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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

#101
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can label receptors with aptamers and other technology, and then sequence the aptamer labels (or whatever). Many in situ sequencing techniques can be applied here. Note, however, that this requires more steps than simply scanning with electron microscope multi-array.

Interesting. Maybe also doing some kind of rnaseq synapse by synapse could tell you what levels of neurotransmitters and receptors it’s maintaining.

I’m not sure if that small of a scale would ever be possible.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#102

> Most neuroscientists think the ability to recapture memories from brain tissue and re-create a consciousness inside a computer is at best decades away... At best, decades away? That's some crazy hubris. It's not even imaginable how far away it is. I find it absurd that humans think they can achieve arguably the highest level of godliness in mere decades. This is almost as crazy as saying teleportation is less than…

" To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." - Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube, 19…

This is not a very good comparison at all. In the 1950s, we already had a complete theoretical foundation for space travel. Newton's equations, developed hundreds of years earlier, gave us that foundation. Where is the theoretical foundation for consciousness upload? If you had pulled a quote denouncing space travel from the late 1600s, it would be a better comparison. It should be noted that it took hundreds of years before Newton's theory resulted in extraterrestrial travel.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#103

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…

Furthermore, assuming that one's 'consciousness' could actually be brought back in some kind of form that roughly approximates what it was like when one was alive, what's to prevent one's body/brain from being used in some kind of terrible medical experiment?

For example, what if an evil scientist or organization were to buy up cryogenically preserved bodies on the cheap in 300 years?

Yeah, you could say it's unlikely, but why is it more or less likely than being unfrozen into some paradise?

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#104
post #85
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you seriously suggesting that anyone who does not want to preserve all humans indefinitely is a murderer?

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#105
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evaporat…

If you have the technology to simulate a brain, it seems pretty trivial to simulate a body, environment, and associated sensory inputs as well.

I'm reminded of the 'hybrot' experiments where rat brain cells in a nutrient solution are allowed to wire up their own neural network on top of electrodes that send and receive data wirelessly from a robot body [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401756/rat-brained-robot/]

The question of doing something similar with a strata running a human brain doesn't seem impossible, just extremely technologically daunting when one considers the sheer number of connections into and out of the physical brain.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#106
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

what determines the conductance of the synapse is mostly the number AMPA/NMDA receptors in the synapse for excitatory and GABAa/GABAb for inhibitory. Then there's neuromodulation, g-coupled receptors etc etc. it's clearly not straightforward.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#107
post #30
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... if the startup goes south The startup is a snake oil scam. It is by definition "south." It is not "unclear if the upload is feasible." It is simply NOT feasible.

The startup is not claiming to have current uploading technology. The startup is researching (does not claim to have) brain preservation techniques leading to long-term structure preservation in hopes of uploading sometime in the indefinite future. If your personal opinion is that this cannot happen, that does not make other people who have different beliefs and are upfront about their arguments for them "scammers".

It is likely an iteration on cadaver plastination, wherein tissues are infused with plastic to preserve their structure. This is what enables those "Bodies" exhibitions that show actual human cadavers that have been plastinated, posed, and dissected to show anatomical details.

If you preserve the structure of the brain well enough, you can scrape it down in micrometer-thick layers and progressively photograph the visible surfaces in sufficient detail to reconstruct a map of all neural connections. Combine this with a working model of a neuron, a physics model for chemical diffusion, and knowledge of how living neurons respond to certain chemicals typically found in the brain or those that can cross the blood-brain barrier, and you can simulate a human consciousness inside a computer.

It won't be you, but it will think it was you. That's almost the same thing as what happens every time you wake up in the morning.

Also, in order to avoid frequently resetting the simulation due to insanity, you probably also need a virtual world that simulates realistic inputs through the sensory nerves.

The technology is plausible, particularly if you are a Kurzweilian or transhumanist. Some may feel more comfortable with "Ship of Theseus"-style gradual migration of an organic brain into digital computer via implantation of technology devices with neuron-computer interfaces. But since we aren't as close to that, injecting your dead brain with epoxy is the closest you can get now to not being dead and gone forevermore.

Note that the necessary knowledge for digitizing a preserved brain is likely centuries away, but that doesn't matter if you can preserve your brain to remain unchanged for centuries. To the new entity that can remember being you and likes all the same things you like, it will be like waking up in the future. And hopefully, you left some money for AI civil rights in your will, so it won't be a digitized slave toiling away on the pattern recognition plantations.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can label receptors with aptamers and other technology, and then sequence the aptamer labels (or whatever). Many in situ sequencing techniques can be applied here. Note, however, that this requires more steps than simply scanning with electron microscope multi-array.

Interesting. Maybe also doing some kind of rnaseq synapse by synapse could tell you what levels of neurotransmitters and receptors it’s maintaining. I’m not sure if that small of a scale would ever be possible.

Yeah, it would certainly help to use a method like expansion microscopy, sort of like if Nectome were to subcontract some work to a certain MIT lab that invented the techni--- oh wait..

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#109
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evaporat…

If you have the technology to simulate a brain, it seems pretty trivial to simulate a body, environment, and associated sensory inputs as well.

Even if the technology to emulate a particular brain based on a preserved copy could exist, it seems to be asking a lot for the engineers to also emulate the specific nervous system that brain has grown to work with without a copy of it...

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#110
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resurrection, while not impossible , is sufficiently unlikely that taking people's money while promising it-- even with a disclaimer that it is not guaranteed-- seems exploitative, akin to people promising homeopathic cancer remedies. It is preying on people's fear of death.

No cryonics organization promises it.

I don't know where you're getting that. Alcor calls itself a "life extension" foundation, and right on the front page, says:

"We believe medical technology will advance further in coming decades than it has in the past several centuries, enabling it to heal damage at the cellular and molecular levels and to restore full physical and mental health."

This is not a promise from them but is surely worded like resurrection is a certainty.

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