17 ms·

A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize

64 points by porejide 11y ago

danieltillett 11y ago
I am glad progress is being made here, but until we can avoid the destruction that occurs in the last 24 hours of expected death (eg cancer), or the damage that occurs with unexpected death (eg heart attack or trauma) from sitting at room temperature for hours after death, then all we are going to be preserving is grey mush.
- ianpurton 11y ago
  If people learn to take regular backups this wouldn't be a problem.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    If only this were possible :(
    - crimsonalucard 11y ago
      Will those backups be you? What if one of those backups activated on accident? Would you kill it? Or should it kill you?
      - SCHiM 11y ago
        Depending on your outlook on life, if the backup is you, don't you already know the answer?
- imaginenore 11y ago
  You're assuming this "grey mush" can't be recovered. We don't actually know that. A sufficiently advanced AI should be able to recover a person from way less.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    The problem is the information is encoded in the arrangements of the neural connections. Once your brain has reached the grey mush stage all those connection are lost.
    - htns 11y ago
      Aren't neurons relatively sizable? I don't see why they would totally "decay" in a short time frame, but maybe it's because I'm ignorant.
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    You're assuming the phrase "a sufficiently advanced AI" answers anything at all. Presumably you're assuming if the information is there at all - if the necessary data hasn't been scrambled beyond the noise floor of the scrambling process - then there's something for magic (because you're really talking about magic here) to work with. So, please (a) set out your claim with precision (b) back up your claim. * What is the information you need to recover? * To what degree is it scrambled? * What of it is scrambled below the noise floor of the process? * How do you know all this? (wrong answer: "here's a LessWrong/Alcor page." right answer: "here's something from a relevant neuroscientist.") For comparison: even a nigh-magical superintelligent AI can't recover an ice sculpture from the bucket of water it's melted into. It is in fact possible to just lose information. So, since you're making this claim, I'd like you to quantify just what you think the damage actually is.
    - atrus 11y ago
      Sure it can. Look at a photograph, make a mould and find a freezer :P
    - M8 11y ago
      If it's a godlike AI it can simulate humankind in reverse and resurrect everyone's consciousness before each person's death.
      - 11y ago
- Udo 11y ago
  There has to be enough information left over to reconstruct a person in "high enough fidelity" (whatever we may decide that means in the future). A brain just sitting there for hours after death at room temperature isn't idea - however, there is some good news in the area. It turns out that the most destruction happening to a brain after an ischemic episode is actually due to a cascade triggered by eventual re-perfusion. Since the dead brain is never re-perfused, this cascade is never triggered. Cellular decay after death makes a biological re-animation infeasible, but speaking as someone who did prepare a lot of neuro slides at uni, it takes more than a few hours for the structure itself to decay heavily, so we should be good for a scan/upload scenario. Pertaining to the article, the first hours after death are nowhere near as problematic to the brain's information content as the plastination procedure they're using! Brain trauma before death is another matter. Since we don't have the capability to create backups or checkpoints of our neuronal structure, what's physically destroyed is simply lost beyond recovery. However, for example in aggressive brain cancers, a functional copy of the person might still be recovered in principle even if their neocortex was severely compromised, as long as the actual data is still there.
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  I agree. But I also think this work (and future work like it) will help with that; having convincing proof that a preservation process works will make it easier to get obstacles to prompt preservation out of the way.
maaku 11y ago
Note that this approach should be compared with cryonics, which attempts to vitrify the brain and preserve it in a glass-like state at liquid nitrogen temperatures: http://www.alcor.org/ http://www.alcor.org/ Personally I have some reservations about the plastination approach to personal longevity. Depending on your philosophical views on the nature of consciousness, it may be that under this procedure you would die and cease to exist, while some future emulation of your brain thinks it is you -- i.e. biological-you and future-emulated-you are two separate people that just share memories. It is however interesting science and may be a short-cut path to getting necessary scanning resolution for whole brain emulation.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?
  - sanoli 11y ago
    No, its very probably not the same. The brain doesn't shut off when you go to sleep. It keeps going, it keeps doing it's stuff, messing with memories, thoughts, all the bodily functions and a whole extra stuff that we don't know too well, but which probably still makes you you. Killing that brain and then simulating it somewhere else is not the same.
    - fallous 11y ago
      More importantly, does anyone suggest that running the original brain and the copy doesn't result in two separate diverged intellects? If running two results in separate consciousnesses then obviously they are not the same.
      - x1798DE 11y ago
        I don't think that follows. If "your" consciousness is just the consciousness that has a continuity of memory with a previous version of you, then the two copies would both be you, but they would not be one another.
iLoch 11y ago
One step closer to me being able to spin up multiple instances of my brain to work on my side project and play video games with.
- sanoli 11y ago
  Or spin up an instance with the 'lazyness' region deactivated.
- ttty 11y ago
  Please add a load balancer too. I hope we can have an interface like amazon ec2, but for brains
  - vidarh 11y ago
    That would have been a somewhat less ridiculous explanation for The Matrix. "Oh, those vats full of humans? They're our neural network cloud".
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      Yes, and considering that The Fall of Hyperion was published in 1990, that scenario should have been obvious to the Wachowskis.
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        It was actually what they intended, before the execs told them audiences wouldn't understand it.
        jessaustin 11y ago
        "Humans are used as batteries." "Humans are used as computer chips." Neither statement really makes any sense without some creative thinking. Execs are weird.
        vidarh 11y ago
Udo 11y ago
We just has a plastination vs. cryonics debate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595853) which might be of interest here.

