This blog post will discuss life extension by means of artificial intelligence. There are two main methods. You can 1) use data collected about you to build an avatar of yourself, or 2) use actual memories from your brain and upload them to a computer. Both of these methods are currently in the realm of science fiction, but they may be viable within our lifetime. Thus it might be worth your time to act now to increase the odds that you achieve digital immortality. Namely you could choose to preserve your data and your brain so that they are available to be uploaded to a computer when the technology matures.
In my opinion, the technology necessary
for a brain upload will probably not be developed by humans within the lifetime
of any person living today. The brain is simply too complex. However, I think that
if humans are able to develop a superintelligent AI and that AI tasks itself
with developing the methodology and equipment necessary then it may be possible
within our lifetime. Lucky for us, if you were to die today you could still
arrange to have your brain preserved so that it is available for upload in the
future.
I am quite confident that even if you were to die next
month, current techniques are capable of preserving your brain in enough detail
that you could be resurrected from the data in the future. Just paying to have
your brain preserved though, does not ensure that it will be uploaded. However,
it is quite possible that merely preserving it will increase the odds that it
will be uploaded by altruistic scientists in the future. As we will discuss, it
is not clear if this upload will be a vessel for your current, sentient
consciousness or just an uncanny replica of your memories and personality. Because
brain preservation is an opportunity that is just now becoming available to
humanity I think we should all look into it, and consider it. However, because
the outcome is uncertain we should also make an effort to make peace with the
fact that we may be mortal and will never have our mind uploaded.
Creating an Avatar
from Data
You certainly don’t need a physical brain to construct a
decent simulation of a human being. Instead you could take data from a person,
living or dead, and attempt to reconstruct their personality and likeness. You
could do this for a person like Aristotle (385-323 BC) by programming it to
reflect his writings, and everything we know about him. But a much more precise
simulation could be made of someone like Bertrand Russel (1872-1970) who we
have actual photographs and video of. Even using today’s technology specialists
could take recorded conversations, photographs, and video footage of a person
and combine it with a generic chatbot to create a convincing digital simulation
of someone. Just a minute of video footage of someone talking can be fed into
an artificial neural network to create a highly realistic “deep fake” of both
their voice and their appearance. So if you want to have a chance at recreating
a parent or grandparent (or yourself) you ought to start collecting data on
them now. There are many kinds of easy-to-procure data that could help to
create a digital recreation of someone in the absence of a brain specimen.
A default AI capable of holding a conversation and reasoning
effectively could form a starting point. It would amount to a generic
reproduction of the brain’s algorithms and data structures. Then it could be
updated with a specific individual’s characteristics, and eccentricities. The
more data you have on that person the more realistic the simulation. Here is a
list that I brainstormed of sources of data that could help to describe someone
as an individual and thus could be used to help fashion their digital identity:
photos,
home videos,
emails,
letters,
art,
creative work,
diary,
voice memos,
SMS texts,
phone call log,
search engine history,
internet browsing history,
books read (Kindle, Goodreads),
their videogame records (trophies, scores),
music playlists,
movies and television
(Netflix viewing history),
youtube history,
recorded phone calls,
social network,
social media posts and likes,
map and GPS history,
travel history,
vitals & body measurements,
medical records,
structural brain scans (MRI),
functional brain scans (fMRI),
psychological evaluations,
personality tests,
psychometric tests,
school records,
standardized testing,
yearbooks,
surveillance records,
legal and medical history,
wardrobe,
childhood toys,
belongings and property,
online purchase history,
genome sequence,
epigenome sequence,
videos of their gait,
habits, mannerisms, posture,
terms, phrases and colloquialisms,
a list of their values,
a description of their morals,
ethical stances,
spiritual convictions,
recounting of fondest memories,
pictures of their homes,
historical setting,
You could certainly start gathering, saving, and
safeguarding this kind of data for yourself today. I am sure that in the near
future there will be businesses that help people to curate their data. Such a
business might also help to create a structured self-report questionnaire that
asks people questions about their likes and dislikes, and interrogates them
about what makes them unique, interesting, and sets them apart from others.
Such a questionnaire should ask about things that would not be obvious from the
person’s data. You could fill out the questionnaire about yourself, or about
your loved one. Some of this data might equate to a binary setting (e.g. I like
loud people or I don’t), but some of it could be used to train artificial
neural networks to create a convincing simulacrum of the person in question.
You could also collect data using detailed 3D photographic
scans and motion capture video in a performance capture environment. This could
help the system to accurately recreate the person’s lip movements, facial
expressions, microexpressions, eye movements, pupil dilation, sweating, intonation,
speech patterns, voice stress, and much more. Clearly this method could create
a convincing copy or mimic, but without a brain specimen it certainly wouldn’t
qualify as a form of life extension.
Creating a Digital
Reconstruction Based on Brain Data
Life extension through brain preservation began in earnest
with the freezing of bodies. Cryonics is the low temperature freezing of a
human corpse or severed head with the hope that resurrection will be possible
in the future. Robert Ettinger first discussed it when he published “The
Prospect of Immortality” in 1962. Since then there have been many companies
that offer the service of keeping corpses in vats of liquid nitrogen. Cryonics
is often characterized as pseudoscience, and those that practice it have been
called quacks, but as the relevant technologies develop this will change.
