How to Prepare Your Data and Brain to Have Your Mind Uploaded to a Computer

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.  9^th 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