
A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal” - sethbannon
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/amp/
======
bulletsvshumans
If folks really want to make sure they come back from the dead, they might
also think about setting up proper incentives for performing the potentially
highly laborious process that resurrection might entail even 100+ years from
now. It might be helpful to place a sort of back-to-life bounty on yourself,
to be held in escrow, and only to be paid out upon successful resurrection.
The bigger the bounty, the higher your de-facto priority in the queue. Let it
collect interest and fund the ongoing administration of your bounty in the
meantime.

If you really want to make it stringent, make the bounty require a password
that only that (deceased) person knows. Best case scenario they do such a good
job resurrecting you that you still remember the password, or at worst there's
an incentive to picking the fact out of your brain, which might be only
slightly less difficult than doing the full resurrection.

~~~
wl
This would be difficult with the current legal system in most of the United
States because of the rule against perpetuities[0]. Of course, jurisdiction
shopping makes this easier in certain locales.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities)

~~~
hyperpallium
According to Larry Niven ( _Rammer_ ), the courts will find the dead cannot
own property.

I observe there's a certain prejudice, in that law is written by the living.

The other ideas of cryptocurrency/escrow/private keys would escape the law...
until you tried to spend it legally. You might as well bury gold in a chest.

~~~
DonHopkins
According to Douglas Adams, Hotblack Desiato once spent a year dead for tax
reasons.

[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Hotblack_Desiato](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Hotblack_Desiato)

~~~
hyperpallium
DNA is strangely relevant here (as he often is):

[...] I don't know what this great think I'm meant to be doing is, and it
looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right?

"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except that the old
me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain - my own brain -
and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I
wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I
wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing.

"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my
brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and
by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring
about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he
got.

"Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving
orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to
know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be
anybody's puppet, particularly not my own."

Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was
attracting.

"The old me is dead!" he raved, "Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about
trying to interfere with the living!"

------
whack
Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your
brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness
to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you
haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I
wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal
chance of it happening.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Museum_(Black_Mirror)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Museum_\(Black_Mirror\))

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk)

~~~
kevindeasis
There's also a similar scene in Altered Carbon

~~~
satori99
Iain M Banks' Culture novel, Surface Detail, also deals with the idea of
eternal digital heavens and hells.

Many of them are run by corporations. Some civilizations even send young
sinners on day trips to hell to keep them on the 'right' path.

Scary stuff.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail)

~~~
pmoriarty
Back in 1965, Stanislaw Lem wrote in his _Cyberiad_ about a sadistic king who
was given a virtual world to rule over. The king gleefully proceeded to
torture its virtual inhabitants. Lem has a lot to say on the ethics of this.

You can read this remarkable story and Douglas Hofstadter's and Daniel
Dennett's commentary on it here:

[https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-18-seventh-
sal...](https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-18-seventh-sally-or-how-
trurls.html)

------
PeanutNore
“Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant.
Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?” Hendricks told me this week
after reviewing Nectome’s website. “I hope future people are appalled that in
the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent
their money and resources trying to live forever on the backs of their
descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? They are cartoon bad guys.”

Best part of the article for sure

~~~
cwkoss
Anyone who is cryopreserved, but is viewed as a villian in the zeitgeist of
the future, could end up being booted up into a personal hell for the
amusement/vindictiveness of future people.

If a 'Hitler' VM was publicly available online, how many people would torture
it? What are the ethics around torturing virtual consciousnesses of evil
people?

~~~
petercooper
A heads up for anyone interested in such matters, but an episode in the latest
season of Black Mirror is specifically about this :-) (Indeed, most of the
season is about the ethics of simulated consciousness in various ways.)

~~~
cwkoss
Great show. Loved season 3. White Christmas in season 2 also touches on this.

------
kaizendad
Seems like a big bet on the concept that the physical structure of the brain
preserves enough information to resurrect a consciousness. If electrical
transmissions are at all required, then this would render a brain nothing more
than an amusing curio.

Although, given that their target market is already those planning to be
euthanized, I suppose the tradeoff of one's brain being an amusing curio vs.
one's brain being worm food is not a reason to avoid this service.

If they are correct, it brings up an interesting question: given that the
technology requires a slow, planned process to preserve the brain, at what
point should a uniquely brilliant person be euthanized, in order to preserve
them, rather than allowing them to die by sudden misadventure, e.g. not paying
attention and getting hit by a car crossing the street.

