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‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#161

Post by idreyn »

etrautmann wrote: post #61
NickM wrote: post #11

I used to buy into this kind of stuff, but I've become more and more skeptical of the idea that you would still be yourself if your brain could be preserved/emulated/transplanted/whatever. Our nervous system extends into our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. People with certain kinds of brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotions normally also experience trouble making rational decisions. More recent…

As a neuroscientist working on brain computer interfaces, it's painfully clear to me that we are absolutely nowhere close to understanding the full complexity of the human brain in a manner required to simulate or reboot someone's consciousness. It's not even clear yet what level of abstraction is required. Do we need to map all of the synapses to get a connection graph, or do we need to map all synapses plus the syn…

On one hand, I wonder if a gradual transition would work. Spend enough time over the years mirroring your conscious patterns onto a computational substrate, and they might get used to the lay of the land, the loss of old senses and the appearance of new ones. There might not be an ultimate "stepping in", but something like you might be able to outlive you, on a substrate that it feels happy and comfortable on.

On the other hand, the idea of "simulating your consciousness" raises questions beyond just cognition or personality. A mechanistically perfect simulation of your brain might not be conscious at all. Spooky stuff.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#162

Post by jprete »

jryan49 wrote: post #142
Nux wrote: post #113

Once the brain has been powered off and the back on, is it even "you" anymore? Hasn't that person died and a new one was "born"? Used to go a little bit crazy thinking about this when watching people getting transported in StarTrek.

I like how the video game Soma showed it. If you fork a brain you kind of have a 50% chance of it continuing into the copy, and 50% chance of you being "left behind". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x790AjID0FA

I get the point, but I think the most self-consistent answer is that your conscious experience has a 100% chance of staying in the original body. (And similarly for destroy-and-remake teleporters.)

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#163

Post by robbomacrae »

wutwutwat wrote: post #141

“Take very high resolution scans of brain structure to characterise how someone’s neurons work, recreate it in a digital format then put it in another robotic, virtual or biological body.” This isn't preserving, it's copying. A copy of your brain/personality/you... isn't you... it's a copy. It's a cassette tape playing back the radio you recorded onto it. It's really kind of odd that people talk about brain transplan…

That all makes sense. But let's run with this way beyond the foreseeable tech. What if you can replace each neuron in situ one by one up to X%. Then what if it was reversible (the neurons were initially just bypassed, commented out). Someone could then dial it up to 5%.. 50% and if they still felt the same throughout and then went up to 100%. In that scenario would they have copied themselves?

I find it fascinatingly coincidental that neurons are the only cells in the body that don't rejuvenate unless there is some sort of injury [0].

[0]: https://www.dzne.de/en/im-fokus/meldungen/2021/neurons-able-...

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#164

Post by ghosty141 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #146
wutwutwat wrote: post #141

“Take very high resolution scans of brain structure to characterise how someone’s neurons work, recreate it in a digital format then put it in another robotic, virtual or biological body.” This isn't preserving, it's copying. A copy of your brain/personality/you... isn't you... it's a copy. It's a cassette tape playing back the radio you recorded onto it. It's really kind of odd that people talk about brain transplan…

Suppose you died every night in your sleep and were replaced in the morning with a perfect copy of yourself with all your memories intact. Would you know the difference?

No but you would not wake up, a clone who has your memories would wake up but the you that went to sleep will never wake up. That effectively doesnt make a difference but I find it pretty odd to think about. We as humans kinda miss a way verify its really „us“ and not a clone.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#165

Post by augusto-moura »

whythre wrote: post #144
augusto-moura wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree with you. There are multiple examples in society of damaged nervous system connections with the brain, spine cord damage for example, where the personality of the pacient changes little. In the same sense, losing limbs or entire sections of your body (aside from psychological trauma and other psychological consequences) don't affect personality that much Of course the nervous system is much more…

I see what you mean- but consider that the gut does seem to play a significant role in mood and mental health. The enteric nervous system may not hold memories, but it seems to have something to do with personality and digestion issues can have negative cognitive effects.

Agree that discomfort can cause temporary problems, and sometimes chronic problems in parts of the body can cause life long cognitive impairment. But that is not to say that these represent "you" or your personality. You brain could still function perfectly without those body conditions.

