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MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

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Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#81

Post by dmix »

ilamont wrote: post #29

Never thought I would ask something like this, but here goes: What's Y Combinator's stance on the death requirement? Nectome was at demo day last month and Sam Altman is (or was) on the waiting list. Following the example of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it is sizing up demand by inviting prospective customers to join a waiting list for a deposit of $10,000, fully refundable if you change your mind. So far, 25 people…

If it's not possible without induced death then is the concern really the "death requirement" or whether it makes sense for consumers to gamble $10k+ that in a future you a) will not die suddenly, b) your brain will not have deteriorated significantly, c) you are fully capable of making a decision to die, d) the company is still around, and e) the science somehow works out to allow "brain uploading"?

Then yes I say there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's their money and their body.

Schopenhauer has the very best treatise on the morality/philosophy of each persons right to suicide: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimi...

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#82

Post by Something1234 »

zapdrive wrote: post #76
walrus01 wrote: post #49

If hundreds of millions of people were to do this, what economic, cultural or religious incentive do people have 500 years from now to resurrect anyone? Maybe people who were famous geniuses, sure, but with my view of human nature I get the impression that unless the resurrection process is extremely low cost and easy, nobody will go to the effort to bring back the consciousness of huge numbers of random people. This…

Or you can die with a private key of a Bitcoin address containing a few bitcoins memorized. And a tattoo or something that will says you'll give half to whoever revives you. Hopefully Bitcoin will be here for a long time.

I highly doubt the longevity of bitcoin enough to do that. Anyways what are the odds that your brain wouldn't be scrambled from the years of being frozen or you'll remember your key.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#83

Post by Jach »

joefourier wrote: post #36
apsec112 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm signed up for cryonics, but to be fair, I agree that it would be irrational if the odds of coming back were 1,000,000,000:1 or something like that. Most people value their lives very highly, but not infinitely.

Depends on the requirements of the 1,000,000,000:1 option. If it's at very little cost to you, and if the alternative is certain, permanent death, the rational choice is still to take the incredibly slim chance of coming back. Otherwise it does indeed depend on the importance you put on your own life. Of course, in the case of cryonics, there is no measurable probability of coming back, so the point is largely moot.

Depends how you measure I guess. If you insist that you need to wait x years and then count how many people were brought back against how many weren't, sure, there's no measure...

But you can break the question down and look for evidence about each step, it's not going to be a precise measurement but you can at least start estimating your belief certainty (as well as introducing bounds -- I don't think anyone's justified in a 90% certainty of coming back at this point, but nor do I think there's justification that it's as low as one in a billion). I've always liked http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/break-cryonics-down.ht... as one approach to turning the problem into multiple conditional steps.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#84

Post by DanBC »

makepanic wrote: post #3

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Please don't use spaces to quote blocks of text. It's completely broken for mobile users, forcing them to use horizontal scroll.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#85

Post by wwwtyro »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #60
Veedrac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First and foremost cryogenics has a PR problem. It is somehow more popular to say that you're glad people are dying by the billions than to align yourself with the people trying to make an earnest effort to stop it (now imagine how fast I would be banned for the same position around genocide). I'm not sure whether this will just further the kneejerk anti-cryogenics sentiment or if it will seem to more normalise norma…

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

Are you suggesting we not save lives so that we can avoid some unrealized fear of overcrowding?

Suppose humanity attains indefinite life spans in the near future. Would you then advocate murder in order to save space?

Should we outlaw antibiotics because they save lives, and those lives take up resources?

I find this argument both unimaginative (improving technology changes the nature of our challenges) and repulsive (it's advocating murder through inaction).

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#86

Post by mrfusion »

return0 wrote: post #67
mrfusion wrote: post #53

I’ve never gotten a good answer as to how an electron microscope can image the synaptic weights. If you look at the pictures it can barely capture the synapses.

electron microscopy has the resolution to discriminate individual spines and synapses, figuring out the weight of the synapse though is not straightforward. At least for excitatory synapses however, there is ample evidence that the size of the spine correlates with the maturity and strength of the synapse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20646057

I didn’t know that. That’s a good start. We still have, what 20 different neurotransmitters that can be weighted differently at each synapse?

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#87

Post by otakucode »

fixermark wrote: post #32
etrautmann wrote: post #26

Brain uploading is a misleading description of what nectome is proposing. We don’t know enough about what needs to be preserved yet to accurately save a snapshot of a brain’s “state”. It’s not theoretically impossible, just much further than this company’s marketing implies.

And given the recent discovery of what some are calling (possibly inaccurately) an entirely new organ in the body resulting from changes in the visualization technologies available ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-intersti... )... I, for one, wouldn't trust that their preservation solution is sufficient for reconstruction of anything even approximating consciousness without a successful bidirecti…

I don't believe we could ever see any kind of system 'approximating consciousness' without a body. Full stop. Dualism is wrong and there is no mind/body split. The full state of the brain, simulated perfectly, would perfectly reproduce the experience of a brain in total sensory deprivation paired with total whole-body paralysis. Even just sensory deprivation alone is enough to cause consciousness to entirely evaporate in moments. Add in whole body paralysis and no, you can never hope to have anything approaching 'consciousness.'

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#88

Post by evanpw »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #60
Veedrac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First and foremost cryogenics has a PR problem. It is somehow more popular to say that you're glad people are dying by the billions than to align yourself with the people trying to make an earnest effort to stop it (now imagine how fast I would be banned for the same position around genocide). I'm not sure whether this will just further the kneejerk anti-cryogenics sentiment or if it will seem to more normalise norma…

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

> How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

If the immortality is based on "brain uploading", maybe just an extra EC2 instance per family of four.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#90

Post by Barrin92 »

Veedrac wrote: post #51
ilamont wrote: post #29

Never thought I would ask something like this, but here goes: What's Y Combinator's stance on the death requirement? Nectome was at demo day last month and Sam Altman is (or was) on the waiting list. Following the example of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it is sizing up demand by inviting prospective customers to join a waiting list for a deposit of $10,000, fully refundable if you change your mind. So far, 25 people…

First and foremost cryogenics has a PR problem. It is somehow more popular to say that you're glad people are dying by the billions than to align yourself with the people trying to make an earnest effort to stop it (now imagine how fast I would be banned for the same position around genocide). I'm not sure whether this will just further the kneejerk anti-cryogenics sentiment or if it will seem to more normalise norma…

there's nothing sound about the 'science of cryogenics' in fact there barely is such science at all if we're talking about the central sales pitch, which is actually bringing you back to life again in one form or another. Freezing you admittedly is straight-forward enough

The brain upload thing is a complete fantasy and science fiction, but even the traditional promise of somehow resurrecting you has never been proven with the exception of a 30-year-old tardigrade two years ago if I remember correctly.

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