Given that the output of so many brilliant people is skewed to when they are
young, do we just start proactively euthanizing the top 0.05% of the
population when they reach 50, to preserve our best for the future?

~~~
prepend
Clearly, morality and the greater good of humanity requires that we
proactively euthanize any genius who hits 60. Even against their will. All
assets should go to the euthanasia team to cover costs.

~~~
manmal
Do you refer to a certain Star Trek episode?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(Star_Trek:_The_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_\(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation\))

(Ritual suicide at age 60 embedded in culture)

~~~
prepend
I had forgotten about this. I bet I subsciously used it.

I was actually thinking of Logan’s Run when writing my comment.

------
noetic_techy
This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an
antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone
actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism?
I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your
consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

~~~
matte_black
If you've ever suffered from Depersonalization/Derealization disorder, it will
become very clear that your mind and your consciousness are not the same thing
_at all_.

DP/DR is quite possibly the worst mental disorder you can ever fall into. It
is the feeling where you are convinced everything around you is not real, you
see people you know, you know they are significant, but they just feel like
actors in a show and you don't care. You look in the mirror, and you don't
recognize yourself as you, you just see a body. Worse, your body just moves
around the world and accomplish things on autopilot, while you watch
everything unfold on what feels like a screen, completely detached. If you
died, you wouldn't care much, because you wouldn't feel it's you dying, in
fact you _want_ to die, because you are trapped in a hell from which there is
no escape.

I've never suffered from this disorder, but I investigated it for some time
and am convinced it reveals something we do not yet understand about our
existence in this world. The source of our existence may not be where we think
it is.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Eh, easily attributed to brain chemistry and not necessarily anything woo.

~~~
matte_black
There is no known cause. Or cure for that matter.

~~~
DoreenMichele
That's not really a rebuttal of my point.

I have a serious medical condition. I frequently suffer somatopsychic side
effects. It's incredible what chemistry can make you feel.

I happen to also believe in a lot of woo stuff. But the reality is that _no
known cause_ is not proof that there is a spiritual explanation or cause.

------
doorbumper
It seems interesting from the perspective of the customer, but the really
interesting thing is that if this succeeds, they will have access to brain
imaging data that no one else has. You can't normally get such detailed scans
of a human brain, because it requires the human to die. It's a business model
that allows them to accelerate the pace of research without the human rights
violations that come from human experimentation. The real value in this
company is in what research arises from the data they gather, while being
funded by people paying to donate their brains to research. It's a diabolical
everybody wins situation.

~~~
mulmen
It's unclear to me how the euthanized brain donors "win" in the absence of
proof that memories can be recovered.

~~~
Spivak
They're going to die anyway and get to contribute to scientific progress and
get the best chance possible today for immortality.

~~~
mulmen
They could contribute to scientific progress by donating the money to a
research university. Depending on your concept of immortality donating sperm
or eggs seems to have a higher chance of success.

------
prepend
“What if we told you we can backup your mind?” ...and never restore it.

As someone who has lived through many backup formats that stop being
supported, don’t work, or decay with time this seems monumentally stupid as
anything other than basic research.

I applaud their goal, digital sentience, but sorry for any of their customers.
They need a pitch that works on the recently dead (eg, current cryo companies)
as I don’t think there are any countries that allow euthenasia for life
extension purposes.

~~~
tlb
What probability of restoration would be high enough to consider it? The
future timelines in which restoration does happen are probably extremely
interesting to be part of, given how far tech would have progressed. (There
are lots of sucky future timelines too, say with nuclear holocausts, where
you'd be unlikely to be restored.)

No: 100% chance of death.

Yes: 100-X% chance of death, X% chance of getting to see a super-interesting
future.

For me, X wouldn't have to be very high to make it worth trying.

~~~
perl4ever
There's _no_ chance of _you_ getting to see a "super-interesting future". This
comment is as weird to me as confusing a book on Relativity with Einstein. If
you had a terminal disease, and a twin, would you expect to wake up in the
body of your twin after death?

~~~
AgentME
If I had a terminal illness, and I had the option of having a healthy twin
come into existence with all of my memories, goals, and creativity, I'd spend
anything on that option. It's a shame if there's some sense it's not "really
me", but what I care about is that my friends don't get a me-shaped hole in
their lives, that my responsibilities continue to be taken care of, and my
goals keep getting met in the way I hoped I could do.

~~~
perl4ever
Well, people raise children, mentor others, create art, build real and
abstract things that outlive them. I'm not sure why a twin with your memories
and abilities would necessarily be the best possible creation. To me, someone
who can only be satisfied by that appears to be somewhat lacking in
identification with the rest of humanity.