And for the gut example the brain actually does work normally, stomach and instetines removal (and other related surgeries) are fairly common procedures and I don't hear of people complaining about personality changes. Of course, those types of procedures are extremely invasive in a sistemic way, and not only your mental state, but multiple other parts of the body need to re-adapt. But I truly believe "you" will be still be "you" inside your brain

PS.: I quoted "you" because discussions about the identity of one-self are much more complex, just regard it as the most high level definition of the concept

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#166

Post by glenstein »

NickM wrote: post #11

I used to buy into this kind of stuff, but I've become more and more skeptical of the idea that you would still be yourself if your brain could be preserved/emulated/transplanted/whatever. Our nervous system extends into our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. People with certain kinds of brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotions normally also experience trouble making rational decisions. More recent…

>Our nervous system extends into our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. People with certain kinds of brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotions normally also experience trouble making rational decisions.

I think that may be true enough, but it doesn't have the upshot you seem to think it does.

It just means that what we need to sustain not just a brain itself but the totality of the environmental conditions on which it depends. No easy task for sure, but not something that presents an in-principle impossibility of preserving brains.

I think there's a major philosophical error here in thinking that the added logistics present this kind of in-principle impossibility.

Also, talking like this starts to play with anti-science speculation a bit. Octopi actually have neurons extending through their limbs. We don't. So when we talk about consciousness being "embodied", I'm sorry, it's an attempt to romanticize the question in a way that loses sight of our scientific understanding. Consciousness happens in the brain.

Sure, the brain needs stimulus from its embodied nervous system, and may even depend on those data and interactions in significant ways, but everything we know about consciousness suggests its in the brain. And so the data from "embodied" nervous systems may be important but there's no in-principle reason why it can't be accounted for in the context of preservation.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#167

Post by stetrain »

suzzer99 wrote: post #146
wutwutwat wrote: post #141

“Take very high resolution scans of brain structure to characterise how someone’s neurons work, recreate it in a digital format then put it in another robotic, virtual or biological body.” This isn't preserving, it's copying. A copy of your brain/personality/you... isn't you... it's a copy. It's a cassette tape playing back the radio you recorded onto it. It's really kind of odd that people talk about brain transplan…

Suppose you died every night in your sleep and were replaced in the morning with a perfect copy of yourself with all your memories intact. Would you know the difference?

The copy who woke up wouldn't know the difference.

There would be thousands of copies that experienced going to bed and then nothing afterwards.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#169

Post by stetrain »

robbomacrae wrote: post #163
wutwutwat wrote: post #141

“Take very high resolution scans of brain structure to characterise how someone’s neurons work, recreate it in a digital format then put it in another robotic, virtual or biological body.” This isn't preserving, it's copying. A copy of your brain/personality/you... isn't you... it's a copy. It's a cassette tape playing back the radio you recorded onto it. It's really kind of odd that people talk about brain transplan…

That all makes sense. But let's run with this way beyond the foreseeable tech. What if you can replace each neuron in situ one by one up to X%. Then what if it was reversible (the neurons were initially just bypassed, commented out). Someone could then dial it up to 5%.. 50% and if they still felt the same throughout and then went up to 100%. In that scenario would they have copied themselves? I find it fascinatingly…

That's still a copy, just one where both copies remember their life before being copied and equally think they are the original. The original will still experience aging and death.

Re: ‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’

#170

Post by hinkley »

giantg2 wrote: post #137
hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to go on in a world that has either left you behind or keeps making the same mistakes over and over in a cycle and won't listen to you because you're too old to understand? And conversely, I think Kim Stanley Robinson puts it best in the Mars trilogy. Scientific progress often has to wait for the old guard to die so new ideas can be tried. Sometimes there are actually new things and they need to be…

Just imagine someone who died 50 years ago coming back and hearing skibidi toilet, no cap, ohio, etc. Then not being allowed to board a plane without a body scan, and not having money for a plane anyways since bread was dime and a gallon of gas was a quarter last you checked. You can't even get a job you're just a brain and all the knowledge work you could do is 50 years out of date.

I'm still alive and this shit is already starting to get to me. This last round of inflation was a kick in the nuts.
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