> Sestan did acknowledge that, yes, theoretically there is nothing stopping a scientist from immediately building a perfusion machine that could support a human brain. The BrainEx technology is open-source, and pig and homo sapiens brains have a fair amount in common. And there are plenty of conceivable applications for a human-optimized BrainEx.
Imagine that you are a billionaire. Money is absolutely no object at all. And yet, you are in an accident. A car crash for example, your body was gravely injured but your head intact. You are flown to a facility but die on route.
This technology is a get out of jail card. What's interesting to me, is where is the cut off point. Right now I assume its within minutes? But one day it could be a week? Your head in a jar until they either create a new body for you or find a donor body?
Then there is this:
> Consider, Greely suggested, the case of the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero and his associate, the Chinese scientist Xiaoping Ren, who claim to have transplanted a head from one cadaver to another. Undoubtedly, a scientist with fewer scruples than Sestan, fewer moral qualms about human experimentation, will emerge. “Somebody will perfuse a dead human brain, and I think it will be in an unconventional setting, not necessarily in a pure research manner,” Greely told me. “It will be somebody with a lot of money, and he’ll find a scientist willing to do it.”
Putting the current ethical concerns aside. I find this absolutely fascinating. How long until the technology is perfected and some form of immortality is reached?
How would it work. Do you get to 90 years old and they pull out your brain and put it into a newer body?
Just so happens that in 50 years I'll be 90 myself. I a more ethical version of this tech is around in some form or another. I'd love another 90 years!
Oh and for over population concerns, don't worry. I'll be happy to be part of the new expedition on Titan or Ganymede or further out. :)
>Putting the current ethical concerns aside. I find this absolutely fascinating. How long until the technology is perfected and some form of immortality is reached?
No expert here, but first you are limited by cellular decay. If we can reverse engineer the aging gene and apply it to the brain, you might be right that we can stave off cell death by a lot.
Then there's alzheimers and other forms of dementia, which the aging thing probably won't fix. Even if you cure alzheimers, you still have memory loss.
So then we'd have to invent some type of memory therapy that defrags the brain and allows consciousness to continue to access a healthy memory bank. Not sure if you'd be able to maintain new memories, slowly lose old ones, or what. But then we could preserve consciousness.
So once you perfect either controlling human memory or at least defragging it so the brain doesn't go crazy or develop dementia, you now have an immortal brain. As long as it has access to the therapy it needs, maybe could live for forever.
> How long until the technology is perfected and some form of immortality is reached?
As long as the brain remains a black box... never. We only understand a tiny bit how the brain works; the biggest problems are still unsolved. Even with a completely prosthetic body, your brain will eventually build up plaques and die (again).
This is quite timely, as I'm just about to finish Neal Stephenson's new novel: Fall, or Dodge In Hell. https://n.pr/30EFA4l
That story revolves around scanning the brains of deceased humans into a computer simulation. Initially this technology is only available as a "get out of jail" card for rich people, as the scanning process and subsequent ops costs of running the simulation are, well, astronomical. Eventually the process is dumbed down to the level of a certain kind of "life insurance", and many more dead people join the simulation. That's when the floodgates open for real. I know I run the risk of spoiling the story, but I'll just say that this is one way the singularity can get started.
All good questions, but it also lends some credence to the cryopreservative folks who are freezing people's heads for later reanimation. What those guys need is a recipe that they can use to insure the preserved brain can be re-animated later. For them a good perfusion process and a perfusion fluid that maximally preserves brain tissue over time would be a solid advancement in their cause.
Given the amount of brain damage that will happen even with good methods, you'd probably be better off using the perfusion to instead perfuse cryoprotectives and vitrify your brain to stop all additional degradation indefinitely (or instead of cryonics, use plastination to fixate the brain), and wait for a permanent solution.
>How would it work. Do you get to 90 years old and they pull out your brain and put it into a newer body?
I don't recall the title but in middle school I remember reading a scifi/horrorish thriller about this exact scenario, the problem they ran into is that the brain still ages, and transplanting it into a younger body doesn't magically de-age the brain itself.