~~~
AgentME
As someone relatively young still, if I found myself on an early deathbed, it
wouldn't do much to comfort me to imagine that perhaps most others are content
with what they've created by the time they reach their deathbed. The best
thing for me would be more time to create things/impact myself, and the next
best thing would be an agent that I'm confident that would finish up (or
continue) those things the very same way I would've done. Maybe those aren't
entirely different outcomes depending on the fidelity of the agent and my
interpretation of identity.

------
debrisapron
"I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and
most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to
live forever"

I hope nobody tells this guy about chemotherapy, he's gonna flip.

~~~
Turing_Machine
> I hope nobody tells this guy about chemotherapy, he's gonna flip.

Or about vaccines. Or about antibiotics. Or about sterile surgery procedures.
Or about running water and electricity. Or about....

Just about everything that makes up our modern quality of life was only
available to a privileged class when it first came on the scene.

My bet is that future people won't be appalled in the slightest.

Something tells me that Professor Hendricks isn't living a Neanderthal
lifestyle (or even a modern Third World lifestyle).

~~~
anentropic
these are all significantly different from living _forever_

------
reasonattlm
Underneath it all, this is a manifestation of an important split in the
cryonics community.

One group is (I think overly) critical of present vitrification approaches and
the planned future of those approaches. They believe that these approaches are
broken, and nothing of value is preserved. I think this is just as ridiculous
as saying there is no room for improvement - it is clearly the case that, e.g.
nematodes vitrified using the present technologies can be restored and show
preserved memory.

That group has a strong overlap with pattern identity theorists, who are quite
comfortable with a copy of them living in the future, and throwing away the
original brain.

So the intersection of these two groups is motivated to work on technologies
such as aldehyde-stablized cryopreservation (vitrifixation) that are
incompatible with the future goal of thawing, restoration, and repair, as they
are not reversible short of far distant molecular nanotechnology. Their aim is
to produce the best possible record of data of the mind with the intent of
reading into a machine environment in the future, then discarding it.

To my eyes this is a terrible, terrible, mistaken view on identity, and one
that will cause a great deal of existential harm when it is extended from
theory to action.

The rest of the cryonics community is interested in a technology path that
leads to reversible vitrification in the near future, and some kind of union
with the tissue engineering / organ engineering community. They want the flesh
restored and repaired, and the end goal of cryopreservation is some form of
advanced cell/bio/nanotechnology that can achieve that end.

This is why Alcor, etc, is not adopting vitrifixation.

So on the one hand, great to see progress, and vitrifixation is an excellent
advance in tissue preservation in the general sense. It will be of use in many
areas of research. On the other hand, pattern identity theory seems to have
many of the aspects of religion. A copy of you is clearly not you, and no
amount of handwaving is going to make that the case.

~~~
jiggunjer
"A copy of you is clearly not you, and no amount of handwaving is going to
make that the case."

What an unnuanced way of stating your opinion. Views on what "identity" is
differ, clearly.

------
hartator
> It has also won a $960,000 federal grant from the U.S. National Institute of
> Mental Health

I have nothing against the elite trying to live forever. However, I wish they
weren’t using our taxes in the process.

~~~
eggpy
Let's start here: > In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03
trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes. [0]

Assuming the taxes collected this year are even remotely similar, and assuming
this grant came 100% from income tax, and assuming you pay an equal amount in
taxes as everyone else, this grant cost you (960000/1.23 trillion)=1/1281250
of the taxes you paid. I know that's a lot of assumptions, but even if that
calculation is off by several orders of magnitude, the tax burden is pretty
darn small. If you earned $100,000 last year you paid roughly 8 cents for
this. It could open up doors to a lot of interesting research. Maybe nothing
will come of it. I'd pay 8 cents to find out though.

Also, who says this is "the elite" wanting to live forever and us schlubs
footing the bill?

[0] [https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-
tax-...](https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-
data-2015-update/)

~~~
hartator
> Also, who says this is "the elite" wanting to live forever and us schlubs
> footing the bill?

I think it's reasonable to think that's someone that is ready to put aside
$10,000 in the eventually of an accident leading to coma for the small odds
that future people will be able and willing to give him a new body is probably
part of the elite.

~~~
eggpy
True, but the research involved could be applicable to a lot more situations
that aren't specifically this. Peering deeper into the brain than currently
possible sounds pretty useful.