There are currently three such cryopreservation companies in
the U.S. and one in Russia. As of 2014 about 250 corpses had been cryogenically
preserved, and around 1,500 living people had signed up for preservation. When
a customer opts to just have their brain and not their body preserved it is
called “neuropreservation.” Of course, this is cheaper. Depending on the
company and the method, cryopreservation can set you back anywhere from $28,000
to $200,000. There are a number of costs: medical personnel have to be on call
for death, the body must be transported quickly to the facility, the
preservation process has to be performed by medical experts, and the body must
be stored indefinitely. In many cases individuals set up a trust fund to cover
storage and revival costs. The cost of cooling and storage have already shown
to be substantial. Many cryonics corporations have gone into bankruptcy. In
fact, as of 2018, all but one of those that came before 1973 had gone out of
business and were forced to thaw and dispose of the corpses that they stored.
Consider the fact that most businesses have a one in one thousand chance of
surviving even one hundred years and you get an idea for how tenuous this is in
its current form.
Initially the idea was to freeze a body until medical
science advances to a point where it can be reanimated and treated medically.
However, freezing temperatures cause damage to tissues and cause individual
cells to break, destroying the information stored in the connections between
them. Certain chemicals called “cryoprotectants” can prevent ice formation
during cryptopreservation but they also cause damage making it so that the
corpse cannot be reanimated. These limitations of cryonics have led to other
options.
A company called Nectome uses a chemical called
glutaraldehyde to perform a “100% fatal brain preservation” procedure. It is
fatal because the procedure creates chemical crosslinks between protein
molecules that eliminate biological viability. So unlike with freezing, the brain
can never be resuscitated… but it can still be mapped. It must be doused in the
glutaraldehyde quickly after death though. The brain’s cells start to break
apart and die (the cell membranes rupture) soon after death due to lack of
oxygen. This is why this procedure must be performed either immediately after
death or on a live person under general anesthesia. In the second case it is a
form of assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia. Why would someone want to
undergo this procedure? So that their brain could be mapped, transcribed into
digital data, and reconstituted within a machine.
The molecular details of a brain would probably not be
needed to create a high fidelity map, but the cellular details would be
essential. All of the person’s neural connections (their connectome) including
cell type and location, information about the cell membrane and intracellular
structure, as well as the positions of hundreds of millions of axons and
trillions of synapses would have to be scanned by a computer. There are around
100 billion neurons in the human brain. Given that each of these can have up to
1,000 connections to other neurons each, that gives us 100 trillion neural
connections to hold in computer memory and model. A brain map or connectivity
database of the anatomic connections of a human brain has been estimated to
occupy less than 20,000 terabytes. Today this would cost over $300,000, but in
a few decades this price will drop significantly.
To upload the connections the brain must be cut into
extremely fine slices and scanned with an electron microscope. This is done
today, but currently it is done very slowly, and no human brain has ever been
mapped in its entirety. If the procedure could be fully automated like gene
sequencing has been automated in the last two decades it could become quick and
cheap. It is pretty easy to envision a distant future where there are automated
factories that takes preserved brains from the past and reanimate them
digitally. It may sound absurd, but this could be our salvation: a fountain of
youth, a portal to immortal godhood, and a source for eternal life.
This process of scanning a brain and copying or transferring
it to a computer is called whole brain emulation or mind uploading. The neurons
could be simulated by hardware and the software they run would come from the
mapped brain. If this was attempted today it would have to run on silicon
microchips, but by the time this becomes viable other forms of hardware may be
available such as optical, neuromorphic, or quantum computing.
You wouldn’t want to be among the first to be resurrected
because the tech will exhibit exponential improvement and the early methods
will be less effective, and more destructive to brain tissue. So you would want
to stipulate in your will, trust, or contract that you would like to wait until
the technology fully matures. This may be hundreds or even thousands of years
after it becomes technically feasible.
Most leading experts today believe that advancements in AI,
computer science, and brain mapping will come together to result in artificial
consciousness. An uploaded mind with artificial consciousness could inhabit a
robot situated in the real world, or could be situated in virtual reality or cyberspace.
Transhumanists and futurists see mind uploading as the most viable form of life
extension technology. There are definite benefits in leaving our organic
components behind. If we were made of metal, fiberglass, and silicon we could
better withstand accidents, damage, the vacuum of space, and the passage of
time. Mind uploading could even help humanity survive a catastrophe on Earth if
it were to become inhospitable to biological life.
To help you recreate a person it might also help to mine
your, or another person’s, memories of them. For example, if your brain had
been uploaded you could use your memories of your grandparent to help recreate
them, or to help train the system that is attempting to emulate them. If a
pet’s brain could be restructured digitally it could be mined for a very high
level of detail about someone’s movements and emotional reactions. The digital
memories of whole families could be used to reconstitute each other with even
higher fidelity. One could also collect information about (or mine the brains
of) teachers, classmates, childhood friends, roomates, coworkers, etc., and use
these to refine and reconcile a model of someone.
