MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#121

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

wwwtyro wrote: post #85

s73v3r_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

Are you suggesting we not save lives so that we can avoid some unrealized fear of overcrowding? Suppose humanity attains indefinite life spans in the near future. Would you then advocate murder in order to save space? Should we outlaw antibiotics because they save lives, and those lives take up resources? I find this argument both unimaginative (improving technology changes the nature of our challenges) and repulsive…

"Are you suggesting we not save lives so that we can avoid some unrealized fear of overcrowding?"

No, and putting words in my mouth like that is extremely uncivil. We're talking about people who have already died.

"I find this argument both unimaginative (improving technology changes the nature of our challenges) and repulsive (it's advocating murder through inaction)."

And I find your tone repulsive and uncivil, as you're making extreme assumptions about my positions.

Not to mention, you're only advocating that we save the rich. I don't see you setting up a GoFundMe to preserve homeless people.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#122

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

tene wrote: post #95

s73v3r_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

There will be challenges and struggles and costs to be paid to significantly reduce death, but my personal philosophy is that involuntary death is bad and should be fought, and that the costs of increased crowding are worth paying to cut down on the deaths of billions. The general principle, to me, is that whatever the "ideal" rate of death is, for any given set of values and preferences, it would be an astonishing c…

"would you start by advocating for mass executions"

The very idea that this would cross your mind after reading my comment shows that you are not interested in having any kind of serious discussion about this topic.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#123

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

rmcpherson wrote: post #97

s73v3r_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?

For a fascinating and realistic exploration of what that might look like, I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. In the series, a longevity treatment is developed that significantly extends lives. Beyond the strain on resources, there are the issues of older generations delaying progress by not relinquishing power (much like the current octogenarian U.S. congress) and other issues.

I would also recommend The Postmortal, by Drew Magary. It explores a world where the cure for aging is found, so no one has to die through natural means anymore.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#124

Post by etrautmann » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

currymj wrote: post #91

fixermark wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And given the recent discovery of what some are calling (possibly inaccurately) an entirely new organ in the body resulting from changes in the visualization technologies available ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-intersti... )... I, for one, wouldn't trust that their preservation solution is sufficient for reconstruction of anything even approximating consciousness without a successful bidirecti…

yeah, the idea here is that it might be sufficient, much like cryogenics. their marketing is probably irresponsible, depending on your perspective, but then again you're dead anyway so any shot at a future may be worth it. unlike cryogenics it will definitely result in a lot of useful and interesting data about the brain, whether it works or not.

Undoubtedly true, though good luck passing this by an IRB. The goals of preserving brain state at time of death and learning about the brain from a science perspective are not fully aligned. There's a dot product there, but enough orthogonality that it's duplicitous to sell people a brain preservation service if the true goal is science.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#125

Post by aurellem » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #4

MITs statement seems to position themselves to not be at risk if the startup goes south. They seem to think that with current technology it is unclear if the upload is feasible. Also, it would be interesting for someone to comment on how this embalming process is done? From what I know from cryogenic freezing or preservation is that it is a good idea that it could be "scanned" back in but most likely the information…

Nectome is still in the research stage, so we are not preserving anyone. If you'd like to learn more about how the preservation process works, check out the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401... or the summary at http://aurellem.org/ASC/html/ASC-introduction.html.

And yes, we are in YC Winter 18

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#126

Post by aurellem » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #107

Eliezer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startup is not claiming to have current uploading technology. The startup is researching (does not claim to have) brain preservation techniques leading to long-term structure preservation in hopes of uploading sometime in the indefinite future. If your personal opinion is that this cannot happen, that does not make other people who have different beliefs and are upfront about their arguments for them "scammers".

It is likely an iteration on cadaver plastination, wherein tissues are infused with plastic to preserve their structure. This is what enables those "Bodies" exhibitions that show actual human cadavers that have been plastinated, posed, and dissected to show anatomical details. If you preserve the structure of the brain well enough, you can scrape it down in micrometer-thick layers and progressively photograph the vis…

The process is described in the science paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401..., and also at the Brain Preservation Foundation website (http://www.brainpreservation.org/). It involves fixation with glutaraldehyde and then vitrifixation for long-term storage. It does not use plastic.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#127

Post by aurellem » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:04 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #53

I’ve never gotten a good answer as to how an electron microscope can image the synaptic weights. If you look at the pictures it can barely capture the synapses.