------
dontreact
Reconstructing a human in silico from a dead brain is likely to be a very
expensive process. Why would anyone in the future be interested in going
through with it for any more than a few select old brains when there will be
plenty of dead brains to go around at that time?

~~~
prepend
You memorize the bitcoin private key before preservation. In a way that
requires consciousness to reconstruct.

Public key verifies the value and there’s a smart contract with some
percentage to the successful recoverer.

Depending on the recoverer’s profit margin they will restore whenever there’s
enough value to make it worthwhile.

Whether bitcoin will exist and whether it will appreciate is a different
story. But assuming bitcoin exists, resurrection is a certainty.

~~~
carbocation
Then they threaten to resurrect you 1000x and torture each of your resurrected
selves for 1000 years unless you tell them the private key.

Roko's basilisk meets bitcoin.

~~~
Jesus_Jones
Meets Altered Carbon. But if you wake up in virtual reality, when you enter
your key, how can you keep them from taking it from you? You'll never know if
you are being man-in-the-middled.

~~~
piracykills
We constructed a whole reality to steal your keys - the world's most advanced
phishing attack.

~~~
ada1981
This is basically the thesis of evangelical Christianity.

~~~
kolpa
That's what "Roko's basilisk" mentioned upthread is. An AI cyberpunk version
of evangelical Christianity.

------
sarabande
In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts
processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you
anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical
problem for which literature exists?

~~~
ajuc
Is it still you when you wake up every day?

What about after general anesthesia?

You only know you are you because of your memories. The future brain will have
the memories, so it will think it's you, just like you think today that you
are the same you that were awake 3 days ago and 10 years ago.

Are you afraid of nonexistence when you fall asleep, and envy the tommorow's
you that he will live in your body and get to see what the future brings?

I don't think there's much difference between these scenarios - the
conciousness is interrupted in both cases.

~~~
ericb
I think there is. If you cloned me while I'm sleeping and I never knew about
it, you could torture and kill the other "me" and I'd be none the wiser, so
that definitely seems like it isn't "me" because for whatever definition of me
that I have, it involves this particular instance of conscious experience.
Other conscious experiences, even if they are similar, are not me if they
don't share my conscious experiences.

Programming wise, I'm an instance of an object, not a class.

~~~
gagege
This is the part I'm always surprised people don't seem to get. If someone
makes an exact copy of me, the original me is still going to think "I'm me.
That other thing is a copy of me."

So, if the original me has to die for the clone to be created... unless my
consciousness somehow jumps to the clone, I experience a death which I do not
come back from.

~~~
ajuc
> unless my consciousness somehow jumps to the clone

You don't have conciousness when you sleep (at least during some parts of it).
Your conciousness disappears every night for several hours and is recreated
every morning. Why is it not a problem, but when there is 2 of you - it
suddenly becomes a problem?

If you were sleeping while someone made a clone - would that make it OK? If no
- why?

There's no evidence of anything external that has to "jump".

~~~
gagege
I disagree that I disappear during states of "unconsciousness". Sleep/general
anesthesia/drugs are just different states of brain activity, but I'm still
"me" during these states. We don't say people become no one, or someone else
when they sleep.

So, a copy of your consciousness (if such a thing is possible) is different
than sleeping. No matter how much the clone believes it is me, it will never
be me. I still die in my scenario, even though the other feels differently
about it.

To add to that, asking "who am I" is a philosophical question, and I'm not a
strict empiricist, so I don't categorically dismiss the idea that there exists
an "I" outside of my natural body.

~~~
ccostes
I think the point about unconscious states was not that you "become no one",
but rather that it is an interruption to the continuity of consciousness.

As a thought experiment, imagine you were magically replicated during sleep
such that, at the time of replication, both "you"s were completely physically
identical. Both would wake up thinking that they are the same person that went
to sleep, but now there are two of them. Are either/both/none of them "you"?

My answer would be that they both are, and don't think there's anything
special about our physical selves, nor any reason that we're limited to being
singletons (to give a code analogy). The combination of our physical self and
our cumulative experience and memories are what defines "us". Thinking of
identity in possessive terms and the desire to think of ourselves as unique is
a quirk of psychology, I think.

------
bambax
There's a company in the US that pitches taking care of your pets after "the
rapture" (a once-in-the-history-of-the-world event where, apparently, the
righteous will ascend to heaven).