64 points by porejide 11y ago

I am glad progress is being made here, but until we can avoid the destruction that occurs in the last 24 hours of expected death (eg cancer), or the damage that occurs with unexpected death (eg heart attack or trauma) from sitting at room temperature for hours after death, then all we are going to be preserving is grey mush.

ianpurton 11y ago
If people learn to take regular backups this wouldn't be a problem.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  If only this were possible :(
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    Will those backups be you? What if one of those backups activated on accident? Would you kill it? Or should it kill you?
    - SCHiM 11y ago
      Depending on your outlook on life, if the backup is you, don't you already know the answer?
imaginenore 11y ago
You're assuming this "grey mush" can't be recovered. We don't actually know that. A sufficiently advanced AI should be able to recover a person from way less.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  The problem is the information is encoded in the arrangements of the neural connections. Once your brain has reached the grey mush stage all those connection are lost.
  - htns 11y ago
    Aren't neurons relatively sizable? I don't see why they would totally "decay" in a short time frame, but maybe it's because I'm ignorant.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  You're assuming the phrase "a sufficiently advanced AI" answers anything at all. Presumably you're assuming if the information is there at all - if the necessary data hasn't been scrambled beyond the noise floor of the scrambling process - then there's something for magic (because you're really talking about magic here) to work with. So, please (a) set out your claim with precision (b) back up your claim. * What is the information you need to recover? * To what degree is it scrambled? * What of it is scrambled below the noise floor of the process? * How do you know all this? (wrong answer: "here's a LessWrong/Alcor page." right answer: "here's something from a relevant neuroscientist.") For comparison: even a nigh-magical superintelligent AI can't recover an ice sculpture from the bucket of water it's melted into. It is in fact possible to just lose information. So, since you're making this claim, I'd like you to quantify just what you think the damage actually is.
  - atrus 11y ago
    Sure it can. Look at a photograph, make a mould and find a freezer :P
  - M8 11y ago
    If it's a godlike AI it can simulate humankind in reverse and resurrect everyone's consciousness before each person's death.
    - 11y ago
Udo 11y ago
There has to be enough information left over to reconstruct a person in "high enough fidelity" (whatever we may decide that means in the future). A brain just sitting there for hours after death at room temperature isn't idea - however, there is some good news in the area. It turns out that the most destruction happening to a brain after an ischemic episode is actually due to a cascade triggered by eventual re-perfusion. Since the dead brain is never re-perfused, this cascade is never triggered. Cellular decay after death makes a biological re-animation infeasible, but speaking as someone who did prepare a lot of neuro slides at uni, it takes more than a few hours for the structure itself to decay heavily, so we should be good for a scan/upload scenario. Pertaining to the article, the first hours after death are nowhere near as problematic to the brain's information content as the plastination procedure they're using! Brain trauma before death is another matter. Since we don't have the capability to create backups or checkpoints of our neuronal structure, what's physically destroyed is simply lost beyond recovery. However, for example in aggressive brain cancers, a functional copy of the person might still be recovered in principle even if their neocortex was severely compromised, as long as the actual data is still there.
jimrandomh 11y ago
I agree. But I also think this work (and future work like it) will help with that; having convincing proof that a preservation process works will make it easier to get obstacles to prompt preservation out of the way.

maaku 11y ago

Note that this approach should be compared with cryonics, which attempts to vitrify the brain and preserve it in a glass-like state at liquid nitrogen temperatures: http://www.alcor.org/ http://www.alcor.org/ Personally I have some reservations about the plastination approach to personal longevity. Depending on your philosophical views on the nature of consciousness, it may be that under this procedure you would die and cease to exist, while some future emulation of your brain thinks it is you -- i.e. biological-you and future-emulated-you are two separate people that just share memories. It is however interesting science and may be a short-cut path to getting necessary scanning resolution for whole brain emulation.

danieltillett 11y ago
Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?
- sanoli 11y ago
  No, its very probably not the same. The brain doesn't shut off when you go to sleep. It keeps going, it keeps doing it's stuff, messing with memories, thoughts, all the bodily functions and a whole extra stuff that we don't know too well, but which probably still makes you you. Killing that brain and then simulating it somewhere else is not the same.
  - fallous 11y ago
    More importantly, does anyone suggest that running the original brain and the copy doesn't result in two separate diverged intellects? If running two results in separate consciousnesses then obviously they are not the same.
    - x1798DE 11y ago
      I don't think that follows. If "your" consciousness is just the consciousness that has a continuity of memory with a previous version of you, then the two copies would both be you, but they would not be one another.

iLoch 11y ago

One step closer to me being able to spin up multiple instances of my brain to work on my side project and play video games with.

sanoli 11y ago
Or spin up an instance with the 'lazyness' region deactivated.
ttty 11y ago
Please add a load balancer too. I hope we can have an interface like amazon ec2, but for brains
- vidarh 11y ago
  That would have been a somewhat less ridiculous explanation for The Matrix. "Oh, those vats full of humans? They're our neural network cloud".
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Yes, and considering that The Fall of Hyperion was published in 1990, that scenario should have been obvious to the Wachowskis.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      It was actually what they intended, before the execs told them audiences wouldn't understand it.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        "Humans are used as batteries." "Humans are used as computer chips." Neither statement really makes any sense without some creative thinking. Execs are weird.
      - vidarh 11y ago

Udo 11y ago

We just has a plastination vs. cryonics debate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9595853) which might be of interest here.