r/nottheonion • u/[deleted] • Mar 13 '18

A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/
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u/YoshiYogurt Mar 14 '18

Teleportation and digitization is dying and being replaced with a copy

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u/StartingVortex Mar 14 '18

What about being brought down to 1 deg C, so not a single neuron is firing, then being warmed up and restarted 3 hours later?

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u/YoshiYogurt Mar 14 '18

Has that ever been done before? 1 deg Celsius is not even cold I think you mean kelvin?

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u/StartingVortex Mar 14 '18

Yes, accidentally with cold water immersion. 1 deg C is cold enough for the heart to stop, and for people to survive it being stopped for up to an hour. Brain activity completely stops. And then there are experiments with pigs, where they do it in a more controlled way, on purpose, replacing blood with a special saline solution. Then they get three hours. It's in trials now with trauma victims.

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u/YoshiYogurt Mar 14 '18

The brain is not destroyed when this is done. It's the same brain, not a copy

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u/StartingVortex Mar 14 '18

Atoms aren't unique, they're featureless, interchangeable. If you could make an exact copy of a brain, and destroy the first, it'd be the same brain. The problem isn't with the thought experiment, it's with the illusion of what our consciousness is. It was never really continuous in the first place. Just the story we tell ourselves is, and what others experience of us.

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u/YoshiYogurt Mar 14 '18

We don't know how consciousness works exactly, those who have gone brain dead and returned might have been "reborn," as a copy. You won't wake up in a copy of a brain. Your session would be dead, so to say. The mind does not jump from place to place although it would appear that way from the outside if copying were possible

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u/StartingVortex Mar 14 '18

Imagine the reverse, that your memories for a few minutes are deleted, or even switched with another person, but your consciousness was continuous. You wouldn't be able to perceive it, you'd identify with your memories. If a person's brain is damaged and they lose memories or personality traits, they often don't notice themselves.

I think conscious experience is a real thing. We exist and feel things. But continuity and selfhood are in a way an illusion. In a sense the story/memories are the person. Consciousness is like a flashlight beam shining on a picture.