there are some who adhere to a dualistic explanation where consciousness is separate from the brain. In this view the conscious mind is something altogether other, akin to an essence, soul, or spirit. This is not always a religious point of view, but, to this way of thinking, a description of consciousness covering just the mechanistic nature of the brain misses something. I see this position as a fundamental misapprehension.
Some people see consciousness as an aspect—to greater or lesser degrees—of everything in the universe. In this so-called panpsychism view, even the very atoms themselves have a (minimal) spark of consciousness. I am swayed by this approach even less than the dualist description.
Then there are those who see consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, almost unavoidably generated by a system of sufficient complexity, as the human brain surely is. This view usually allows for varying levels of consciousness in some, perhaps most, or even all animal brains.
My own view on consciousness starts with thinking about free will. Free will is not an illusion. It is real. It is just not what you think it is, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett might have said. We are decision-making machines. Free will, then, is the sensation we get when we observe (pay attention to) our brains making those decisions. In that way, it is much like the sensation of déjà vu. Déjà vu is the sensation we get when we pay attention to the brain making memories and notice the similarity to other memories. It just feels like something it is not.
All animals with brains pay attention to what is happening in the world outside their brains. Consciousness, then, is the sensation we get when we pay attention to what the brain is doing on the inside. It is the sensation the brain gets when it pays attention to itself. This isn’t dualism. There is no self outside of the brain. There are brains complex enough to pay attention to themselves, in addition to paying attention to what is going on outside of the brain—in the rest of their bodies, in the rest of the world around them.
But back to my musings on my brain somehow escaping the continuation of decay it is currently undergoing. This expansion and eventual replacement of my brain by artificial elements, while retaining some aspect of what it is to be me, brings a new definition to the term thought experiment, but it is a thought experiment in the original sense as well.
I imagined further. If my mind could eventually live completely within artificial circuitry, it might become possible to interface more readily with other computer-based systems. I could connect with AI systems—today's Turing Test-passing prediction systems (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and many others) requiring massive training on human-generated data, but also truly intelligent AI systems, assuming they will eventually be developed.
Once I am instantiated in a purely electronic world, what would prevent the creation of additional copies of me, just as you would copy a computer file? I could be easily cloned. It is fascinating to contemplate this possibility. Each instance would experience that fabricated illusion of self. Each would believe itself to be me, yet it would quickly diverge, influenced by the specifics of the environment it found itself in.
What would it be like to encounter the minds of other individuals who have gone through the same process? We might experience a closer connection than humans can achieve today, with minds necessarily separated by at least a few inches of bone and skin, which need to interpret the connection through the external transfer of spoken words and actions taken. Imagine the unions that might be established if these augmented minds were to intimately mesh. They could even give rise to a very different kind of offspring. Larger groups might form, leading to novel arrangements.
I went off the deep end a bit there. Still, I have captured only the very beginning of how my mind has wandered this domain. If I went into all the details of my imaginings, this would be a much longer written piece. More to the point, it would not be what I mean to convey—my musings on how I might recover a full mind, how I might exist more than I am likely to.
I know this is all a flight of fancy. I will not survive long enough for my migration into this altered form to become a real possibility. I will be dead long before technology advances to the point—if ever—of it actually coming to be. If it does, I am sure it will be different than I have the ability to imagine.
The lack of feasibility does not curtail my speculation, however. And, in this way, I comfort myself. It helps me endure. I can only hope if this capability is ever developed—a long shot—some of the first opportunities would be given to those desperate for a chance to stave off what would otherwise be the certainty of losing themselves.
I leave you with this image:
expand here to view it