Once you are dead, you won’t be in any hurry to be brought
back to life. You will be unconscious until you are resurrected so it will feel
as if no time passed at all, even if it took one thousand years to resurrect
you. If the procedure is done properly the new version of you should remember
his/her last day like it was yesterday. However, you may not be able to recall
the last few hours before your death because the chemical and electrical
changes responsible for short-term memory would not have had the time they
needed to be changed (consolidated) into physical changes responsible for
long-term memory. These traces are very subtle and are likely to be very
difficult to ascertain and record.
Would It Really Be
You?
Would minds that have been uploaded retain a sense of
historical identity with their past self or would it be like being replaced by
a twin or doppelganger? If performed exactingly the mind upload technique would
probably result in a person that even our friends and family could not tell
apart from us. This new person themselves might even be convinced that they are
us, but that doesn’t mean that we are them. The important question would be:
“Would we feel like our sense of consciousness and personal continuity
continued to live on in this system? Would we experience identity perseverance
through time after having our mind uploaded from our body? Or would we be
effectively dead?” Personally I don’t think any kind of technology developed in
the next hundred years would allow us to feel like we have woken up within a
machine. But thousands of years from now, that may be a possibility.
Take the teleporter from Star Trek for instance. When
Captain Kirk steps into the machine his cells and molecules are read by it and
the data it collects is used to create a perfect copy of him in some other
location. As this is taking place his original body is destroyed, but the new
copy has all of his knowledge and memories, and even perfect recollection of
the thoughts he was having before he entered the machine. But let’s be honest,
the original Captain Kirk was killed. If his body had not been destroyed in the
process, there would be two of him, but neither would feel like they were two
people. In fact, it would be possible to convince the original Kirk that the
teleportation hadn’t worked and he would have no way of knowing that he had an
exact double on another planet. He would feel no psychic connection with it.
Some scientists have speculated there are two ways to
overcome this problem: 1) you could slowly turn off a person’s brain as you
slowly turn on its digital recreation as if you were pouring the contents of
one container into another, and 2) you could gradually replace neurons with
their electronic equivalents one by one until the entire brain had been
replaced. I don’t think the first solution solves the problem. I think the
second one might if done properly, but is too messy and complicated to be
feasible in the next several hundred years. The second technique is analogous
to the thought experiment of “the ship of Theseus.” Theseus gradually replaced
the parts of his ship until the whole ship had been updated, but the question
considered by philosophers is: “Is it still fundamentally the same ship?” It is
important to point out that both of these methods requires a living person and
could not be performed with a “neuropreserved” brain. Can there be continuity
between two selves separated by death?
The feeling that you are the same person that you were 5 or
even 50 years ago, involves an illusion. You are not that same person today.
Your interests, memories, and values have changed substantially. Keep in mind
that every year 98% of all of the atoms in the body are replaced. In fact, when
you wake up in the morning you are not the same person you were when you went
to bed. Billions of connections throughout your brain were altered while you
slept. We even lose continuity every time we take a mind altering substance.
Accidental drowning, near death experiences, coma, anesthesia, hard drugs like
psychedelics, and the passage of time all cause the erosion of neurological
continuity and personal identity. What would it mean for you to die, and then
have a version of you be resurrected 10 or 100 years later? Would that be
similar to the case of Star Trek teleportation? Or would it be a just another
example of imperfect continuity that we already accept and take for granted?
Ok, here is a simple hypothetical. Imagine being teleported
to a base on the moon. If your previous body was destroyed your personal
conscious awareness would be annihilated with it despite the fact that your
duplicate will behave as if it was you. But now imagine that rather than being
transported to the moon, you are merely transported three feet to the right.
Same outcome right? Ok, imagine that you are transported one nanometer (a
billionth of a meter) to the right. What if your duplicate was compiled in the
exact space that you take up now, perhaps using the same atoms and molecules?
It would feel like it was you, but would you feel like you were it? This
hypothetical scenario tells me that there is something illusory about the
persistence of personal identity through time. You are not the same person who
started reading this paragraph, or even this sentence. You might as well have
been duplicated multiple times.
Not only has your brain changed physically and chemically
every morning when you wake up, but countless physical vibrations and
electromagnetic rays have passed through it. Because the Earth revolves around
the sun, and the solar system revolves around the Milky Way your brain is now
in a vastly distant location than it was when you went to sleep last night.
During your eight hours of sleep trillions of tiny microscopic changes have
taken place in your brain due to metabolism, homeostasis, learning, and
entropy. Because of these constant changes, continuity in your personhood is
broken down on submillisecond time scales even when you are awake, so it’s not
clear how important it is that your uploaded AI brain feels 100% continuity of
consciousness with your previous biological self. What is really important is
to preserve as much of the identity, values, creativity, intelligence, and
humanity as possible.
The Costs and
Benefits to Humanity
To some people mind uploading sounds creepy and unnecessary,
but even these people must admit that it accomplishes the goal of preserving
interesting and important data as well as preserving the diversity of our
species and of intelligent life on Earth. Each person has their own perspective,
insights, and intuitions. Is it wise to just let these decompose with the rest
of the body? Historians go to great lengths to preserve books, cultures,
languages, movies, and even videogames. Our societies preserve mummies in
museums and academics try to make all possible inferences about historical
figures and events from prehistory through antiquity, and on through to the
present age. Why wouldn’t we want to preserve brains and minds?
