Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 201 posts

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#61

Post by jillesvangurp »

esperent wrote: post #47
cute_boi wrote: post #24

Is there such thing called transplanting a body? I thought it would be transplanting a brain because brain is part where memories etc live? Yea there are some philosophical queries but you know ...

> brain is part where memories etc live? As far as we know. But we really know so little and there's a lot of interesting work being done regarding the networks of nerves in other parts of the body. It's extremely likely that the brain is where most of the memories are stored, things like your name and age and so on. It could turn out that a lot of other types of memory, like muscle memory or emotional memory, are mo…

Actually, we know that removing limbs and organs doesn't change memories or personality. Happens all the time. Plenty of gruesome accidents and conditions that can cause that. People seem to survive that kind of trauma without side-effects on memory or personality (well, besides the impact of major trauma).

We also know we can replace limbs and organs with replacements from donors and our brains remember how to use them. This has also been used to control artificial limbs even. Also, hand transplants have been performed already, for example.

Finally, we pretty much know the layout of the brain pretty well and personality changes because of brain injuries are well documented. Also companies like Neuralink seem to be well on their way to repair and augment brains. Also, there have been cases of musicians undergoing brain surgery while playing their instrument so the doctors could see the direct impact of their actions and avoid unnecessary damage.

All that suggests that if this distributed memory is a thing, it's a very minor thing that seems to survive transplants and amputations.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#63

Post by Gupie »

tsimionescu wrote: post #46
Larrikin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always imagine this will be the divide between rich and poor in the future. The more expensive technology will break the person down and send their atoms to the destination to be reconstructed, it will be slower but it will be the same person. The less expensive technology will scan the person send that data and they will be printed out from a a futuristic atomic printer in a process that kills the original. I imag…

You are presupposing that there is a material difference between these two. Whenever you have a discontinuation of your conscious experience (for example, when you go to sleep and wake up), you can view that as one person disappearing, and a copy waking up in the morning. In fact, unless you believe in a transcendent soul as the seat of consciousness, it must be equivalent. So, when you step into the teleporter, you…

> unless you believe in a transcendent soul as the seat of consciousness, it must be equivalent.

That is a big claim considering we have no idea what causes consciousness. It is however certain that the copy is not you. Whether the original gets destroyed on teleportation or not, the original you will not feel, see, hear etc anything that the copy does.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#64

Post by partingshots »

protoman3000 wrote: post #41

The article mentions Soviet jigsaw experiments on dogs, like reanimating dead dog heads [1] and grafting two dogs on to each other having one circulation [2]. How would we go about confirming this was more than propaganda? [1] https://youtu.be/VtDQc-4wGvM [2] https://youtu.be/uvZThr3POlQ

There are many videos on YouTube. I first happened upon them after a late night of scrolling.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#65

Post by Haga »

Organ transplant ethic comitee guidelines are a horrible example on how a fair algorithm can make things worser. Every patient gets points by sickness, which means a mother of 4 needing a liver, is way behind a multi organ failing coma case, and only gets it, if she has damaged other organs due to the wait. Every now and then the doctors, who want to help patients that can be helped, juice the charts, to get ahead of the undead zombie hordes , and of those, even rarer one gets found out and dragged through the streets. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://m.dw.com/en/organ-donat... those outside of the system, there is the red market if you are rich (usually in poor regions) or nothing. Comitee + fair algorithm + ethics is a recipe for disasters.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#66

Post by ClumsyPilot »

skissane wrote: post #53
JProthero wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a long tradition in academic philosophy of using this model of teleportation as a device for investigating questions of personal identity. Derek Parfit's 'Reasons and Persons' is probably the best-known treatment [1]. I think there are good reasons to believe this is not generally how the writers of Star Trek thought the transporters in their stories were supposed to work, but they weren't always perfectly c…

> I think there are good reasons to believe this is not generally how the writers of Star Trek thought the transporters in their stories were supposed to work, but they weren't always perfectly consistent on the subject. I remember one episode of one of the TV shows (I forget which one), they used a transporter to transport a bomb off the ship, so it detonated in space instead. If transportation is converting matter…

Furthermore, why not use the transporter as a weapon, creating bombs next to / inside enemy ships

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#67

Post by MattGaiser »

keiferski wrote: post #52

The fact that this is uncontroversial to a lot of people mostly just shows how intellect-focused our society has become. Plenty of other value systems treat the Self as the entire body, not merely the head. Perhaps if we did too, we might not have so many issues with obesity and drug abuse. Dualism has consequences. I once read someone describe academics as “floating heads with bodies attached.” I think that could ap…

Isn't this just science?

We routinely replace every other part except the brain, whether by mechanical, artificial biological, or donor/transplant means.

Prosthetic arms and legs are normal, millions need things like insulin replaced in their bodies that is manufactured by yeast, and every day thousands donate blood to be put into other people and replacing kidneys, hearts, lungs, and various other organs from those who are brain dead is routine.

Everything except the brain is a swappable part (quality/success of swap may vary).

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#68

Post by keiferski »

MattGaiser wrote: post #67
keiferski wrote: post #52

The fact that this is uncontroversial to a lot of people mostly just shows how intellect-focused our society has become. Plenty of other value systems treat the Self as the entire body, not merely the head. Perhaps if we did too, we might not have so many issues with obesity and drug abuse. Dualism has consequences. I once read someone describe academics as “floating heads with bodies attached.” I think that could ap…

Isn't this just science? We routinely replace every other part except the brain, whether by mechanical, artificial biological, or donor/transplant means. Prosthetic arms and legs are normal, millions need things like insulin replaced in their bodies that is manufactured by yeast, and every day thousands donate blood to be put into other people and replacing kidneys, hearts, lungs, and various other organs from those…

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is.

That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#69

Post by the8472 »

keiferski wrote: post #68
MattGaiser wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just science? We routinely replace every other part except the brain, whether by mechanical, artificial biological, or donor/transplant means. Prosthetic arms and legs are normal, millions need things like insulin replaced in their bodies that is manufactured by yeast, and every day thousands donate blood to be put into other people and replacing kidneys, hearts, lungs, and various other organs from those…

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is. That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

Metaphysics?

What if I put you in a coma and wake you up a few days later and tell you a team of surgeons had replaced one of your internal organs with a lab-grown genetically equivalent version. Or maybe they just cut you open and closed you up again. Sure, there's a small scar left as evidence and some residual pain. But how would you be able to tell the difference? How does it connect to your perceptible self?

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#70

Post by the8472 »

esperent wrote: post #47
cute_boi wrote: post #24

Is there such thing called transplanting a body? I thought it would be transplanting a brain because brain is part where memories etc live? Yea there are some philosophical queries but you know ...

> brain is part where memories etc live? As far as we know. But we really know so little and there's a lot of interesting work being done regarding the networks of nerves in other parts of the body. It's extremely likely that the brain is where most of the memories are stored, things like your name and age and so on. It could turn out that a lot of other types of memory, like muscle memory or emotional memory, are mo…

> muscle memory

That's in the cerebellum, part of your brain, not in your muscles. The state that your muscles remember is mostly the amount and composition of muscle fibers, i.e. how strong and fast they are due to exercise.

Post reply on HN