Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more weird to have enemies.
It takes a very specific type of person to believe that they, specifically, have enemies.
Why, do you think conflict only exists in fiction?
Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
121–130 of 207 posts
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#122If this technology pans out, and there doesn't seem to be anything fundamental against it, the future will be very different from what I imagined. Medical treatment, space travel and exploration, even retirement may have gotten a lot more interesting.
Not really. We know that oxygen-starved brain quickly destroys itself in minutes, unless very cold. So even if you can revive a brain after hours, it will not be a very good brain.
Why would anyone wait a few hours after death to do the technique? Wouldn't it make more sense to do it right away, and get the brain into its new medium? Right now there's all the limitations of something that's a nascent technology, but the methods should surely be improved as time goes on.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#123Throwing it out there—when I'm dead, you are totally allowed to resuscitate my brain. Better than being dead. Please make sure I am supplied with some good books to read, if at all possible.
I can't relate to this at all. When I'm dead, I'd like to cease. I have no desire for my brain to outlast my body.
Will you know you're dead though? If they have the technology to bring your brain back, they probably have the technology to make your brain think you're still in your body and you woke up.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies.
It's very weird to think that people would even care enough about a dead person to single out your brain for "payback". Even weirder to think that these people would somehow be in power.
This idea was somewhat explored in Iain M. Banks _surface detail_, after death, your conciousness would be put into a virtual hell if you 'sinned' in your physical life and that the hells were used as a deterrent
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Option 3: the experience of being disconnected from your body is so distressing that you can do nothing but attempt (and fail) to scream. The scientists have no idea you are in distress. This goes on for months or years. By the time technology develops to a point where they can communicate with you, you are irreparably broken.
Couldn't they monitor brain activity for common pain modalities?
They currently ignore them. Not talking fantasy.
When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored.
Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd actually be fantastic. If I've donated my brain to anything like the modern research apparatus, I can be relatively sure of one of two possibilities: Either my brain was chosen as a test, in which case the project is on the news literally worldwide and the ethics have had the crap argued out of them and I can be sure that any limitations of the environment are due to technological shortcomings and I get to parti…
Your brain is one of the first 543 experiments in a private laboratory. Researchers convinced ethical board that brains were not really alive. Brains were kept alive average 3 years, but no "contact" was officially attempted to avoid legal or ethical issues. There are rumors of some extracurricular activity happening. Your contribution is not wasted however. First brain that was able to talk to the world and received…
This Reminds me of Scalzi's "Locked In" series where a disease causes a portion of the population to be conscious, but totally disconnected from their bodies. The supplemental material describes I how the first attempts to interact with these people was performed on prison inmates.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't they monitor brain activity for common pain modalities?
They currently ignore them. Not talking fantasy. When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored. Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.
Years ago, I saw a TV interview of the first recipient of a heart-lung transplant.
When asked some question post surgery, she blurted "I could really use a beer!" She didn't drink, but the young male donor of her organs who died in a motorcycle crash did.
She wrote a book about her experience. Initially, she had bizarre dreams, as if tapping into the psyche of her organ donor. Over time, those stopped.
Mention of this tends to not go over well on HN, though it would be easy enough to google who got the first heart-lung transplant, find her book and read it to confirm if I'm making this up or misremembering it or if it's a true story (at least insofar as me remembering that she claimed such things).
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
My naive guess is that, although very jarring at first, most people would actually get used to it in not too long of a time. Humans adapt easily. Also, if they can achieve that feat, they could probably also trick the brain into feeling like it has robotic or virtual body parts. Maybe people with locked-in syndrome could provide some reports of what it's like. It's not the exact same, but it may be similar.
> most people would actually get used to it All evidence we have regarding long stays in solitary confinement or sensory deprivation indicates everyone trends towards psychosis.
For sure. I was assuming a hypothetical ultra-futuristic scenario where the vat brains could communicate with each other via some mechanism, and could access the Internet and consume media and such. Basically you could be just as social as any homebody; just without the body. And maybe they could do some kind of VR body projection thing that mimics all the physical senses. Solitude is a separate matter.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies.
I think it's more weird to have enemies.
You may not have enemies, but someone may consider you their enemy, for any reason they so choose.
Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death
#130Wait, isn't this how the zombie apocalypse normally starts?
That’s precisely what I was thinking!