Actually, right now it'd be a very simple task to find people willing to undergo the experiment: the terminally ill. The more important question is whether terminal illness will even exist anymore when total brain upload becomes viable.
Even that would not be conclusive. Each person has to take the pluge for him/herself. It's like the believe of life after death, essentially. No way to prove it except by going through the experience yourself. All other information about survival of consciousness is second-hand. Even recall of human memories memory input to a black box could be a case of rote recall without consciousness.
Some scientists tend to paint their conception of reality with the colors that are popular at a given time. When Isaac Newton was the reigning savant, the peak of technology was the mechanical clock; therefore, the human mind was deemed to be a clockwork mechanism, deterministic and mechanical. Computers are the technology du jour; therefore, RayKay thinks consciousness is something like a computer program -- a program capable of running on any appropriate platform.
I beg to disagree.
As for Moore's Law: expecting a computer to become conscious simply because it has more processing power is like expecting a car to fly because it has more horsepower. "In accordance with Ford's Law, autombiles are becoming faster, more powerful, and cheaper at an ever-increasing rate. For example, ten years ago, in 1913, most automobiles had four cylinder engines producing fifty horsepower or so at a cost of five hundred dollars. Today, eight cylinders, one hundred horsepower and $750 is the norm, and plans for cars with sixteen-cylinder engines developing more than two hundred horsepower are on the drawing boards. These fantastic machines will cost only eight hundred dollars in today's money. By 1963, we can expect to see cars being sold at a cost of $843.75. These cars will be equipped with 128-cylinder engines cranking out an amazing sixteen hundred horsepower, enabling them to fly, drive across water, and travel through time. At that point, mankind's ability to comprehend auto travel will come to an end -- a sort of "autopia" will come into being, beyond which nothing about driving can be known."
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.