If this fascinates you, then you'll like Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan. Changing bodies is commonplace for the rich in these novels. They are quite excellent, if not a tad violent, so don't read them if that's not your thing.
The novels are way better than the Netflix S01, which was the first book. I'm guessing there will be 2 more seasons, one for each book.
> Perhaps the most innovative modification involved fluid mechanics, one of Vrselja’s specialties in graduate school. As the British mathematician John Womersley managed to quantify more than half a century ago, blood does not circulate through our arteries at a uniform rhythm — it circulates in pulses, in concert with the shudder of our hearts. To account for that dynamic, the BMI unit had shipped with an automated “pulse generator,” a device that replicates the heartbeat’s pulsatility in the organs.
> But the pulse generator’s settings proved unsuitable for brains, which have a different flow pattern than the rest of the body. Before Sestan’s team adjusted the settings, the fluid might not completely permeate the vasculature of the organ, leaving parts of the brain essentially untreated. In such tissue, Daniele told me, “you’d end up with this sludgy, white yogurt-ish substance. It was a mess.” Conversely, if the pressure was too high, “the brain could just physically not stand it.” The organ fell apart.
> By that summer, Vrselja and Daniele had fine-tuned the pulse generator and attached a number of custom sensors[...]
It sounds like it was a lot of work getting the pulsation right. If they actually needed pulsation at all that seems like an interesting finding unto itself, since humans and cattle do fine with continuous-flow hearts: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423277
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω."
‘I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die’.’
I see many comments on this article on people's choice to do anything to avoid dying. One argument I haven't seen covered is the fairness of it.
Is it fair to younger generations that we keep on living? If we don't die there will be fewer opportunities for the younger generations, the resources we have all have access to are after all rather limited. Population growth is already too high, immortality can only make it worse. We can see how millennials are struggling with a tight job market and housing market, all because previous generations who now have longer life spans than their parents are holding on these resources.
There are aspects to immortality that go beyond selfishness, such as the experience and knowledge that is lost of the people dying, being a negative to the society. I'm in support of pursuing technology to allow all or most of that knowledge to be preserved and passed on to younger generations but at some point I think we have to accept our role in this world and that role includes having to stop existing and let others have their chance at a full life.
This brings up a question of how you value people who don't exist yet. Technically (not saying anything about politically) the problem you describe can be solved by population control -- "just" don't make more people than can be comfortably supported. We already do that with birth control or by simply not having sex.
But that means people who would have been otherwise born would not be. If that is not an issue, perfect, you have your technical solution. If that _is_ an issue, then you have more problems than immortals hoarding resources (one of them is Repugnant Conclusion [0]).
Another way to look at it -- would you want current lifespan artificially shortened if you knew for sure that it would make things fairer for new generations?
I find this sort of thing fascinating both for what it means about our own consciousness, but also what it means for emergent consciousnesses. We're not sure when a dying brain stops being conscious; and we're not sure when a once-dead brain that's revived starts being conscious again. Why do we think we'd have any idea when an artificial brain awakens to consciousness?
I feel like the same ethical concerns raised in the article about accidentally reviving a person into a sensory-deprivation nightmare could also apply to accidentally generating a thinking being that can only express itself though shopping recommendations.
We're a long ways off yet from a comprehensive ethics of universal consciousness.
Now that the war is through with me
I'm waking up, I cannot see
That there is not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please God, wake me
Back in the womb it's much too real
In pumps life that I must feel
But can't look forward to reveal
Look to the time when I'll live
Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me
Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please God, wake me
> Our grandfather's digital consciousness currently resides in this cube, where I upload the latest films and books for him to enjoy every week.
> We're also able to download correspondence from him. Over one thousand letters were received during his first hour in storage, as this was approximately four years time inside the cube. I will read one of his letters to you now: "Oh, oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh my God. Holy mother of God. Oh, oh, oh, oh God."
They said you would sleep for half a millennium — not an unreasonable length of time, considering you'd be in limited cryogenic suspension. Your body would rest frozen at the planet's nerve center, an underground complex 20 miles beneath the surface. Your brain, they told you, would be wired to a network of computers; your mind would continue to operate at a minimal level, overseeing maintenance of surface-side equilibrium. And you would not awake, so they promised, until your 500 years had elapsed — barring, of course, the most dire emergency.