It's a kind of insurance, because you won't be able to pay the company after
the rapture, so you have to pay now. Also, the company has to be manned by
evil people (as a matter of fact and marketing), because if they were good
they wouldn't stay behind after the rapture to execute their contractual
obligations.

The best kind of commerce is when you take money and don't have to deliver
anything in return; however sometimes customers feel cheated. The bestest kind
of commerce is the same, but the customer is happy.

But, SV should be wary of becoming its own caricature.

~~~
colanderman
I suppose you don't get your money back if your pets die pre-rapture?

------
Jeff_Brown
Although I would not feel immortal knowing that a copy of me would live
forever, I would if I could gradually replace each of my neurons with
invulnerable* synthetic ones.

* which grew and pruned themselves the same as organic ones

------
Invictus0
I'm beginning to think that YCombinator will fund anything with MIT on it.
Just last month I spoke with a YC founder that was trying to get me to pay $50
to have a 30 minute phone call with people working at Google. Not an
interview, not a phone call with some executive--just a phone call with
Google's rank and file. I've lost a lot of respect for YC as venture capital
firm.

------
CryptoPunk
We should do everything in our power to eliminate death. There is nothing
meaningful about it. It is totally meaningless and tragic, and one day we'll
look back on the days when millions died every year the same way we look back
on the day when three fourths of children died before the age of five.

And this criticism of the rich embracing it first totally misses how
technology develops. The rich are always the early adopters, and the high
prices paid by them enable the industry to scale up which gradually brings the
price down.

If you look at any technology over the last 50 years, you see this pattern at
work: PCs, tablets, smart phones, etc.

The first generation was always expensive and only affordable for the rich.

~~~
alonmower
I'm torn about this, I agree that in a world without death we'd view it as
meaningless and tragic. I worry about what our path there would look like.

Let's say we find a way to eliminate death or aging. It's expensive at first
so only the very wealthy can afford it. Now you have a set of rich people in
positions of control that won't age out of them. They'll live forever so
they'll continue amassing wealth, if they don't give up control then a new
generation with new ways of thinking about the world won't be able to take the
helm. I mean, lots of people aren't able to really internalize new ideas in
their own current lifetimes, let alone these hypothetically endless ones. The
people in control get wealthier, inequality increases, new ideas have a harder
time taking hold. Even if this life extension eventually trickles down to the
rest of humanity would they ever be able to catch up? Would they want to live
an eternal life subjugated by the elite?

Also, assuming this life extension is biological and not digital all of a
sudden we have lots of people. Necessity is the mother of invention and all
that so hopefully we figure out a way to move excess people to other
planets/space colonies, but what if that takes too much time? What if we
increase the number of people faster than we can solve the scaling problems?
Food, energy, waste, ways of transporting these excess people elsewhere. If we
don't solve all of them we're talking about periods of extreme pain and
tumult. What happens if we need to put a cap on the number of people while we
figure some of them out? Are some people now not allowed to have children? Are
some people not allowed to live forever? Who decides the answer to these
questions? Hopefully not the ultra rich & powerful class that's formed - that
might not be good for the average folks.

Anyways, maybe I'm being pessimistic and on the time scales we're talking
about we'd figure out reasonable solutions but it still feels like this whole
area feels pretty hand-wavy today when I hear people talk about eliminating
death. Death, for better or worse is a sort of equalizer, remove it and a lot
of the problems that exist today could get worse.

This is even putting aside questions about what happens to a hypothetical
brain that lives forever. Do we run out of space for new memories? Do we start
forgetting things after enough time? If so, is the person we are 500 years
from now that can no longer remember it's first 100 years the same person as
us today?

~~~
CryptoPunk
>>They'll live forever so they'll continue amassing wealth,

From a wealth inequality perspective, there's no difference between living
forever and accumulating wealth or having a finite life and your dynasty
living forever and accumulating wealth.

Even if it were true that immortality means some individuals accumulating far
larger amounts of wealth, I think a pretty good case could be made that it's
beneficial for humanity for them to do this rather than spend it on increasing
the number of descendants they have. High net-worth individuals do things like
create space flight companies.

------
mannykannot
So, assuming the technical premises are correct here, who will be paying for
the uploading? If it is a trust fund established from the initial fee, then
the question of who manages the fund becomes an existential matter - it's not
like you can switch managers post-(your)-mortem.

On the other hand, if the continued operation of this service depends on later
recruits, that's quite the pyramid scheme that you are participating in.

IIRC, in one of Larry Niven's novels, the funds of the frozen dead had been
confiscated because they were monopolizing global wealth, and the living were
indebted to the dead.