Because uploaded minds could be run within a simulation
there would be few costs. If it costs pennies, creates no waste, and does not
contribute to pollution or overpopulation, wouldn’t it be preferable to have a
digital version of your grandparents? Why not? In the future, if these uploads
didn’t require a lot of energy or take up a lot of space, I can see
corporations or even the government getting involved and making sure that
corporations in the business of brain preservation that fail do not trash their
corpses because of the value of the information that they contain. If two heads
are better than one, doesn’t that mean that we want as many heads as possible?
Why not have a communal system of digital intelligences? In comic books and
science fiction it is already a staple. For instance Marvel comics alone has
the Xandar World Mind, The Kree Supreme Intelligence, the Phalanx hive mind,
and the Eternal’s Unimind.
If the costs to running uploaded brains are inconsequential
then there will not be many barriers. In the distant future the computer memory
and processing resources needed to run the equivalent of a human brain will be
very small. Your brain uses about the same amount of electricity as a 60 watt
lightbulb and this could be reduced dramatically by technology. Moore’s law and
Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns suggest that this could happen in just a
few hundred years. If you could run millions of lives in their own chosen
simulated realities on something like a phone, wouldn’t you? Of course it would
have to be overseen by some kind of ethical governing body because there are
ways it could go wrong.
There are certainly some risks and downsides. Your brain
could be destroyed accidentally (or on purpose) before you are brought back.
This is a problem because, as of today there is no way to back it up. Even more
disturbingly, your brain could be stolen and placed inside of a nightmare
simulation. It would be possible for a malicious person to upload you to a
computer, enhance your senses and intelligence one millionfold and then subject
you to the worst torture imaginable for the rest of eternity. You would be
totally disembodied, with no way to reach out to your own hardware, so you
could not commit suicide, and there would be nothing you could do to escape.
This is a serious concern, especially given that this could happen to people,
or even to copies of people, and the device involved could be hidden so that
any kind of law enforcement that exists at the time would have trouble finding
it.
Acclaimed futurologist and inventor Ray Kurzweil believes
that he will live long enough to be digitized before he dies. He is currently
72, but he points out that technology and medicine are advancing exponentially
and thus should be able to keep him alive long enough to see the next major
advancement. He uses the analogy of a bridge to another bridge to describe how
future medicine will be able to keep extending lifespan until brain emulation
technology finally matures.
Let’s assume that brain emulation technology will be
feasible by the year 2100. For someone who is 70 today to reach this time the
medicine of the future will have to be able to extend their lifespan to 150.
Experts in gerontology estimate that almost everyone would develop Alzheimer’s
if they lived to be 130. However, even
if you died with profound Alzheimer’s and severe memory loss, the data could
still be mined, and your synthetic brain could be free of Alzheimer’s and have
full recall. Much of Alzheimer’s disease is an issue of data access due to
reduced brain metabolism. In most cases it is not necessarily an issue of
complete loss of memory traces (although cell death and brain shrinkage are
issues). Thus much of the mental aging or cognitive morbidity you suffered in
old age could be reversed, because increasing the energy output of an
artificial brain would be as easy as turning a knob.
Upgrading Your Own
Hardware
I would want to live forever, even if it meant that I had to
remain in virtual reality within a computer. This is partly because very soon,
virtually reality will be much more interesting and stimulating that actual
reality. Just look at the progress in videogames and computers in the last 40
years. Think about the jump from Pong to a game like Red Dead Redemption 2. We
have gone from simple sprite graphics to vast, photorealistic, polygonal worlds.
Virtual reality will become insanely immersive within our lifetime and its
quality will continue to increase exponentially. But the digital environment
won’t be the only thing that shows exponential progress. Your mind and
consciousness will too.
Today our brains are stuck at a fixed energetic capacity
because our hunting and gathering ancestors could only find so much food in a
day. Our neurological blueprint is encumbered by the metabolic constraints of
our past. Not so for machines. You could easily turn up the juice on an AI. You
could increase the processing power and speed easily. You could add as many
neurons and synapses as you want. This would expand the level of consciousness.
Working memory, and intelligence, could be expanded millions
of times. There would be many ways to do this but one of the most interesting
ways would be to manipulate something called “sustained firing.” The ability of
neurons in the brain’s association areas, such as the prefrontal cortex, to
engage in sustained firing allows them to maintain whatever information they
encode for as long as they keep firing. This firing can last up to a minute at
a time and allows us to keep specific representations active for sustained
periods. If we didn’t have this ability we could not have a train of thought
and thus. Sustained firing in humans lasts for longer than any other animal,
but if it was made even longer then we would be less forgetful, near-sighted,
and impulsive, and far more intelligent. Merely, increasing the duration of
sustained firing in an AI could vastly expand its awareness and mental
capabilities.
Using techniques like these to amplify the working memory of
a digitally reanimated brain would result in interesting abilities. A digital
brain that could coactivate many more parameters and specifications (memory
fragments) would perform searches for associations with much more specificity.
