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Interesting article that I found after reading a story about cyronics being practiced and wondering if there was any validity to it at all. The piece touches on some fascinating points about how our brain works that I thought would be of interest here. From MIT Technology Review...

[technologyreview.com]

I think the publisher gives a few free reads per month, I subscribe now so I'm not sure, it didn't let me read the whole article until I logged in. So here's a free read for you, I put it on Pastebin.

[pastebin.com]

josh_is_exciting 7 May 18
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So...This article, from beginning to end, title and all is nothing but misleading. It is conflating two separate concepts...cryonics (freezing and unfreezing), and "mind uploading" (copy, then destroy the original).

Cryonics hasn't been found to work yet, that I'm aware of, mostly from the problem listed in another response... if ice crystals form, it perforates/destroys every cell membrane, making the unfreezing process pretty...um...messy. However, cooling a body, but not to freezing, may extend life. They're messing with that stuff as we speak, in various forms. The military is doing experiments where with quickly cooling a human immediately after major trauma, and finding that they can extending a 30-minute critical treatment window into a couple of hours by slowing metabolism. This is a step toward cryonics, and is a form of cryonic treatment. This is also a step toward better medical treatments for the general public, as it may be great for massive heart attacks and crash victims...and most military advances trickle into societal use after a few decades.

Concerning what this article is ACTUALLY discussing, there is quite a bit of talk of "mind uploading" in recent years. It has come up as an episode in Black Mirror. But the real kicker is the "Ship of Theseus" paradox, which, when considered in a step-wise fashion, exposes that brain uploading is likely NOT life extension in any way. I encourage you to take a minute to familiarize:

[baringtheaegis.blogspot.com]

How does this apply? We may come to a time when you can upgrade some part of your brain, a piece at a time. You will remove the old, and put in the new. If they replace 1% of your brain, will the person who wakes-up from surgery still be you? (Most likely yes). This stands on the idea of a "continuity of consciousness". You have a consciousness that goes back as far as you do, with no breaks in the chain. Suppose they replace 50% of your brain? Still you on the table when you wake up? Suppose they replace 100%? Still you?

The article proposes making an even MORE distant version of you, by making a high resolution copy of your brain, for creating a computer copy (a brain upload, as it were). Of all of the Theseus examples, this most certainly is NOT you. It's a copy of you. Your continuity of consciousness stopped on the operating table during the process, and a new consciousness was created in the copy. That copy may swear up and down that it is you...but it's not. (Think of the original BladeRunner, and the girl who did not know she was a robot, but reasoned, because she could remember her childhood, that she must be human).

THAT is what this article is actually talking about. It is hinting that "brain uploading" is viable for creating eternal existence. It is not. It'd be a great way to kick off the life of an AI, but it will certainly NOT be you.

How about THAT for a novel of a response!?! Did that elucidate anything? Any thoughts? In the future, if this shit starts happening, one best be familiar with the philosophies before you sign on the line to be uploaded, and inadvertently find your stream of consciousness ceases to exist after the procedure. 😊

The link I provided has a nice video, but it can be tricky to consider how it relates to consciousness. If you follow the video all the way through, a "continuity of consciousness" is like Theseus's ship, particularly the "A" variety as discussed in the video. Also, the final concept in the video, the "worm theory" shows that consciousness continuity concept...if you upgrade, your consciousness follows (ie ship A). If you take the ship apart (ie to make a copy, or to rebuild with the original parts, the line of continuity (the worm line) is broken at some point. That's the point at which YOU, the continuous consciousness stopped...ie you died, and a new/rebuilt thing took your place.

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I was always told tissues can't hold their structure when frozen due to the water crystallizing. Makes sense to me.

They have no good way

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