~~~
myroon5
Do you remember the name of the Larry Niven novel?

Sounds interesting

------
intrasight
Can we see if they can "wake up" a fly? I'd like some proof-of-concept before
investing my brain in this.

~~~
mr_toad
We don’t yet have the resources to simulate the brain of even a fruit fly.
Even the neural simulation of a flatworm is challenging.

[https://www.jefftk.com/p/whole-brain-emulation-and-
nematodes](https://www.jefftk.com/p/whole-brain-emulation-and-nematodes)

------
jaredhansen
The original press release from the team has much more detail on the
technology itself, and is here:
[http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb15276833.htm](http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb15276833.htm)

------
rhombocombus
This sounds just like the transcardial perfusion that I used to do on hamsters
and rats in graduate school. After doing and witnessing hundreds of those I
think I will pass, I'd rather rot. What's wrong with dying? I am a huge fan of
living and of life, but as cool as it sounds to have my consciousness
reconstituted in some server closet, being perfused with formalin (and
whatever else) before I'm technically dead is not something I place a high
level of confidence in working, and it also makes me viscerally uncomfortable.

------
mrfusion
It seems to me they can image the synapses but I don’t see how they’re going
to get the synaptic weights.

Take a look at the picture in the article. You’re really just getting the
shape of the synapse at best.

------
OrganicMSG
I guess that's one way of managing customer expectation.

~~~
harryf
Getting to non-fatal is just a future implementation detail

~~~
prepend
It’s a feature not a bug.

~~~
acrefoot
Given that an early death is only possibly prescribed in cases where a patient
is terminally ill (as determined by two physicians), where a patient is of
sound mind, and is often in pain, it can be a reasonable alternative to a lot
of the (often expensive) interventions that don't do much more than prolong
agony in the last weeks of life.

------
camillomiller
This seems to be based on the theory of the connectome, which is widely
accepted but still fundamentally unproven. The idea that __we __are but a sum
of the electrical interactions between cells in our brain is extremely short-
sighted. Our nervous system expands over the physical limit of the brain. How
can we be sure that memories are not activated by specific interactions with
other departments of our body. And even if it were true that brain equals
conscience, how can we ignore the constant interaction with the external
world? Would it be possible to recreate a conscience "in sich" and "für sich",
to say it with Kant, without connecting it to a simulation of whatever else is
there? In any case, I applaud at this trial. It is intriguing and interesting,
but it also is a display of scientific hybris that you don't see often. I
completely disagree with the assumptions that are moving this operation, but
I'm extremely excited to see where this ends up.

------
jakecrouch
I'm somewhat uncomfortable with brain fixation because there is no way to
actually verify that it works. Mind uploading is very far off if we still
can't upload C. Elegans. It is more plausible that we would be able to test
biological revival within the next couple decades. Going from atoms to bits is
much harder than going from atoms to atoms.

------
knowThySelfx
Have got a very bad feeling about this. Makes you wonder what really is "You"
or "I". Just a collection of memories in your brain? Do people here approve of
the idea of soul? Most probably won't because there's no "scientific" proof
for it yet.

------
yters
Sounds like a perfect scam. Rich guy pays you to kill him. He can't sue cuz
he's dead.

------
axaxs
Maybe I'm a bit jaded...but I don't like this. Or any of the 'anti-aging'
initiatives. Natural death is a beautiful thing; it's a part of life. I'll be
honored to die a natural death at a normal age. I don't want to live forever -
even at my age I feel the world is changing out from underneath me. Friends
and family tick off one by one each year. I'm not too old yet, but already
appreciative of the time I've been given. Not sure why anyone who values human
relationship would want to 'live forever', even if it's just in digital form.

~~~
vagab0nd
>> Natural death is a beautiful thing; it's a part of life. I'll be honored to
die a natural death at a normal age.

I completely disagree. Natural death is not a beautiful thing, and is
sometimes painful. Even if I don't want to live forever, I'd like to be given
the choice of when to die, basically when I'm tired of living.

Maybe you still don't agree, but would you have thought differently if all
your friends and family also have that choice?

~~~
axaxs
Childbirth is also, by all accounts, painful. But it's seen as a beautiful
thing, no? I don't mean to be contrary, these are all opinionated questions
and I like the discussion. And it's really hard. A few of my favorite
people(non famous or famous) died 'too young' and have very fond places in my
heart and others. Yet some who lived to 80-something...grew old enough to
disown their own family and die a lonely life in dementia.

