A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100 percent fatal
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The startup accelerator Y Combinator is known for supporting audacious companies in its popular three-month boot camp.
There’s never been anything quite like Nectome, though.
Next week, at YC’s “demo days,” Nectome’s cofounder, Robert McIntyre, is going to describe his technology for exquisitely preserving brains in microscopic detail using a high-tech embalming process. Then the MIT graduate will make his business pitch. As it says on his website: “What if we told you we could back up your mind?”
So yeah. Nectome is a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation. That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere.
This story has a grisly twist, though. For Nectome’s procedure to work, it’s essential that the brain be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals into the big carotid arteries in their necks while they are still alive (though under general anesthesia).
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/
A mind-blowing experience.
Where do I apply.
Ah, the next level of scamming those dumb asses who pay hundreds of thousands to have their heads "cryogenically preserved" so they can ideally be brought back to life in the future.
[quote]in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals[/quote]
powered by magnets and science magic
I'm gonna come back to this post and laugh at it in 2300 years
Assuming in 2300 years the primitive fluid mixtures they pumped into your brain to "preserve" it actually were able to somehow preserve all the connections on the 10^11 neurons you have then fair game. The primitive magic "secret formula" cocktails they are using right now aren't that good, they don't even know if it preserves enough neurons or if it still destroys too many cells to even bring you back. If you get lucky maybe you'll be functional enough to be a janitor, but you'll likely be completely brain dead. The only confirmed times this shit worked was a trial of 12 dogs that were only cooled to 2 degrees C, and 9 of those dogs fucking died after being brought back due to the thawing process. And they're freezing these heads to -200+ so..
they never mentioned this in futurama, so ill be taking this with a huge grain of salt
Silicon Valley once again reinventing the wheel, I can kill myself at home for free
I thought memories were stored as a continuous stream of electrons via neurons, but not the neurons themselves.
Won't this basically make someone that probably thinks like you, but doesn't share your memories?
The truth is, we actually really don't know for sure. We just don't really have the info we need on how the human brain fully works to say with any actual confidence yet iirc. We're making leaps and bounds in understanding the human brain but it's so complex that we still can't even properly model it. Like I said earlier there's 10^11 neurons in the brain, 100 billion, give or take. And that's just neurons alone, glial cells are estimated anywhere from 10 to 50 times as many as the neurons. Each neuron in turn has something like around up to 10,000 connections between other neurons. IIRC, this ~3 pound computer called the human brain is equal to something close to 1000 petaflops to put it in supercomputer terms. The most powerful supercomputer in the world to date, Sunway TaihuLight, is only 93 petaflops. It has 10,649,600 CPU cores running at 1.45 GHz.
This really just sounds like a very roundabout way to have a legal form of euthanasia while profiting from it. "Lets just freeze people with our special sauce pored into their veins and keep our fingers crossed that in the future we'll be able to copy their brain", yeah no that's not going to work out.
Honestly they'd be better off running it as a form of euthanasia that might* be able to resurrect a copy of you, with a heavy emphasis on might.
They'll probably just put a USB drive in your head, wait for you to pass away, then just throw it in the garbage.
Electrical impulses in the nervous system are carried by ions, not electrons. The brain is far, far more complicated than just electrical signals as there are a whole host of chemical signals and feedback loops involved as well. The biggest mistake one can make when thinking of the human brain is to think of it in terms of things we're familiar with: computers and the electrical circuits they comprise. Brains are nothing like computers.
“The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,” he says. “Product-market fit is people believing that it works.”
Doesn't mention coming back at all as part of the User experience, says the product is for people who believe it works. AKA you pay them to kill you.
Back in my day, killing yourself was free!
I mean technically even if they do "bring you back" they fully admit it isn't going to be your current stream of consciousness.
The coming back to life bit is part of someone elses user experience.
I bet the whole thing is going to be powered by solar roadways as well.
Man why even bother go through the procedure if it's going to be a continuation of your own consciousness? Sort of understandable if you're some kind of genius, so then you could theoretically preserve your way of thinking and combined knowledge, but anyone who buys into this is clearly bug fuck stupid to begin with
Oh god, it's the preliminary steps of immortality via transferring your consciousness between clones like in EVE Online.
Thsts the first thing I thought of when I saw the title.
https://youtu.be/FZPCiqBLPM8
Wake my brain up when I can finally date my anime gf irl
I mean, I guess its always an alternative to euthanasia. If you get euthanized normally you 100% know you're going to stay dead forever, whereas even if this has 1/1000 chance of working it will still be an improvement. Plus if it gets widespread traction and is legalized, it might be a cool loophole for countries that don't legalize euthanasia.
I wonder if they'll figure out this kind of technology for real within the next 50 years or such a thing is still in "flying cars" realm of science fiction.
I would be very critical of the companys trustworthness in the long run, as Silicon valley people are generally not very farsighted...
How well they do preserve, handle and store, and who do they later sell the infomation, aka brains, they have mapped to?
But will they go on to copy themself into a suit without deactivating their old self thereby stranding themselves twice in an underwater hellhole?
What if the company goes out of business?
Wise thing to would be to build fund for upkeep.
I remember that Alcor does so.
You get auctioned off to cover their debts
What's the point of this when age reversing DNA altering tech is just around the corner?
A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100 percent fatal
