11 ms·

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: Eithe

by saulrh 8y ago

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 participate in fixing it, or I'm part of a follow-up trial or large-scale roll-out, in which case they'll have fixed up the rest of the issues. In the first case I get to be a grad student again, albeit with a bit of a disability. In the second case, I'm catching a rez from a reasonably reliable medical procedure and the major issues have already been worked out. In both cases I'm no longer dead, and these scenarios are nowhere near having enough downsides to outweigh that.

DavideNL 8y ago
I imagine this would be more like waking up with the worse hangover in my life, multiplied by 10000. I'd rather stay dead.
nsxwolf 8y ago
Or it would be like Robocop 2, which would not be fantastic.
fmihaila 8y ago
> It'd actually be fantastic [...] Either my brain was chosen as a test, [...] or I'm part of a follow-up trial or large-scale roll-out Or your enemies took power, and when they were going through the vats for payback they picked yours (along with many others). If you think you have no enemies, or that you know them all personally, you are better than me.
- sfkdjf9j3j 8y ago
  Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies.
  - fmihaila 8y ago
    > Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies. You made the assumption that I considered them enemies, or that they would even know who I am. If I am an identifiable member of the wrong community, social group, or race from the point of view of the mob in power, I don't have to consider them my enemy in order for them to see me (or my family, or friends) as one. Do you want to contemplate the possibility of genocides, of which we have seen plenty in the last 30 years, being replaced by "vaticides"? Because once the technology allows it, it will happen. I've lived through this kind of historic upheaval once already; I know that of which I speak. The point I'm making is that any new technology can and will eventually be used by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and that the likelihood for that to happen is directly proportional to its potential for good. We better make sure that potential good is really in balance with the potential bad before we commit to bringing it to life (pun intended).
  - groby_b 8y ago
    It just means you live in a very privileged world. If, say, you're a black lesbian feminist, you can live the most saintly life, there are plenty of people who are your enemies, and who'd delight at the idea of being able to hurt you. Despite never having anything done to you. Or, if that's too contemporary, you can be the nicest Jewish person in all of Hitler's Germany, and it still wouldn't save you. If that's too Godwin's law, just be poor. There is a good chunk of people who'd be perfectly OK with experimenting on you, just because you're a drain on society's resources. And we can continue on - there are any number of axes along which society separates, and there are always people who consider "the other" an enemy, or, worse, something not even human. Enmity and dehumanization isn't necessarily mutual, but you need a very strong support system to be able to ignore that it still exists.
  - kraftman 8y ago
    I think it's more weird to have enemies.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nabla9 8y ago
Your brain is one of the first 543 experiments in a private laboratory. Researchers convinced ethical board that brains were not really alive. Brains were kept alive average 3 years, but no "contact" was officially attempted to avoid legal or ethical issues. There are rumors of some extracurricular activity happening. Your contribution is not wasted however. First brain that was able to talk to the world and received full human rights was Peter Thiel's brain.
- sircastor 8y ago
  This Reminds me of Scalzi's "Locked In" series where a disease causes a portion of the population to be conscious, but totally disconnected from their bodies. The supplemental material describes I how the first attempts to interact with these people was performed on prison inmates.
tlrobinson 8y ago
> 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?
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  After living a full life? Probably?
  - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
    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.
    - haisch 8y ago
      I put my money on the brain adapting to the absence of those inputs.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I thought maybe looking into how people in comas experience their time, but apparently it's common for them to have experienced much of what happened around them as a hazy dream[1], which means a lot of sensory input was still being processed. I'm not sure what it would be like to actually lose all sensory input. There's probably some disease that causes this, so maybe I'll stumble on it eventually, but even then we'll only get answers at this point if it's reversible... 1: https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-after-having-been-in-a-coma-for-an-extended-period-of-time https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-aft...
phoboslab 8y ago
The 2015 game SOMA[1] paints a far darker picture of precisely this topic: a brain donated to research. It really explores this in depth. If you're remotely interested in games I can only recommend it. [1] https://www.somagame.com/ https://www.somagame.com/
- hashhar 8y ago
  I'd just like to chime and second the recommendation. Gameplay aside the story that it paints is amazingly well done and makes you think a lot about all the possible implications of something like that.
jhomedall 8y ago
Option 3: the experience of being disconnected from your body is so distressing that you can do nothing but attempt (and fail) to scream. The scientists have no idea you are in distress. This goes on for months or years. By the time technology develops to a point where they can communicate with you, you are irreparably broken.
- Darkphibre 8y ago
  Couldn't they monitor brain activity for common pain modalities?
  - SkyBelow 8y ago
    They currently ignore them. Not talking fantasy. When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored. Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Years ago, I saw a TV interview of the first recipient of a heart-lung transplant. When asked some question post surgery, she blurted "I could really use a beer!" She didn't drink, but the young male donor of her organs who died in a motorcycle crash did. She wrote a book about her experience. Initially, she had bizarre dreams, as if tapping into the psyche of her organ donor. Over time, those stopped. Mention of this tends to not go over well on HN, though it would be easy enough to google who got the first heart-lung transplant, find her book and read it to confirm if I'm making this up or misremembering it or if it's a true story (at least insofar as me remembering that she claimed such things).
      - ben_w 8y ago
        Given how much my personality shifts from relatively minor things like switching between high/low carb diets, or medium things like whatever was in my drip when I went under general anaesthetic, I totally believe that her personality was changed by having a transplant, or separately by her anti-rejection meds. I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.