------
anotheryou
Do they have _any_ Idea which resolution of what parts you need to capture
anything close to the original mind?

Do we even know it's just the very material shape, not some quantum or
magnetic field magic along with it?

------
devgutt
I think we need to completely understand every detail of the brain in order to
successfully make a cryogenic procedure viable. But at this point, we will not
need this procedure anymore.

------
yters
Proof that Silicon Valley is becoming a religious institution.

------
pavlov
Americans seem to have an obsession with embalming of nearly Egyptian
proportions.

Apparently it started in the Civil War, and became a nation-wide sensation
after Lincoln's corpse did a three-week tour in in a "funeral train":

[http://theconversation.com/how-lincolns-embrace-of-
embalming...](http://theconversation.com/how-lincolns-embrace-of-embalming-
birthed-the-american-funeral-industry-86196)

------
basementcat
Are people in the future going to find bootleg copies of other peoples'
consciousness on torrents? When will we be able to check ourselves into
Github? After you see that particularly horrifying youtube video, you might be
able to roll yourself back to a previous commit and literally _unsee_ what you
have seen!

------
speby
Imagine the ego you could curate when you believe you can upload your mind for
eternity. How _special_ you are!

------
e12e
> “And there is a much larger humanitarian aspect to the whole thing. Right
> now, when a generation of people die, we lose all their collective wisdom.
> You can transmit knowledge to the next generation, but it’s harder to
> transmit wisdom, which is learned. Your children have to learn from the same
> mistakes.”

Books?

------
omegaworks
Michael Hendricks' take is the best:

> “Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically
> arrogant. Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?” Hendricks told me
> this week after reviewing Nectome’s website. “I hope future people are
> appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people
> in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever on the
> backs of their descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? They are cartoon bad
> guys.”

We are on the verge of great shifts in climate and energy resources. Millions
of humans are already migrating across continents in search of food security
and an escape from perpetual war. We're already seeing climate refugees from
vulnerable island nations, consumed by the rising seas. Entire governments
have been toppled in the Arab Spring, replaced with authoritarian regimes
installed to protect the borders of the west.

And a few of the richest people in human history are using their unimaginable
resources to try to live forever.

~~~
knowThySelfx
Relax, it is not gonna happen. Even if it "happens" in a sense, it won't be
"them". Tech dissent is not much appreciated in yc, esp when a yc fellow is
backing this.

~~~
omegaworks
>Relax, it is not gonna happen.

It already is happening in some sense. Prices for many drugs people need to
cope with chronic disease continue to rise. The price of insulin, for example,
has tripled in the past decade.[1]

>Tech dissent is not much appreciated in yc, esp when a yc fellow is backing
this.

If you're accusing me of luddism, you've missed my point entirely. Do you
think we should automatically fall in line when marketing materials are posted
to this discussion forum?

1\. [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/whats-behind-
skyrocketin...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/whats-behind-skyrocketing-
insulin-prices)

~~~
knowThySelfx
No, I wasn't accusing you at all. In fact, was agreeing with you. Just that I
used a bit of sarcasm by pointing out how it is in here.

------
ramblerman
It's really strange to think it will be someone just like you, but not
actually you. You never re-open your eyes so to speak, your copy does.

It seems a bit narcissistic to know you will never open your eyes again, but
you would still like a copy of you to exist.

------
davidkuhta
Interesting idea. The phrasing on the deposit gave me a lol:

> fully refundable if you change your mind

------
rajacombinator
This is treading a very thin line between a typical voluntary snake oil (with
a hint of reverse Pascal’s wager) transaction and unethical exploitation (and
murder for profit, one could easily argue) of the desperately ill and naive.
Although I suspect many involved (investors...) may themselves be naive enough
to imagine this works. Merging it with a YC/VC “do anything and break any rule
to produce growth” mentality - which is great for a business - is wildly
unethical. There’s no theoretical basis for “brain uploads” other than
middlebrow “tech solves everything” pie-in-the-skyism. There’s no economic
basis for getting people in the far future to do you favors. And there’s no
medical basis for brain embalming/freezing. If they could do this on pigs and
resurrect them after x number of days it would be a different story.

~~~
Veedrac
By the time we can do this on pigs, the ethical disaster of the fact that
_billions_ of people will have died preventable deaths will be at holocaust
levels. The only ethical action is to do this _well before_ it's possible,
roughly at the point where the probability of it happening at _some_ point in
the future crosses the cost-benefit threshold.