Then, and only then, you would be awakened to save your planet by strategically manipulating six robots, each of whom perceives the world differently. But such a catastrophe, you have been assured, could not possibly occur.
It is nice to see that whoever wrote that headline acknowledges that this is a story you see being discussed on a TV in the background of the first 10 minutes of a zombie movie as the protagonist prepares for their day.
Unfortunately, the opportunity to reexamine it has already passed. Even without brain-in-jar sci-fi devices, technology is already sufficiently advanced to create artificial nightmares. Consider the case of state-sponsored torture, which now has at its disposal near-perfect surveillance, VR, genetic modification, a litany drugs, remotely controlled robotics, etc. It's a tragedy that scientific progress itself is a control system that is capable of overshooting its target.
[+] [-] no1youknowz|6 years ago|reply
Imagine that you are a billionaire. Money is absolutely no object at all. And yet, you are in an accident. A car crash for example, your body was gravely injured but your head intact. You are flown to a facility but die on route.
This technology is a get out of jail card. What's interesting to me, is where is the cut off point. Right now I assume its within minutes? But one day it could be a week? Your head in a jar until they either create a new body for you or find a donor body?
Then there is this:
> Consider, Greely suggested, the case of the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero and his associate, the Chinese scientist Xiaoping Ren, who claim to have transplanted a head from one cadaver to another. Undoubtedly, a scientist with fewer scruples than Sestan, fewer moral qualms about human experimentation, will emerge. “Somebody will perfuse a dead human brain, and I think it will be in an unconventional setting, not necessarily in a pure research manner,” Greely told me. “It will be somebody with a lot of money, and he’ll find a scientist willing to do it.”
Putting the current ethical concerns aside. I find this absolutely fascinating. How long until the technology is perfected and some form of immortality is reached?
How would it work. Do you get to 90 years old and they pull out your brain and put it into a newer body?
Just so happens that in 50 years I'll be 90 myself. I a more ethical version of this tech is around in some form or another. I'd love another 90 years!
Oh and for over population concerns, don't worry. I'll be happy to be part of the new expedition on Titan or Ganymede or further out. :)
[+] [-] jklinger410|6 years ago|reply
No expert here, but first you are limited by cellular decay. If we can reverse engineer the aging gene and apply it to the brain, you might be right that we can stave off cell death by a lot.
Then there's alzheimers and other forms of dementia, which the aging thing probably won't fix. Even if you cure alzheimers, you still have memory loss.
So then we'd have to invent some type of memory therapy that defrags the brain and allows consciousness to continue to access a healthy memory bank. Not sure if you'd be able to maintain new memories, slowly lose old ones, or what. But then we could preserve consciousness.
So once you perfect either controlling human memory or at least defragging it so the brain doesn't go crazy or develop dementia, you now have an immortal brain. As long as it has access to the therapy it needs, maybe could live for forever.
Am I wrong here?
[+] [-] umvi|6 years ago|reply
As long as the brain remains a black box... never. We only understand a tiny bit how the brain works; the biggest problems are still unsolved. Even with a completely prosthetic body, your brain will eventually build up plaques and die (again).
[+] [-] virgilp|6 years ago|reply
Does "en eternity in hell" sound exciting? Because it might be a very real possibility.
[+] [-] maxaf|6 years ago|reply
That story revolves around scanning the brains of deceased humans into a computer simulation. Initially this technology is only available as a "get out of jail" card for rich people, as the scanning process and subsequent ops costs of running the simulation are, well, astronomical. Eventually the process is dumbed down to the level of a certain kind of "life insurance", and many more dead people join the simulation. That's when the floodgates open for real. I know I run the risk of spoiling the story, but I'll just say that this is one way the singularity can get started.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwern|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zircom|6 years ago|reply
I don't recall the title but in middle school I remember reading a scifi/horrorish thriller about this exact scenario, the problem they ran into is that the brain still ages, and transplanting it into a younger body doesn't magically de-age the brain itself.
