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Is there remotely any reason to believe you could put their brain back together in a functioning way or that the connections are even still there cryopreserved

Is there remotely any reason to believe you could put their brain back together in a functioning way or that the connections are even still there cryopreserved like this? If not, this is all so silly. Just take a tiny piece of tissue and cryopreserve its DNA and you can have a clone made in the future. It won’t have your memories but that’s as close as we can get. I cryopreserve cells all the time but they have to be single cells surrounded by fluid or it just makes a mess. As far as I know we don’t know how to cryopreserve the delicate structure and micro architecture of tissues. It may be physically impossible.

pfdietz 3y ago
I'm assuming it would require a complete demolition of the frozen brain, recording the state of its cells and connections, then rebuilding that in some way, or running it in simulation. Not an easy task at all, but perhaps more believable than repairing the damned thing. Somehow I see Elon Musk as the kind of person who's going to spring for this. Cryonics on Mars! At least it would save on life support costs there.
metalcrow 3y ago
> Is there remotely any reason to believe you could put their brain back together in a functioning way or that the connections are even still there cryopreserved like this This is a well studied area, and there's good reason to believe the damage isn't unfixable/absolutely devastating to the brain structure. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22533424/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22533424/ is a paper specifically on this.
- echelon 3y ago
  If we can recolor jpegs from the 1800s, I'm confident we'll be able to recover frozen connectomes. I wouldn't place any limit on our future computational abilities or techniques. And even things that lie beyond the limit of detection may fit some into some clever model we've yet to imagine.
Veedrac 3y ago
Yes, it's not obvious that structural information suffices to reconstruct brain state, but it's not implausible either. We know brains survive periods of reduced activity, and they're stable over longer time periods than you'd expect if a ton of vital non-transient state was stored non-structurally. I think resuscitation is ~implausible, but reconstruction seems logically feasible, just not with current day technology, nor obviously with high surety.
vagab0nd 3y ago
> It won’t have your memories but that’s as close as we can get. I'd argue it's not much closer than just having children. It's still far from preserving self, because you don't preserve the "consciousness" whatever that is.
- Qem 3y ago
  I don't even know the names of my grand-grand-grandfathers and grand-grand-grandmothers, and I believe the same appies to most people. So having children on average sucks at preserving one's memories beyond a few generations.

pfdietz 3y ago

I'm assuming it would require a complete demolition of the frozen brain, recording the state of its cells and connections, then rebuilding that in some way, or running it in simulation. Not an easy task at all, but perhaps more believable than repairing the damned thing. Somehow I see Elon Musk as the kind of person who's going to spring for this. Cryonics on Mars! At least it would save on life support costs there.

metalcrow 3y ago

> Is there remotely any reason to believe you could put their brain back together in a functioning way or that the connections are even still there cryopreserved like this This is a well studied area, and there's good reason to believe the damage isn't unfixable/absolutely devastating to the brain structure. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22533424/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22533424/ is a paper specifically on this.

echelon 3y ago
If we can recolor jpegs from the 1800s, I'm confident we'll be able to recover frozen connectomes. I wouldn't place any limit on our future computational abilities or techniques. And even things that lie beyond the limit of detection may fit some into some clever model we've yet to imagine.

Veedrac 3y ago

Yes, it's not obvious that structural information suffices to reconstruct brain state, but it's not implausible either. We know brains survive periods of reduced activity, and they're stable over longer time periods than you'd expect if a ton of vital non-transient state was stored non-structurally. I think resuscitation is ~implausible, but reconstruction seems logically feasible, just not with current day technology, nor obviously with high surety.

vagab0nd 3y ago

> It won’t have your memories but that’s as close as we can get. I'd argue it's not much closer than just having children. It's still far from preserving self, because you don't preserve the "consciousness" whatever that is.

Qem 3y ago
I don't even know the names of my grand-grand-grandfathers and grand-grand-grandmothers, and I believe the same appies to most people. So having children on average sucks at preserving one's memories beyond a few generations.