This could result in the ability to completely recall events that a biological
brain could not. This could allow you to recover distant memories that you have
long since forgotten. In fact, you might be capable of remembering virtually
any semantic knowledge that you had acquired before (such as facts about the
world), and also a great deal of episodic memory (such as minute details about
every birthday you ever had).
If the hardware and software is consistently upgraded your
intelligence and knowledge will grow geometrically. Constant tweaks, additions,
and improvements to our artificial minds would cause us to rapidly gain
computational power in the same way that computers did in the last 70 years.
Thus as we aged we would consistently get smarter. Each day you would think
faster and more comprehensively. But even more excitingly, this computational
power would enhance our very sentience. We could become incomprehensibly
intelligent and commune with other superintelligent beings in fantastic ways.
Imagine a hyperintelligent future version of yourself that was able to engage
in a form of profound post verbal communication with hundreds of other entities
simultaneously.
Imagine learning new fields of science, mathematics, and
engineering in seconds and having the mental wherewithal to put them to use
creating not only new theories, but practical uses as well. You will be free to
learn about, explore, and contribute to whatever endeavors, or lines of
progress you wish. You will also be able to watch all of the fantastic social,
scientific, and technological advancements and breakthroughs being made by
others. Imagine living in the year 30,000 and having encyclopedic knowledge of
everything that has happened and everything that has been discovered. The
neural circuits associated with physical and emotional pain could be cut out,
and those associated with pleasure, excitement, and love could be amplified. Imagine
living in a cyberspace afterlife paradise with trillions of times more
cognitive resources than you have now. I want that.
It is pretty clear that missing out on brain uploading may be
like missing out on heaven. It has the potential to provide everyone alive
today with eternal bliss, replete with endless knowledge, superintelligence,
limitless growth, incomprehensible beauty, and unlimited connection. So you
might want to start looking into curating your data, and preserving your brain.
As we have discussed though, for people alive this century the desire for a
postmortem existence could all be in vain, and for that reason we should also
come to peace with the idea that we may not be immortal. Also we should not let
the specter of digital immortality in any way diminish the value of a good and
worthwhile life, or our sense of peace with the natural way of things.
Here are some lists of a few of my favorite things:
Favorite Comic Book Artists
Arthur Adams
Jim Lee
John Romita Jr.
Jose Luis Garcia Lopez
John Byrne
Frank Frazetta
George Perez
Mike Deodato Jr.
Esad Ribic
Olivier Coipel
Leinil Francis Yu
Daniel Acuna
Jack Kirby
David Finch
Humberto Ramos
Whilce Portacio
Jae Lee
Ariel Olivetti
Rob Liefeld
Jim Cheung
Eric Larson
Joe Madureira
Todd McFarlane
Frank Cho
Paul Smith
J Scott Campbell
Sam Keith
Alex Ross
Frank Miller
Mark Silvistri
Bill Sienkiewicz
Bob McLeod
Carmine Infantino
Akira Toriyama
Chris Bachalo
Greg Capullo
Brian Stelfreeze
Jerome Opena
Steve Ditko
Bob Kane
Peter Laird
Steve Englehart
Jim Starlin
Walt Simonson
Art Thibert
Bruce Timm
Steve Epting
Jason Fabok
David Cockrum
Marko Djurdjevic
Jim Valentino
Mark Texeira
Dale Keown
Mark Bagley
Paul Ryan
Jim Steranko
Rod Reis
John Romita Sr.
Andy Kubert
Bryan Hitch
Favorite
Comic Book Writers
Brian Michael Bendis
Chris Claremont
Stan Lee
Geoff Johns
Mark Millar
Louise Simonson
Jonathan Hickman
Kurt Busiek
Chuck Dixon
Jim Starlin
John Byrne
Matt Fraction
Alan Moore
Scott Lobdell
David Michelinie
Larry Hama
Marv Wolfman
Grant Morrison
Jeff Loeb
Neil Gaiman
Ed Brubaker
Jason Aaron
Frank Miller
Fabian Nicieza
Walter Simonson
Rick Remender
Dan Slott
Warren Ellis
Roger Stern
Scott Snyder
Mark Waid
Peter David
Brian K Vaughn
Grant Morrison
Favorite TV Shows
1.
The Office
2.
The Twilight Zone
3.
The Simpsons
4.
Batman the Animated Series
5.
Planet Earth
6.
Jeopardy
7.
Rick and Morty
8.
Black Mirror
9.
Married with Children
10.
TMNT
11.
Family Guy
12.
The Wonder Years
13.
He man
14.
G.I. Joe
15.
Transformers
16.
Ducktails
17.
MacGyver
18.
X-Men
19.
Fresh Prince of Belair
20.
Dragon Ball
21.
Martin
22.
Ren & Stimpy
23.
Star Trek New Generation
24.
In Living Color
25.
Knight Rider
26.
The X-Files
27.
Chapelle’s show
28.
South Park
29.
The A-Team
30.
Lassie
31.
Miami Vice
32.
Muppet Babies
33.
American Dad
34.
Thunder Cats
35.
Superman Animated Series
36.
That 70s show
37.
Magnum PI
38.
Looney Toons
39.
Are you afraid of the dark
40.
Spider-Man
41.
Review
42.
Reading Rainbow
43.
Cops
44.
The Real Ghostbusters
45.