by saulrh 8y ago

DavideNL 8y ago

I imagine this would be more like waking up with the worse hangover in my life, multiplied by 10000. I'd rather stay dead.

nsxwolf 8y ago

Or it would be like Robocop 2, which would not be fantastic.

fmihaila 8y ago

> It'd actually be fantastic [...] Either my brain was chosen as a test, [...] or I'm part of a follow-up trial or large-scale roll-out Or your enemies took power, and when they were going through the vats for payback they picked yours (along with many others). If you think you have no enemies, or that you know them all personally, you are better than me.

sfkdjf9j3j 8y ago
Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies.
- fmihaila 8y ago
  > Is it really that weird to not have "enemies"? There I people I wouldn't hang out with or wouldn't work with again, but I don't think I'd consider them enemies. You made the assumption that I considered them enemies, or that they would even know who I am. If I am an identifiable member of the wrong community, social group, or race from the point of view of the mob in power, I don't have to consider them my enemy in order for them to see me (or my family, or friends) as one. Do you want to contemplate the possibility of genocides, of which we have seen plenty in the last 30 years, being replaced by "vaticides"? Because once the technology allows it, it will happen. I've lived through this kind of historic upheaval once already; I know that of which I speak. The point I'm making is that any new technology can and will eventually be used by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and that the likelihood for that to happen is directly proportional to its potential for good. We better make sure that potential good is really in balance with the potential bad before we commit to bringing it to life (pun intended).
- groby_b 8y ago
  It just means you live in a very privileged world. If, say, you're a black lesbian feminist, you can live the most saintly life, there are plenty of people who are your enemies, and who'd delight at the idea of being able to hurt you. Despite never having anything done to you. Or, if that's too contemporary, you can be the nicest Jewish person in all of Hitler's Germany, and it still wouldn't save you. If that's too Godwin's law, just be poor. There is a good chunk of people who'd be perfectly OK with experimenting on you, just because you're a drain on society's resources. And we can continue on - there are any number of axes along which society separates, and there are always people who consider "the other" an enemy, or, worse, something not even human. Enmity and dehumanization isn't necessarily mutual, but you need a very strong support system to be able to ignore that it still exists.
- kraftman 8y ago
  I think it's more weird to have enemies.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nabla9 8y ago

Your brain is one of the first 543 experiments in a private laboratory. Researchers convinced ethical board that brains were not really alive. Brains were kept alive average 3 years, but no "contact" was officially attempted to avoid legal or ethical issues. There are rumors of some extracurricular activity happening. Your contribution is not wasted however. First brain that was able to talk to the world and received full human rights was Peter Thiel's brain.

sircastor 8y ago
This Reminds me of Scalzi's "Locked In" series where a disease causes a portion of the population to be conscious, but totally disconnected from their bodies. The supplemental material describes I how the first attempts to interact with these people was performed on prison inmates.

tlrobinson 8y ago

> 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?

mrguyorama 8y ago
After living a full life? Probably?
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  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.
  - haisch 8y ago
    I put my money on the brain adapting to the absence of those inputs.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I thought maybe looking into how people in comas experience their time, but apparently it's common for them to have experienced much of what happened around them as a hazy dream[1], which means a lot of sensory input was still being processed. I'm not sure what it would be like to actually lose all sensory input. There's probably some disease that causes this, so maybe I'll stumble on it eventually, but even then we'll only get answers at this point if it's reversible... 1: https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-after-having-been-in-a-coma-for-an-extended-period-of-time https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-aft...

phoboslab 8y ago

The 2015 game SOMA[1] paints a far darker picture of precisely this topic: a brain donated to research. It really explores this in depth. If you're remotely interested in games I can only recommend it. [1] https://www.somagame.com/ https://www.somagame.com/

hashhar 8y ago
I'd just like to chime and second the recommendation. Gameplay aside the story that it paints is amazingly well done and makes you think a lot about all the possible implications of something like that.

jhomedall 8y ago

Option 3: the experience of being disconnected from your body is so distressing that you can do nothing but attempt (and fail) to scream. The scientists have no idea you are in distress. This goes on for months or years. By the time technology develops to a point where they can communicate with you, you are irreparably broken.

Darkphibre 8y ago
Couldn't they monitor brain activity for common pain modalities?
- SkyBelow 8y ago
  They currently ignore them. Not talking fantasy. When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored. Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Years ago, I saw a TV interview of the first recipient of a heart-lung transplant. When asked some question post surgery, she blurted "I could really use a beer!" She didn't drink, but the young male donor of her organs who died in a motorcycle crash did. She wrote a book about her experience. Initially, she had bizarre dreams, as if tapping into the psyche of her organ donor. Over time, those stopped. Mention of this tends to not go over well on HN, though it would be easy enough to google who got the first heart-lung transplant, find her book and read it to confirm if I'm making this up or misremembering it or if it's a true story (at least insofar as me remembering that she claimed such things).
    - ben_w 8y ago
      Given how much my personality shifts from relatively minor things like switching between high/low carb diets, or medium things like whatever was in my drip when I went under general anaesthetic, I totally believe that her personality was changed by having a transplant, or separately by her anti-rejection meds. I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.