151–160 of 161 posts
I for one am in favor of death without backups. I’ve met enough of you people; on the whole, you’ve all got to go.
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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.
This is how frogs in shallow pond-bottoms can freeze solid during the winter and then thaw out in spring. The formation of ice crystals is what damages the organ. But glutaraldehyde is highly cytotoxic, and the brain cells are killed, along with anything else, so your brain won't ever be thawed. They will use ion beams to shave off very thin layers of your brain and use a scanning electron microscope to image it, all while still frozen.
This is the same process, in finer detail, that occurs for detail 3-d imagery of plastinated organs and entire organisms. The crosslinking and heat generated during the curing process of most epoxy resins will destroy the finer structures in the brain as it preserves the macro-structure, so no, you couldn't use the same types of plastic typically used to preserve anatomy specimens. Instead of a microtome, the top layer is ablated with ion beams. Instead of an optical microscope, an electron microscope is used.
You can't currently get a more detailed 3-d image than this. The ion beam can strip away one layer of atoms at a time, and the electron microscope can identify the positions of all the atoms in the next layer.
But imagine the size of that data set. Imaging a volume of about 1500 mL, at a detail level of 1 nm, is 1.5e24 voxels. Even at one bit per voxel, for filled/empty, that's in the yottabyte range. A trillion 1 terabyte hard drives. The gap junction of an electrical synapse is about 3.5 nm, and chemical synapses are 20-40 nm apart. so if you image at a resolution of 3.5nm, you're still talking at least a zettabyte, but at least that's just under half the maximum file size of UFS, at around 2^75 bits.
Better hope those cryo-coolers don't fail before we can store that much data and reduce it all to a neuro-map.
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(1) You could have said the same thing about cell phones, cars or any other technology which started out expensive before it scaled to the point where most people could afford it. (2) If you fear death to much, you might not fight to the death in a war. Not everything in our culture makes sense in the modern world. (3) https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
(1) Yes, but from a utilitarian perspective cell phones, cars, and any other technology offered finite utility over their alternatives, whereas immortality offers infinite utility over the alternative of death. (2) ? unsure about what you're saying here. (3) Okay yeah, sure, I've read that before. I don't think he offers a (currently) practical alternative to "resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in…
(2) I'm saying that one of the reasons why death is viewed as cowardly is because that belief is promoted by generals in order to make their soldiers more willing to die in battle. If that's where the idea comes from, then we should reject it, because willingness to die in battle is no longer a good thing.
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That's so stupid. There's nothing stopping anyone from browsing 3 articles and then clear the cookies...
What's even more stupid is that it's even possible to detect you're browsing incognito. The server should never be able to know.
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Epictetus was friggin insane though. Taking life advice from him is pretty awful. I doubt his death advice is any better.
>Epictetus was friggin insane though. What do you mean?
A) Not hoping for anything is a great way to stay in shit situations, and B) Yeah, no, you can't actually control your own mind that well.
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Why is incentivizing that a priority? If it is something that needs to happen, then it will need to happen regardless of the incentives.
Well in an argument between "everyone should die by 150 years" and "lets have the happy problem of people not dying of old age" I'm in the latter camp. Similarly having all of your species susceptible to any out of context problem that destroys a planet... yeah planetary existential risks are low probability with game ending penalty I'd like to see mitigated.
We're a very very long way away from being able to survive if Earth fails. It is foolish to bet on any kind of interplanetary survival strategy at this point. Getting humans to other worlds is by far the easiest part of that equation.
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…
It sounds like people are essentially donating their brains to (private) science, with the off-chance that they may come back. The marketing thereof as something else doesn't sound quite ethical to me. It's downright ghastly if people are dying earlier because of this.
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Well in an argument between "everyone should die by 150 years" and "lets have the happy problem of people not dying of old age" I'm in the latter camp. Similarly having all of your species susceptible to any out of context problem that destroys a planet... yeah planetary existential risks are low probability with game ending penalty I'd like to see mitigated.
Sure, but if you put half of humanity on Mars, you'd clearly be increasing our risk, as the difficulty of surviving on Mars is nearly insurmountable. If you want people on other planets, they need to be self-sustaining. And if we can't even be self-sustaining on Earth, why would we be elsewhere? We're a very very long way away from being able to survive if Earth fails. It is foolish to bet on any kind of interplaneta…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(1) Yes, but from a utilitarian perspective cell phones, cars, and any other technology offered finite utility over their alternatives, whereas immortality offers infinite utility over the alternative of death. (2) ? unsure about what you're saying here. (3) Okay yeah, sure, I've read that before. I don't think he offers a (currently) practical alternative to "resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in…
(1) Are you saying that immortality is bad because it's infinitely good? That seems like an argument for bringing immortality to everyone as soon as possible. (2) I'm saying that one of the reasons why death is viewed as cowardly is because that belief is promoted by generals in order to make their soldiers more willing to die in battle. If that's where the idea comes from, then we should reject it, because willingne…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The casual explanation is that the brains are infused with a chemical that prevents formation of ice crystals and chilled to freezing temperatures until the water in the brain solidifies into a glasslike solid. This is how frogs in shallow pond-bottoms can freeze solid during the winter and then thaw out in spring. The formation of ice crystals is what damages the organ. But glutaraldehyde is highly cytotoxic, and th…