Arsenio Hall
46.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
47.
Saturday Night Live
48.
Nathan for You
49.
Stranger Things
50. Mr. Ed
Favorite Movies:
2001 A Space
Odyssey
Pinocchio
Memento
Akira
Kurosawa‘s Dreams
Joker
Karate Kid
The Never Ending Story
The Master
Rain Man
The Shining
There Will Be Blood
Akira
Aliens
Alice in Wonderland
Raiders of the Lost Arc
Street Fighter II
Animated Movie
Limitless
Guardians of the Galaxy
Her
Goonies
My Octopus Teacher
Planes Trains and Automobiles
Napoleon Dynamite
The Rescue
Beverly Hills Cop
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
All Star Superman
Blood Sport
Scarface
40 Year Old Virgin
Home Alone
Interstellar
Avengers Infinity War
Annihilation
Ace Ventura
Adventures
in Babysitting
Godfather
Back to the Future II
Coming To America
Batman 1989
Inception
Ghostbusters
Forest Gump
Diehard II
Ex Machina
The Matrix
Silence of the Lambs
Peter Pan
One Flew Over Cuckoo’s
Nest
Pulp Fiction
Rambo
Stand By Me
The Blues Brothers
Taxi Driver
Snow White
Brewster‘s Millions
The Alpinist
Dark Knight
Social Dilemma
Star Wars Episode 4
Thor Ragnarok
The Time Machine 1960
The Sixth Sense
Belly
Wayne’s World
Transcendence
Wedding Crashers
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Enter the Dragon
Ninja Scroll
The Usual Suspects
Friday
Gravity
The Thing
Awakenings
Independence Day
The Revenant
Swingers
The Martian
Superbad
Borat
The Exorcist
Bridesmaids
Guys and Dolls
Journey to the Center of the Earth 1959
A List of my Favorite Games (in
order)
1. Street Fighter Alpha 3
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade
3. Grand Theft Auto Vice City
4. SVC Chaos
5. Max Payne 2
6. Tetris
7. Astroneer
8. Beat Sabre
9. Capcom vs. SNK
10. Tomb Raider
11. Rez
12. Sonic the Hedgehog
13. Street Fighter 4
14. Punisher Arcade
15. Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours
16. Dead or Alive 3
17. Panzer Dragoon
18. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
19. The Turning Test
20. Onimusha Dawn of Dreams
21. Last Blade 2
22. Katamari Damacy
23. Mark of the Wolves
24. Devil May Cry
25. Samurai Showdown 2
26. Fez
27. Aliens Versus Predator Arcade
28. Portal
29. Bubble Bobble
30. NBA Jam
31. Mario Kart Double Dash
32. Red Dead Redemption
33. X-Men Arcade
34. Super Mario Brothers 3
35. Mortal Kombat 3
36. Abzu
37. Injustice 2
38. Mario Galaxy
39. Rime
40. Journey
41. Tekken 3
42. Call of Duty Modern Warfare
43. King of Fighters ‘02
44. Soul Calibur 2
45. Hulk Ultimate Destruction
46. Halo
47. Dynasty Warriors
48. Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay
49. Capcom Fighting Evolution
50. Virtual On
51. Killswitch
52. Flower
53. Batman PSVR
54. Mega Man 6
55. Gears of War
56. Burnout Take Down
57. Metal Slug
58. Sengoku 3
59. X-Men Children of the Atom
60. Firewatch
61. Last Guardian
62. Dynasty Warriors
63. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
64. Captain America and the Avengers
65. Dragon Ball Z
66. Spiderman Miles Morales
67. Final Fight
68. Captain Commando
69. Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis
70. Joe Joe’s Bizarre Adventure
71. Marvel Superheroes versus Streetfighter
72. Red Earth
73. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
74. Sawblade
75. Mario Sunshine
76. Twisted Metal 2
77. World Heroes to Jet
78. Virtua Fighter 2
79. X-Men versus Streetfighter
80. Zelda
81. Mario Odyssey
82. Ultimate Spiderman
83. King of Fighters 96
84. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
85. Red Dead Redemption 2
86. God of War
87. Soul Calibur
88. Grand Theft Auto 5
89. Onimusha 2
90. Streets of Rage 2
91. Fist of the North Star
92. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker
93. Marvel’s Avengers
94. DBZ Budokai
95. Rampage
96. Yakuza
97. Battle Arena Toshinden
98. Dante’s Inferno
99. Resident Evil
100. Ghosts of Tsushima
Jared Reser’s 100 Favorite Rappers
This list is
not based on bars, rhyming, wordplay, entendre, body of work, or impact. I just
don’t value lyrics that much. For me rap is all about melody, cadence, vocal
arrangement, and style, and that is how I came to these rankings.