> If you look at the pictures it can barely capture the synapses

Electron micrographs vary quite a bit in quality (good micrographs are an art), but if you can barely see the synapses, you may be thinking of light microscopy, where it’s very difficult to see differences in the sizes of synapses. You can see for yourself what synaptic details electron microscopy allows you to see in the book, "Fine Structure of the Nervous System: Neurons and Their Supporting Cells". You might also want to see the FIB-SEM images from the Brain Preservation Foundation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYKIePuVENY, which I find quite beautiful.

As for how sizes may relate to weights [1]: “Some axons form two or more synapses with the same dendrite, but on different dendritic spines. These synapses should be the same strength because they will have experienced the same history of neural activity…the synaptic areas and volumes of the spine heads were nearly identical. This remarkable similarity can be used to estimate the number of bits of information that a single synapse can store, since the size of dendritic spines and their synapses can be used as proxies for synaptic strength.”

I hope that these are informative. I do want to clarify that we are not arguing that electron micrographs of brain tissue are all that’s needed to reconstruct memories. We are interested in building the best brain preservation technology possible, and one of the ways we evaluate brain preservation is with electron microscopy. The connectome is the first step, the “skeleton” upon which models of the mind can be built.

[1] "Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity" at https://elifesciences.org/articles/10778

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#128

Post by aurellem » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

etrautmann wrote: post #26

Brain uploading is a misleading description of what nectome is proposing. We don’t know enough about what needs to be preserved yet to accurately save a snapshot of a brain’s “state”. It’s not theoretically impossible, just much further than this company’s marketing implies.

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far—demonstrating that the ultrastructure (connectome) is preserved. The connectome is a necessary starting point upon which models of the brain can be built [0]. We intend to continue researching and validating preservation of important biomolecules as we explore the efficacy limits of ASC. We intend to develop these tools on a timeline to allow proper feedback from the neuroscience community. I certainly don’t want our marketing to imply that we have near-term or even specific plans to offer anything commercially for clinical use, so I will read through our website again and try to find areas where one can get the wrong idea.

[0] From https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connect...: “Some people say we don't know anything about how C. elegans's brain works and I am like, 'Yes, we do!'" says Cornelia Bargmann of The Rockefeller University, who has studied the nematode for more than two decades and attended the Columbia debate. "A lot of what we know about C elegans's rapid behaviors we have learned through and with the connectome. Every time we do an experiment, we look at those wiring diagrams and use them as a starting point for generating hypotheses."

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#129

Post by aurellem » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:09 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #29

Never thought I would ask something like this, but here goes: What's Y Combinator's stance on the death requirement? Nectome was at demo day last month and Sam Altman is (or was) on the waiting list. Following the example of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it is sizing up demand by inviting prospective customers to join a waiting list for a deposit of $10,000, fully refundable if you change your mind. So far, 25 people…

First off, again we are currently conducting research and are not preserving people.

Our early supporters have shown their support for Nectome’s research through fully refundable deposits, and we hope that they will live long, healthy lives, creating the very memories that they hope can one day be preserved.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#130

Post by cryoshon » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:12 PM UTC

ashelmire wrote: post #65

cryoshon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it isn't feasible. here is why: imagine that we create a perfect copy of a person who is alive. there is now person A, and person B, who are identical. but being identical does not imply shared sensations. if you pinch person A, person B won't feel it. the reverse is true. they're two separate entities, even if they behave similarly. if person A dies, person B is very similar to person A -- but they're not person A.…

I'm so glad that you have solved one of the major problems of philosophy and neuroscience in a handful of poorly-constructed sentences. This is a matter of much debate in philosophy, neuroscience, and other fields. You accidentally touch on identity theory (bundle, substratum, etc), philosophy of mind, etc. The Ship of Theseus is an interesting problem - what if I gradually replace parts of someone's brain with artif…

ship of theseus isn't relevant to nectome's claims or any claim regarding "uploading". "uploading" is just creating a copy in a different media. it doesn't preserve the conscioussness of the original media, it merely creates another. i think you'll find that the problems of philosophy and neuroscience operate at a different level of abstraction than what they're discussing.

furthermore, academic concerns aside, there's no disproving my original comment in the context of technical feasibility. it's literally bulletproof; one person does not share the sensations of another person.

postscript: i took a philosophy of mind class and a philosophy of cognition class and a systems neurobiology class in college plus a few others that are tangentially relevant. i'm not appealing to authority here, just stating that my simplistic objections are actually the result of an extensive amount of diving into the details of those disciplines. sometimes the details build a picture that's simple from afar.