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Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

bbc.co.uk

161–170 of 207 posts

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#161

Throwing it out there—when I'm dead, you are totally allowed to resuscitate my brain. Better than being dead. Please make sure I am supplied with some good books to read, if at all possible.

> Please make sure I am supplied with some good books to read, if at all possible.

Seeing as we don't have full eye transplants yet, it seems possible (at lest with near future tech) that they could resuscitate your brain but not your other I/O peripherals, including your eyes. To misquote Harlan Ellison, you may have no mouth with which to scream.

It seems to me that your average case would involve either total darkness or the worst case of phantom limb ever. Or even worse: they might give you eyes, but no one to turn the pages for you.

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#162
post #94

Immediately reminded me of that unforgettable movie in which a 1WW soldier who have lost all his sensory inputs and motor control and is still alive brain is used for experiments. Movie title is "Johnny got his gun". No idea how mainstream it is but i suspect not that much. If you believe nothing could be worse than death, you should consider to watch it.

It was relatively unknown until Metallica based a popular song and video on it.

Perhaps, but we read it in my high school English class, in a small midwestern town in the 1980's, so it wasn't _that_ obscure.

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#163

Throwing it out there—when I'm dead, you are totally allowed to resuscitate my brain. Better than being dead. Please make sure I am supplied with some good books to read, if at all possible.

> Please make sure I am supplied with some good books to read, if at all possible. Seeing as we don't have full eye transplants yet, it seems possible (at lest with near future tech) that they could resuscitate your brain but not your other I/O peripherals, including your eyes. To misquote Harlan Ellison, you may have no mouth with which to scream. It seems to me that your average case would involve either total dark…

Well, that's why I specified "if at all possible." :)

I'd imagine that if we do establish "IO" that "text" would be the first/easiest type of data. It might be encoded in a strange way, but, well, I'll have plenty of time to adapt...

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#164
post #23

Imagine donating your body to science and then waking up in a lab as a brain in a vat. "A Living Soul" by P. C. Jersild is amazing sci-fi book exploring this. https://www.amazon.com/Living-Norvik-Press-English-Swedish/d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._C._Jersild

It could be funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOBl9W7_AbI

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get to participate in fixing it You'd be ok with effectively being blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed, and probably brain damaged, in the name of science?

After living a full life? Probably?

I don't think you're appreciating what it would be like.

Sure, at first, the peacefulness of absolute sensory deprivation would probably feel pretty relaxing.

But then, it never ends. An eternity (or as long as your brain was kept alive) of nothing. You see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel, taste, and smell nothing.

If you're lucky, you'd start building a fake reality to imagine yourself in, like a dream. Over time, maybe you'd accept this reality as being real. People that lose a sense such as sight often gain an enhancement in another sense such as hearing. Maybe with the loss of all senses, the brain's imagination could gain more power.

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad, after all.

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are Jewish, anti-Semites are your enemy, even if you've never met them personally. If you are a person of color, white supremacists are your enemy, even if you have never personally met them. Etc. Your remark comes across to me like "I live an extremely privileged and cushy life and I think that's completely the norm. I'm not interested in understanding the reality of people for whom that's not the norm."

that is the norm, for that person and it's perfectly within his right to announce his experience. You falsely imply that it's anyone's duty to share in the misery of the human race or the consequences that come from believing in the supernatural. And the "priveleged" term is just a dog-whistle for a political agenda that has no place here.

Privilege is absolutely a thing, not just a dog whistle.

If you're not convinced, try changing your frame of reference. Don't think of white males as being privileged. Trying to convince people of that is often a useless endeavour.

Instead, recognize the disadvantage PoC have. Most reasonable people will believe PoC have a harder time than white people. That's what white privilege is. It's not dealing with the additional hardships that PoC deal with. White privilege doesn't mean having the world being handed to you because you're white. It means not having the world taken away just because you're not white.

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#167
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how hard I think, I cannot seem to manifest any true pain in my mind. I doubt a pig could either.

I've been hurt in dreams, in ways that do not appear to have been the real world poking through. It's never been great pain, but it's been real pain or something very close to it. There's also phantom limb syndrome [1]. It's not hard to imagine whatever mechanism is in play there could run even more unfettered when there is no feedback from the body at all. We do not know that simply being severed from your body is s…

Oh, good point about pain in dreams! I have also experienced this. I used to have a lot of lucid dreams, where I was often aware of being in a dream. I somehow hurt my left shoulder and was suddenly in excruciating pain. I woke up and my shoulder felt just the same as in the dream, very bad. I quickly examined myself for injury and finding nothing, the pain very quickly went away. I guess I cannot say for sure that it was not physical pain leaking into imagination land but that is certainly not how it felt.

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#168
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd actually be fantastic. If I've donated my brain to anything like the modern research apparatus, I can be relatively sure of one of two possibilities: Either my brain was chosen as a test, in which case the project is on the news literally worldwide and the ethics have had the crap argued out of them and I can be sure that any limitations of the environment are due to technological shortcomings and I get to parti…

> I get to participate in fixing it You'd be ok with effectively being blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed, and probably brain damaged, in the name of science?

Do I have an internet connection?

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is the norm, for that person and it's perfectly within his right to announce his experience. You falsely imply that it's anyone's duty to share in the misery of the human race or the consequences that come from believing in the supernatural. And the "priveleged" term is just a dog-whistle for a political agenda that has no place here.

Privilege is absolutely a thing, not just a dog whistle. If you're not convinced, try changing your frame of reference. Don't think of white males as being privileged. Trying to convince people of that is often a useless endeavour. Instead, recognize the disadvantage PoC have. Most reasonable people will believe PoC have a harder time than white people. That's what white privilege is. It's not dealing with the additi…

quite a patronizing view you have of "PoC".

Re: Pig brains partially revived four hours after death

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is the norm, for that person and it's perfectly within his right to announce his experience. You falsely imply that it's anyone's duty to share in the misery of the human race or the consequences that come from believing in the supernatural. And the "priveleged" term is just a dog-whistle for a political agenda that has no place here.

If you think "privilege" is only a political dog-whistle, then you must also believe every person is born with equal chance and opportunity without regard for race, gender, or anything else. Can you say that with full intellectual honesty? And what part of being targeted for skin color is a "consequence that come[s] from believing in the supernatural?"

> then you must also believe

if reducing complex issues into simple dichotomies works for you, I'm not going to convince you otherwise. But the fact that you need such crutches tells me all I need to know about this conversation.

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