1. Tupac
2. Warren G
3. 50 Cent
4. Notorious BIG
5. Prodigy
6. Kurupt
7. Lil Wayne
8. Too Short
9. Drake
10. Kanye West
11. Nas
12. LL Cool J
13. DMX
14. Nate Dogg
15. Ma$e
16. Fabolous
17. Camron
18. Xzibit
19. Young Thug
20. Ludacris
21. Daz
22. Busta Rhymes
23. E 40
24. Snoop Dogg
25. TI
26. Pusha T
27. Method Man
28. Gucci Mayne
29. Ice Cube
30. Rakim
31. J Cole
32. Foxy Brown
33. Jadakiss
34. Travis Scott
35. MC Eiht
36. Slick Rick
37. Roddy Rich
38. Andre 3000
39. Kendrick Lamar
40. Rick Ross
41. Lil Kim
42. MC Hammer
43. Future
44. Nelly
45. Young Dro
46. Fetty Wap
47. Pitbull
48. Redman
49. Uncle Luke
50. Dr. Dre
51. WC
52. Ol Dirty Bastard
53. Craig Mack
54. Rappin 4-Tay
55. Dom Kennedy
56. Missy Elliott
57. Juvenile
58. Big L
59. Kid Ink
60. Nicki Minaj
61. Coolio
62. Raekwon
63. Ghostface
64. Mack 10
65. Big Sean
66. MC Lyte
67. Twista
68. Jeezy
69. YG
70. Big Pun
71. Lauryn Hill
72. Common
73. Master P
74. Meek Mill
75. Bad Bunny
76. Mos Def
77. Big Pun
78. Nipsey Hustle
79. GZA
80. Lil Durk
81. Sage the Gemini
82. The Game
83. Beanie Segal
84. Tyga
85. Andre Nickatina
86. Eightball
87. BLXST
88. Eazy-E
89. Cardi B
90. Wale
91. French Montana
92. Juicy J
93. Black Thought
94. Lupe Fiasco
95. Quavo
96. Killer Mike
97. Big Boi
98. ASAP Rocky
99. Chuck D
100.
Treach
Favorite 50 Rap Groups
1. Mobb Deep
2. Tha Dogg Pound
3. Bone Thugs N Harmony
4. Westside Connection
5. 2 Live Crew
6. ONYX
7. Gang Starr
8. Migos
9. The Firm
10. Whodini
11. G Unit
12. 69 Boys
13. Rae Sremmurd
14. Junior Mafia
15. Cash Money Millionaires
16. Sugarhill Gang
17. Fugees
18. A Tribe Called Quest
19. Wreckx-n-Effect
20. Three Six Mafia
21. Naughty By Nature
22. Compton’s Most Wanted
23. Wu-Tang Clan
24. Kris Kross
25. Luniz
26. Salt-N-Pepa
27. Huncho Jack
28. Kid ‘n Play
29. Tag Team
30. The LOX
31. EPMD
32. Dipset
33. Whoridas
34. Flip Mode Squad
35. Run DMC
36. St. Lunatics
37. Timbaland and Magoo
38. Outlawz
39. Ruff Ryders
40. Alkaholiks
41. Young Money
42. ASAP Mob
43. Dove Shack
44. OFTB
45. Goodie Mob
46. Harlem World
47. Lost Boyz
48. Public Enemy
49. Wisin y Yandel
50. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious 5
51. NWA
52. Geto Boys
53. The Roots
54. Yin Yang Twin
55. Black Eyed Peas
56. Arrested Development
57. Thug Life
58. Ultramagnetic MCs
59. Quad City DJs
60. Ghost Town DJs
61. Goodie Mob
62. Gorillaz
63. Boogie Down Productions
64. Das EFX
65. Terror Squad
66. NERD
67. Pharcyde
68. Digital Underground
69. Digable Planets
70. Jurassic Five
71. Dilated Peoples
72. Do or Die
73. Cypress Hill
74. De La Soul
75. UGK
76. 504 Boys
77. Beatnuts
78. De La Sol
79. Da Lench Mob
80.
Favorite 50 Rap Producers
1. DJ Mustard
2. Havoc
3. Kanye West
4. Johnny J
5. Trackmasters
6. Daz
7. Dj Quik
8. Noah 40 Shebib
9. Timbaland
10. Battlecat
11. Mike Will Made-It
12. Puff Daddy
13. Boi-1da
14. Dr Dre
15. The Hitmen
16. The Alchemist
17. DJ Premier
18. Warren G
19. Juicy J & DJ Paul
20. Soopafly
21. Zaytoven
22. DJ Khaled
23. Metro Boomin
24. Hit-Boy
25. Nashiem Myrick
26. Erick Sermon
27. Just Blaze
28. Manny Fresh
29. Swizz Beatz
30. OG Parker
31. Rockwilder
32. Ant Banks
33. DJ Pooh
34. Murda Beatz
35. J Dilla
36. RZA
37. London on da Track
38. The Neptunes
39. Nitti Beat
40. Q-Tip
41. Marley Marl
42. Buddah Bless
43. Hitmaka
44. Large Professor
45. Ron “Amenra” Lawrence
46. PK
47. No ID
48. Irv Gotti
49. Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie
50. Dame Grease
51. Beats by the Pound
52. Lil Jon
53. Pete Rock
54. The Underdogs
55. Danja
56. Drumma Boy
57. Organized Noise
58. Dutch
59. 9th Wonder
60. Rick Rubin
61. The Medicine Men
62. Scott Storch
63. Lex Luger
64. Madlib
65. MMG
Favorite 50 R&B Producers
