One step closer to me being able to spin up multiple instances of my brain to work on my side project and play video games with.
Or spin up an instance with the 'lazyness' region deactivated.
A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#12I am glad progress is being made here, but until we can avoid the destruction that occurs in the last 24 hours of expected death (eg cancer), or the damage that occurs with unexpected death (eg heart attack or trauma) from sitting at room temperature for hours after death, then all we are going to be preserving is grey mush.
You're assuming this "grey mush" can't be recovered. We don't actually know that. A sufficiently advanced AI should be able to recover a person from way less.
You're assuming the phrase "a sufficiently advanced AI" answers anything at all.
Presumably you're assuming if the information is there at all - if the necessary data hasn't been scrambled beyond the noise floor of the scrambling process - then there's something for magic (because you're really talking about magic here) to work with.
So, please (a) set out your claim with precision (b) back up your claim.
* What is the information you need to recover?
* To what degree is it scrambled?
* What of it is scrambled below the noise floor of the process?
* How do you know all this? (wrong answer: "here's a LessWrong/Alcor page." right answer: "here's something from a relevant neuroscientist.")
For comparison: even a nigh-magical superintelligent AI can't recover an ice sculpture from the bucket of water it's melted into. It is in fact possible to just lose information. So, since you're making this claim, I'd like you to quantify just what you think the damage actually is.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming this "grey mush" can't be recovered. We don't actually know that. A sufficiently advanced AI should be able to recover a person from way less.
The problem is the information is encoded in the arrangements of the neural connections. Once your brain has reached the grey mush stage all those connection are lost.
Aren't neurons relatively sizable? I don't see why they would totally "decay" in a short time frame, but maybe it's because I'm ignorant.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming this "grey mush" can't be recovered. We don't actually know that. A sufficiently advanced AI should be able to recover a person from way less.
You're assuming the phrase "a sufficiently advanced AI" answers anything at all. Presumably you're assuming if the information is there at all - if the necessary data hasn't been scrambled beyond the noise floor of the scrambling process - then there's something for magic (because you're really talking about magic here) to work with. So, please (a) set out your claim with precision (b) back up your claim. * What is t…
Sure it can. Look at a photograph, make a mould and find a freezer :P
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?
No, its very probably not the same. The brain doesn't shut off when you go to sleep. It keeps going, it keeps doing it's stuff, messing with memories, thoughts, all the bodily functions and a whole extra stuff that we don't know too well, but which probably still makes you you. Killing that brain and then simulating it somewhere else is not the same.
More importantly, does anyone suggest that running the original brain and the copy doesn't result in two separate diverged intellects? If running two results in separate consciousnesses then obviously they are not the same.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, its very probably not the same. The brain doesn't shut off when you go to sleep. It keeps going, it keeps doing it's stuff, messing with memories, thoughts, all the bodily functions and a whole extra stuff that we don't know too well, but which probably still makes you you. Killing that brain and then simulating it somewhere else is not the same.
More importantly, does anyone suggest that running the original brain and the copy doesn't result in two separate diverged intellects? If running two results in separate consciousnesses then obviously they are not the same.
I don't think that follows. If "your" consciousness is just the consciousness that has a continuity of memory with a previous version of you, then the two copies would both be you, but they would not be one another.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#17I am glad progress is being made here, but until we can avoid the destruction that occurs in the last 24 hours of expected death (eg cancer), or the damage that occurs with unexpected death (eg heart attack or trauma) from sitting at room temperature for hours after death, then all we are going to be preserving is grey mush.
There has to be enough information left over to reconstruct a person in "high enough fidelity" (whatever we may decide that means in the future).
A brain just sitting there for hours after death at room temperature isn't idea - however, there is some good news in the area. It turns out that the most destruction happening to a brain after an ischemic episode is actually due to a cascade triggered by eventual re-perfusion. Since the dead brain is never re-perfused, this cascade is never triggered. Cellular decay after death makes a biological re-animation infeasible, but speaking as someone who did prepare a lot of neuro slides at uni, it takes more than a few hours for the structure itself to decay heavily, so we should be good for a scan/upload scenario.
Pertaining to the article, the first hours after death are nowhere near as problematic to the brain's information content as the plastination procedure they're using!
Brain trauma before death is another matter. Since we don't have the capability to create backups or checkpoints of our neuronal structure, what's physically destroyed is simply lost beyond recovery. However, for example in aggressive brain cancers, a functional copy of the person might still be recovered in principle even if their neocortex was severely compromised, as long as the actual data is still there.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#18We just has a plastination vs. cryonics debate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595853) which might be of interest here.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#19Note that this approach should be compared with cryonics, which attempts to vitrify the brain and preserve it in a glass-like state at liquid nitrogen temperatures: http://www.alcor.org/ Personally I have some reservations about the plastination approach to personal longevity. Depending on your philosophical views on the nature of consciousness, it may be that under this procedure you would die and cease to exist, wh…
Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?
I personaly subscribe to that opinion. Even if the change is negligible. This is why I would like to be sober and conscious in case of any uploading.
Re: A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
#20Note that this approach should be compared with cryonics, which attempts to vitrify the brain and preserve it in a glass-like state at liquid nitrogen temperatures: http://www.alcor.org/ Personally I have some reservations about the plastination approach to personal longevity. Depending on your philosophical views on the nature of consciousness, it may be that under this procedure you would die and cease to exist, wh…
Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?
[deleted]