Preserving your brain might kill you, but it could help you live forever - Sensationalist Headlines

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/may-5-2018-preserving-brains-for-uploading-coral-reefs-sound-sick-south-american-child-sacrifice-and-more-1.4647066/preserving-your-brain-might-kill-you-but-it-could-it-help-you-live-forever-1.4647089 Title is somewhat clickbaity, but it does give you an interesting read (Its different from the pig brain one if you were wondering)

Brain bots here we come.

"Live forever" is a completely loaded term since what's actually surviving is your "data" and in a completely raw form without a means or method to actually access it in a self-cognizant way.

I think before we can truly upload a brain and download it to a new host we'd have to perfect brain transplants, I'd imagine if we can do that good without losing consciousness (basically freaky friday) then we can start really studying consciousness.

And then there's the whole debate about if it's even you anymore

eh, i'd probably do it

IMO, if it's not the same brain, not the same person. Sure you can probably clone a personality, memories, etc, but that's more or less copying instead of preserving the original.

We have literally no way of actually knowing this at all, though. We have absolutely no handle on what consciousness truly is, or what constitutes it and what does not constitute it. Here's a fun question. What if you were to replace the brain piece by piece? Let's say that the pieces are atoms. It'd still be the same person, right? What about molecule by molecule? What if we replaced it in 1mm chunks, somehow keeping the neurons in the same "hot" state? 10mm chunks? Chunks that comprise a whole cortex? There's no reason that an arbitrary line is anything but arbitrary

I say my clone is me and that's OK. take that metaphysics. but seriously, it'll really be up to the individual and their beliefs.

Literally Ghost in the Shell.

I just don't want to live forever, period. As interesting and amazing as getting to see the future would be, living in a world void of everyone and everything I knew is not for me.

If you want to live forever* 'solutions' like this are not the answer. Firstly you have to die, which immediately defeats the whole endeavour. Secondly the you that lives on in a computer or a robot will constantly be questioned on whether they're the 'real' you or not, which is really inconsequential to them. Thirdly you're assuming the information in a brain is even remotely compatible with some uninvented future technology. What if it turns out the brain relies on physical processes we can't recreate? How are you going to emulate hormones? The path to eternal life** is in creating ways for the body to be reinvigorated. For the brain to regenerate and for your DNA to not become a degraded mess over time. You need to extend the body's ability to repair itself while eliminating the natural decay which slowly eats away at your body. Which, if possible, would be fucking obscenely expensive and would be a constant process for the rest of your life. *While some people like to remark that no one wants to live forever there are legitimately people who just want to see what happens in the future and experience it. If you do want to live forever you probably want to live well forever, you want to be relatively young forever not a slowly withering husk. **There is no such thing as eternal life, even if you stopped the ageing process completely you can still be killed. If you avoid being killed by external means Humanity won't last forever so you'll be alone eventually, meaning the end of your life as far as Humanity is concerned.

What if everyone you know lives forever including your annoying neighbor

I don't think it's that arbitrary. At some point you begin removing chunks so large that the continuous functioning of the brain is affected, much like how you can only replace certain parts of an engine while it is running.

Thinking about it, we'd also be a step towards teleportation.

Right, but what if the parts you were replacing the old ones with were "hot' in the same state as the old bits?

"What if ship of Theseus"

Except in this case what the article describes for all intents and purposes clinically murders the brain, suggesting that at best there might be some yet non-existent future hardware capable of fully extracting the exact physical information preserved in this dead brain and simulating it so that in theory a digital (or otherwise) copy of the consciousness emerges, which should from what little we know now be entirely identical. Still however, a copy.

News like this should prompt an almost religious level of dedication to humanity making it to the point that it can create the necessary technology.

You cannot do that without disrupting the continuous functioning of the brain/engine.

You meet new people as you live. It's not like you suddenly stop making friends when you turn 500.

Yes, but I don't think it's productive to just default to common examples without actually explaining how exactly they apply. My point was that it's not quite that black and white. We have no idea what constitutes a continuous conciousness and what doesn't, because as it stands everything in regards to brain discontinuity is completely theoretical.

Yeah yeah, I know, I wasn't trying to shit on the conversation really. There's a reason why a 2000 year old paradox keeps popping up.

Small correction, Consciousness discontinuity*, there is no question on whether the brain discontinues in procedures such as this or any other in which one clearly speaks of a different brain or simulation of it, rather than editing one already running somehow.

Really makes you think what futuristic facepunch and LMAO pics thread might be like

Full of archaeologists posting rage comics.

What parts of an engine can you replace while its running? Because I can't think of just about any that are required for critical function.

This isnt the answer youre after, But you can never determine after what piece is it really you anymore, each piece is changing you and removing a part of you. As said above, if you replace a person piece by piece you are making a copy. The original is gone, the brain may survive with the same consciousness and transfer its data if the replacement pieces are tiny enough at a time, fron what I believe, if the replacements are done perfectly and over a period of time, leave the brain a chance to get used to each new piece like having a transplant. You might be able to? But i doubt this is in the realm of possibility. Preservation is the way to go for sure.

I'm confused as to why you guys are arguing the very simple question about 'what it means to be you' when there are more practical nightmares. Like dictators living forever, or billionaires...or a combination of the two.

I wonder what kind of rapid change the world would see if were able to preserve at least one of somebody the likes of Einstein forever.