1. Babyface
2. Devante Swang
3. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
4. Dallas Austin
5. David Foster
6. Quincy Jones
7. Rodney Jerkins
8. Teddy Riley
9. Jermain Dupri
10. Puff Daddy
11. Timbaland
12. LA Reid
13. Stevie J
14. Daryl Simmons
15. Montel Jordan
16. Keith Crouch
17. Pharrell Williams
18. Barry Gordy
19. Jazze Pha
20. Heavy D
21. Mario Winans
22. Teddy Bishop
23. Joe Thomas
24. R Kelly
25. James Ingram
26. Nick Ashford & Valerie Simpson
27. Tim & Bob
28. Soulshock & Karlin
29. Michael Bivins
30. Bryan-Michael Cox
31. Missy Elliot
32. Prince
33. Tricky Stewart
34. Polow da Don
35. Kevin She’kspere Briggs
36. Rich Harrison
37. Norman Whitfield
38. Tricky Stewart
39. Holland-Dozier-Holland
40. Leon Sylvers
41. Dre & Vidal
42. D’Angelo
43. Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff
44. Narada Michael Walden
45. Wycleff Jean
46. Rich Harrison
47. The Characters
48. Joyce Irby
49. Foster & McElroy
50. Vincent Herbert
51. Keith Sweat
52. Raphael Saadiq
Favorite 50 R&B Groups
1. Jodeci
2. New Edition
3. Boyz 2 Men
4. Dru Hill
5. Blackstreet
6. The Jackson 5
7. SWV
8. Kool & The Gang
9. TLC
10. The Gap Band
11. Earth Wind and Fire
12. Pretty Ricky
13. The Whispers
14. Tony Toni Tone
15. LSG
16. 112
17. The Isley Brothers
18. En Vogue
19. K-ci & Jojo
20. Debarge
21. Parliament
22. The Temptations
23. Total
24. Guy
25. Destiny’s Child
26. Next
27. Mint Condition
28. Silk Sonic
29. The Commodores
30. Cameo
31. Bell Biv Devoe
32. The Spinners
33. Changing Faces
34. Mary Jane Girls
35. The Deele
36. Shai
37. The O’Jays
38. Shalamar
39. Brownstone
40. Soul For Real
41. Allure
42. The Jets
43. The Pointer Sisters
44. Az Yet
45. Ohio Players
46. Public Announcement
47. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
48. Immature
49. Troop
50. Atlantic Starr
51. 702
52. Hi-Five
53. Mokenstef
54. Men of Vision
55. Soul II Soul
56. Zhane
57. B2K
58. Backstreet Boys
59. The Drifters
60. H-Town
61. Playa
62. Lucy Pearl
63. Ideal
64. Blaque
65. Jade
66. Silk
67. Another Bad Creation
68. Xscape
69. The Chi-Lites
70. The Supremes
71. Gladys Knight & the Pips
72. All-4-One
73. After 7
74. 3LW
75. Jagged Edge
76. Four Tops
Favorite 100 R&B Singers
1. Whitney Houston
2. Luther Vandross
3. R Kelly
4. Chris Brown
5. Mariah Carey
6. Keith Sweat
7. Usher
8. Michael Jackson
9. Joe
10. Lionel Richie
11. Al Green
12. Rihanna
13. Toni Braxton
14. Chante Moore
15. Mary J Blidge
16. Bobby Brown
17. Tinashe
18. Ciara
19. Rick James
20. The Weeknd
21. Stevie Wonder
22. Shanice
23. Sade
24. Drake
25. Bryson Tiller
26. Chaka Khan
27. D Train
28. Johnny Gill
29. The Dream
30. Beyonce
31. Janet Jackson
32. Nate Dogg
33. Brandy
34. Tyrese Gibson
35. Marvin Gaye
36. Ginuwine
37. Donell Jones
38. Anita Baker
39. Ne-Yo
40. Ty Dolla Sign
41. Aretha Franklin
42. Sisqo
43. Tamia
44. Aaliyah
45. James Brown
46. Patti LaBelle
47. Ray Charles
48. Trey Songz
49. Angela Winbush
50. Jeremih
51. Montell Jordan
52. Bruno Mars
53. Brain Mc Knight
54. Roger and Zapp
55. Monica
56. Alicia Keys
57. Prince
58. Gina Thompson
59. Omarion
60. Charlie Wilson
61. Vanessa Williams
62. Summer Walker
63. Barry White
64. Amerie
65. TQ
66. Alexander O’Neal
67. Jacquees
68. Freddie Jackson
69. Ashanti
70. Avant
71. Uncle Sam
72. Mark Morrison
73. Zhane
74. Smokey Robinson
75. Trey Songz
76. Bobby Valentino
77. Jon B
78. Case
79. Cherrelle
80. Billy Ocean
81. D’Angelo
82. Gerald Levert
83. Diana Ross
84. David Hollister
85. Aaron Hall
86. August Alsina
87. Jhene Aiko
88. Maxwell
89. Rita Ora
90. Paula Abdul
91. George Clinton
92. Christina Milian
93. Akon
94. Al B. Sure!
95. Tina Turner
96. Tory Lanez
97. Sevyn Streeter
98. T-Pain
99. Raphael Saadiq