The idea that there is a less than 1-in-10000 chance that in 10,000 years we
will be unable to run brains in simulation given over the last ~50y of
development we've produced hardware literally _nine_ orders of magnitude
faster than that of the brain, done so in a mass-producible fashion, made
unbelievable strides in neuroscience, discovered CRISPR and make synthetic
biology, gone from AI-as-theory to computers that can talk, describe images,
and synthesise photorealistic faces, gone from technology as niche to CPUs on
plastic that cost literally a since cent... is frankly an blunt unwillingness
to consider the issue.

------
paradroid
Whether you can get derive function from structure is a big if. This is for
the vain.

------
analog31
This leads to an interesting dilemma: Suppose there are multiple immortality
technologies, such as mind-uploading, cryo-preservation, and so forth. How do
you choose? What if there emerge hundreds of competing processes?

------
jackvalentine
Surely having your consciousness in some kind of computer/machine will be
similar enough to 'locked in' syndrome to be a torture?

If they network you with others, it'll be a a true system of narcissists.

------
pjc50
Ah, the Head of Vecna as a service:
[http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm](http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm)

------
mead5432
I'm not sure I'd want to be the one to test the MVP.

~~~
lev99
I'd probably choose this over other cryo companies. It's a higher quality
preserve.

------
projektir
I wonder if, when they do create this technology, it'll be all that great of
an idea.

I'm not really on Greg Egan's page of things here.

------
noetic_techy
Preserve my brain. Liquidate all assets and put them into an index fund. Boot
me back up when I'm rich in a new sleeve.

~~~
nooron
Think about the impact this would have on interest rates. Closest thing I can
imagine would be this:
[http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/interstellar.pdf](http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/interstellar.pdf)

------
dingo_bat
> That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the
> flowers again in a data server somewhere.

Why not exactly me?

------
mirimir
Arguably, this is religion. Because very little of it is testable now. Or will
be testable in the foreseeable future.

------
ai_ia
Reading this thread makes me realize how much closer we are going towards
Black Mirror Universe. Scary.

------
Vadoff
Why are there so many people excited to do this? Don't they realize it'll be a
copy/digital clone of them? Even if they could upload a digital representation
of a person's brain without the person dying, it would still be a copy.

This isn't immortality, this is a company killing you then promising to create
a clone of you with your memories at a later time.

~~~
projektir
> Why are there so many people excited to do this?

Because science doesn't have evidence for the presence of "you"s, and it's
fashionable among intellectuals these days to only believe scientific ideas
have validity.

------
sreejithr
I wish they could do this to Stephen Hawking's brain.

------
eggsome
I can't believe no one has mentioned MLP - Friendship is Optimal:

[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-
optimal](https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal)

An amazing work that had some help from some of the guys at Less Wrong.

One of the most enlightening and funny things I've read in ages.

Here is a great talk that led me to reading it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7eUomiDaTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7eUomiDaTo)

TL;DR: It's a superintelligent AI that just wants to make humans happy... with
Frendship and Ponies.

------
yters
What if they run two identical copies?

~~~
21
I would say it's still better than 0.

~~~
yters
Which one is the true consciousness?

~~~
kolpa
Both, obviously.

~~~
yters
It seems that way on the surface. Both will wake up with the view that they
are the true consciousness.

Another variant is the concept that every decision we make we actually split
into two universes, one making one decision and the other making the other
decision.

But, anyway the scenario is set up, the question is why does that particular
brain have that particular consciousness?

It is easier to see in the splitting scenario. Why do I end up being the
consciousness that chose A instead of B? A materialistic view does not have a
satisfactory resolution of this issue, whereas the common sense view that I
actually am choosing A and not B and there is only one me easily accounts for
the perception of such. It is only within a strictly materialistic worldview
that common sense accounts run into opposition, which would be a good reason
to look beyond materialism.

~~~
dqpb
You sound like you've thoroughly confused yourself.

If the mind is software then it can be duplicated. There is no dilemma here,
and it's irrelevant what the copies think of it.

~~~
projektir
It's definitely relevant to me, if one copy is sent to the mines and another
copy goes to paradise, it'd be very important to "me" to know which one that
is.

------
epiddy
Does Nectome sell gift cards yet?

------
gcb0
so, legal euthanasia for the rich?

------
smaslennikov
where do i sign up

