Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
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Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#2Frankenstein has taught us nothing uh?
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#3I don’t see why they bothered drugging the brains. Even if they became conscious, the pig’s bodies are dead and gone. There is nothing to feel, one is simply alone with their thoughts, perhaps even dreams.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#4I don’t see why they bothered drugging the brains. Even if they became conscious, the pig’s bodies are dead and gone. There is nothing to feel, one is simply alone with their thoughts, perhaps even dreams.
Pain exists in the brain, not the body.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#5I don’t see why they bothered drugging the brains. Even if they became conscious, the pig’s bodies are dead and gone. There is nothing to feel, one is simply alone with their thoughts, perhaps even dreams.
We don’t know what a brain disconnected from all sensory inputs feels. It could be agonizing pain for all that we know.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#6Frankenstein has taught us nothing uh?
What could he? He never shared the details of his methods with us. All we have is some third party account with superficial descriptions.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#7Frankenstein has taught us nothing uh?
Idle thought: Frankenstein with VC money...
"Yeah, we're raising our series A so we can ink a deal with a Chinese morgue for a steady supply of parts to stitch together, and to scale up our electricity generation to the needed amount so we don't have to depend on the odd lightning bolt, which turns out to be really rare here in Palo Alto"
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#8I don’t see why they bothered drugging the brains. Even if they became conscious, the pig’s bodies are dead and gone. There is nothing to feel, one is simply alone with their thoughts, perhaps even dreams.
Pain exists in the brain, not the body.
No matter how hard I think, I cannot seem to manifest any true pain in my mind. I doubt a pig could either.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#9This is from the Nature article on the same subject [1]:
> [...] Nevertheless, the development of technology with the potential to support sentient, disembodied organs has broad ethical implications for the welfare of animals and people. “There isn’t really an oversight mechanism in place for worrying about the possible ethical consequences of creating consciousness in something that isn’t a living animal,” says Stephen Latham, a bioethicist at Yale who worked with Sestan’s team. He says that doing so might be ethically justifiable in some cases — for instance, if it enable scientists to test drugs for degenerative brain diseases on the organs, rather than people.
Gauging awareness in a brain outside a body would probably be difficult, given that the organ’s surroundings would differ so radically from its natural environment. “We could imagine that brain could be capable of consciousness,” says George Mashour, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who studies near-death experiences. “But it’s very interesting to think about what kind of consciousness, in the absence of organs and peripheral stimulation. [...]”
It's also 'very interesting to think' how many more dimensions this could add to torture. This is the end of the article:
> [...] In the meantime, scientists and governments are left to confront the legal and ethical quandaries related to the possibility of creating a conscious brain without a body. “This really is a no-man’s land,” says Koch. “The law will probably have to evolve to keep up.”
Koch wants a broader ethical discussion to take place before any researcher tries to induce awareness in a disembodied brain. “It is a big, big step,” he says. “And once we do it, it’s impossible to reverse it.”
Sobering.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#10Fulltext: https://www.gwern.net/docs/longevity/2019-vrselja.pdf
_Nature_ overview/discussions: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01216-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01168-9