[+] [-] drtillberg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heymijo|6 years ago|reply
Could you imagine the horror of waking up and being just a head?
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] e40|6 years ago|reply
The novels are way better than the Netflix S01, which was the first book. I'm guessing there will be 2 more seasons, one for each book.
[+] [-] etrautmann|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] docker_up|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firethief|6 years ago|reply
> But the pulse generator’s settings proved unsuitable for brains, which have a different flow pattern than the rest of the body. Before Sestan’s team adjusted the settings, the fluid might not completely permeate the vasculature of the organ, leaving parts of the brain essentially untreated. In such tissue, Daniele told me, “you’d end up with this sludgy, white yogurt-ish substance. It was a mess.” Conversely, if the pressure was too high, “the brain could just physically not stand it.” The organ fell apart.
> By that summer, Vrselja and Daniele had fine-tuned the pulse generator and attached a number of custom sensors[...]
It sounds like it was a lot of work getting the pulsation right. If they actually needed pulsation at all that seems like an interesting finding unto itself, since humans and cattle do fine with continuous-flow hearts: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423277
[+] [-] sverige|6 years ago|reply
‘I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die’.’
[+] [-] d1zzy|6 years ago|reply
Is it fair to younger generations that we keep on living? If we don't die there will be fewer opportunities for the younger generations, the resources we have all have access to are after all rather limited. Population growth is already too high, immortality can only make it worse. We can see how millennials are struggling with a tight job market and housing market, all because previous generations who now have longer life spans than their parents are holding on these resources.
There are aspects to immortality that go beyond selfishness, such as the experience and knowledge that is lost of the people dying, being a negative to the society. I'm in support of pursuing technology to allow all or most of that knowledge to be preserved and passed on to younger generations but at some point I think we have to accept our role in this world and that role includes having to stop existing and let others have their chance at a full life.
[+] [-] UnFleshedOne|6 years ago|reply
But that means people who would have been otherwise born would not be. If that is not an issue, perfect, you have your technical solution. If that _is_ an issue, then you have more problems than immortals hoarding resources (one of them is Repugnant Conclusion [0]).
Another way to look at it -- would you want current lifespan artificially shortened if you knew for sure that it would make things fairer for new generations?
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox
[+] [-] CodexArcanum|6 years ago|reply
I feel like the same ethical concerns raised in the article about accidentally reviving a person into a sensory-deprivation nightmare could also apply to accidentally generating a thinking being that can only express itself though shopping recommendations.
We're a long ways off yet from a comprehensive ethics of universal consciousness.
[+] [-] flavius29663|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
> Our grandfather's digital consciousness currently resides in this cube, where I upload the latest films and books for him to enjoy every week.
> We're also able to download correspondence from him. Over one thousand letters were received during his first hour in storage, as this was approximately four years time inside the cube. I will read one of his letters to you now: "Oh, oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh my God. Holy mother of God. Oh, oh, oh, oh God."
[+] [-] elliotec|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684386
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766920
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19753418
[+] [-] Trilkhai|6 years ago|reply
They said you would sleep for half a millennium — not an unreasonable length of time, considering you'd be in limited cryogenic suspension. Your body would rest frozen at the planet's nerve center, an underground complex 20 miles beneath the surface. Your brain, they told you, would be wired to a network of computers; your mind would continue to operate at a minimal level, overseeing maintenance of surface-side equilibrium. And you would not awake, so they promised, until your 500 years had elapsed — barring, of course, the most dire emergency.
Then, and only then, you would be awakened to save your planet by strategically manipulating six robots, each of whom perceives the world differently. But such a catastrophe, you have been assured, could not possibly occur.
Good morning.
[+] [-] sideshowb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|6 years ago|reply
In that book, the tech works, except that one time out of six the person wakes up insane.
[+] [-] jacobush|6 years ago|reply
That book is fantastic.
[+] [-] slg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] danilocesar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] orblivion|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwdqpowdkop|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j2d3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djohnston|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zazzlez|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurbleblurble|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilfihlman|6 years ago|reply
This is absolutely something we need to put lots of research and experimentation into.
[+] [-] wdqwodjkqwpo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erik_landerholm|6 years ago|reply