Not sure how I missed this reply. I would love to explain how it's untrue. To start at a fundamental level, computation (neurons communicating by electrical signaling with other neurons) is only a small fraction of your brain's activity (never mind the fact that they don't even perform computations in a remotely similar way to a transistor). The author touched on this in the article when he brings up the point about glia (although I'm not sure why he refers to them as being tiny, as the most common subtype, astrocytes, are bigger than neurons). Glia refers to all the neural cells you have that aren't neurons. As it turns out, 90% of your neural cells aren't neurons. And they do have a role in neural activity. For example, at the synapse, which is the connection from one neuron to the next, one "foot" of an astrocyte is always present, a structure commonly known as the "tripartite synapse". The astrocyte provides neurotransmitters and other biomolecules without which your brain wouldn't function. Malfunctions in other types of glia have been shown to cause several diseases of the nervous system, showing definitively that glial cells have a direct role in "consciousness", however defined. So if we just look at the nervous system, it is incredibly easy to tell that computation isn't consciousness; not even close. But, if we want to extend further, just think about a patient with kidney failure. One of the signs of end stage kidney failure is a form of dementia, an obviously altered state of consciousness that results from a chemical imbalance in the blood. A disembodied brain isn't a being. A being is a being, and one's consciousness is inseparable from the being. I would nerd out on you for a bit, but I'd have to get a bit technical, and I'm not sure I could keep anyone's interest if I got into a thing about how silly and wasteful trying to model individual synapses is (as they aren't static), which is kind of the basis of this whole thing.

So the whole thing fails on a least three levels. 1) Synapses are dynamic and can't be mapped with any precision. 2) Neurons aren't the only neural cell type that contributes to consciousness. And 3) your whole body is involved in the way you live (think for example about how an orgasm changes the whole way you feel, physically and mentally).

Furthermore, so what if a computer program can simulate what I might say or do? Does that make that computer program me? It's a silly proposition. Can I see the world through the computer's interface with the world? Absolutely not. A phonograph record is actually a really spot on analogy of what an "uploaded consciousness" might actually be. It's a representation of the real thing, but it's completely fucking different qualitatively . Can a phonograph record respond to the audience? No. Can a phonograph record read subtlety and react accordingly? No. It's an impression of something that was, and nothing more. I would admit that there's a high chance that someday we may have robots of such quality that can trick us into thinking that they're alive, but that doesn't make it so.

Edit: Just to add one more thing, so that I'm being clear, what these folks are doing (in mathematical parlance) is curve fitting. They're making something that looks like something else, but there isn't an underlying theory of consciousness. And unless or until there is, there's no way to replicate it. In math, we can make some curve fit any data set we want, no matter how complex. The Greeks had epicycles, but didn't know shit about gravity. Epicycles are really complicated, but explain nothing about the nature of the universe. Newton's law, even though it's incredibly simple, does. That's the difference between theory and curve fitting.

I think the author made a fair statement. I think your intelligence, emotions, goal-directedness, self-awareness, consciousness, etc are all emergent from the distributed, parallel activity of neurons within the brain and nervous system. Of course this system exists within a larger system of "non-neuronal" cellular material, and that larger system my impact/influence the important properties of your brain, but fundamentally, I think you are you brain patterns. If there were strong evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to hear/read it.