As for traveling to the future: that sounds like fun!
As for "everything you knew is history", who wouldn't want to witness and be a part of a new world?
You have to imagine what it would be like for someone who lived in 1826 too wake up today, in a world where nothing they know is relevant, they have no connections, no idea what to do with any of it. Historians might want to interview you, or the first couple of people like you, but then what?
You will be an audience member to a show you don’t understand, until you die.
I can imagine "educators" who can get them up speed. In a future where people get reanimated, I would think this shouldn't be a problem long term.
Any existence may be better than non existence.
Me?
This view is grounded in the assumption that the future will be better than today. There is no guarantee of that. This is, in my opinion, the same flaw in the thought process of wanting to live forever. The assumption being that, this "new world" is a better place than where you are now. That it is compatible with you as you are. That you will never grow tired of existing.
I know for a fact that I will grow tired of existence. Why would I want to continue it? The bar is very high for me to want to continue to exist in a "new world". I would need guarantees that the world will be a better place where I can thrive in ways I can not in this one. That I will be accepted in this "new world".
Can anyone guarantee those things?
Same question as if you'd like to drop everything and create a new life on the other side of the world, not for everyone.
Or, as in the Bobiverse books, the brain of a space probe, but I have a bleaker view of the future than that…
Worse even is never truly waking up but instead being replicated and turned into the brain for a servitor. If you believe the Roko Worshippers, you might be woken up just to be tortured.
People overemphasize the "time loop trap" piece but seem to overlook the fact that he eventually uses the time to better himself in almost every way. He's a much better, much more enriched and happy person by the end.
I've dealt with loss. It sucks, but it's part of being alive (I say with just a hint of irony).
I do recognize that not everyone feels this way about this topic though. That's ok.
I don't necessarily want to live forever. But I am very curious about Humanity's ultimate fate. I want to see how things play out
I want to know if there is life out in the universe, if humanity ever meets other intelligent life, or even if we ever meaningfully leave Earth
I don't know. I love the good in humanity, I hope we eventually wind up more good than bad, and I just want to see.
It would be interesting to wake up as a Von Neumann probe.
Still, did these people completely solve the ice crystalization problem?
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/d...
"in effect" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
What server will I wake up on? Who is running the infrastructure? What will be asked of me to be allowed to continue to exist on that server? Given our current societal trends, I can't imagine I would enjoy any existence where a copy of me is spun back up.
And of course, my original thread of consciousness will still be ended, so this is some alternate copy of me. (Based on my view of the teletransportation paradox.)
I don't understand why people don't get this simple fact. We are all gonna die, make inner peace with that (it isn't that hard, depends mostly on your ego) and enjoy rest of that short time here. If you seek immortality, do it either via exceptional deeds or via well-raised children, that's the best we have.
No force in the world is going to move both your mortal neurons with all synapses and electric charge between them that together form your personality into anything else, digital or not. Its like asking to transfer this cup of tea I hold right now into digital form. No, it can be copied to certain precision and that's it.
Or another? The trust you set up ran out of money because all of the fees continued to increase and outpaced certain economic downturns. More and more people drew money off of your remaining static assets. You run out of money. Estate sale. Garbage truck.
Just remember, you’ll have all of time to end up there.
No thanks.
People have strokes or accidents and wake up missing memories and with changed bodies, but their families still call them by name.
You still being you is a matter of degree, not a binary, and different people are comfortable with different degrees of change.
In this case, the damage is total. The degrees end here, it reaches a binary state: from alive to dead. And then something else entirely says they are the dead person and they are alive.
The question is, does society accept a complete switcheroo? The individual died in the process, they cannot give an opinion on this. The copy is another entity. There are no degrees, it's all absolutes with this process.
If they freeze the vesicles that deliver transmitters and make them analyzable, you've got all the information you need. In terms of a modern ANN, it's the connections (axons) and the weights (transmitters/receptors in tandem).
That said, this article doesn't get to the point in the free section. How are they collecting the information? Slicing is inherently destructive. Someone's got to manufacture an entirely novel imaging modality. Perhaps they could scan millimeters ahead of the slice at a resolution high enough to image receptors. Not possible currently.
This is exactly what I’m doubting, how can you be so sure?
How can we possibly know that the non-connectome details of the brain don't influence computation or conscious experience?
It seems we ignore these only because they don't fit neatly into our piles of linear algebra that we call ANNs.
Sure, to your point, we don't know. But the worm above (nematode) swims and seeks food when dropped into a physics engine.
My main point is that the scale of the human brain is well beyond the capabilities of modern imaging modalities, and it will likely remain so indefinitely. Fascicles we can image, individual axons we cannot. I guess, theoretically, we'll eventually be able to (but it's not relevant to us or any of our remote descendants).
Do you take the deal? Do you sign your family up for it?
What percentage of your life being enjoyable vs horrible suffering makes it worth living?
Maybe you're 80 years old at the time of storing your brain.
Suppose after being revived that regime with capitalist incentives holds for another 200 years during which you live as a brain in a jar, but some cultural revolutions later you are liberated and then proceed to live 10'000 years across any number of bodies and circumstances, which means that in your lifespan of ~10'280 years (not accounting for being in storage) you experienced horrible suffering for about 2% of your life.
This is as much of a contrived example as yours, aside from maybe good commentary on your part on human ethics being shit when profit enters the scene.
Or maybe after 200 years you expire, having at least tried your best at a non-zero chance of extending your lifespan, instead leading to your total lifespan of 280 years being about 71% suffering. Is it better to not have tried at all, then? Just forsake ANY chance of being revived and living for as long as you want and conquering biology and seeing so much more than your 80 year lifespan let you? Should absolute oblivion be chosen instead, willingly, a 100% chance of never having a conscious though after your death again (within our current medical understanding)?
What about the people dealing with all sorts of horrible illnesses and knowing that each next year might be spent in a lot of pain and suffering, even things like going through chemo? Should they also not try? Or even something as simple as all of the people who look for love/success in their lives, and never find any of it anyways and possibly die alone and in squalor? They knew the odds weren't good and tried anyways. A more grounded take would be that those preserved brains are just left to thaw and you probably die anyways without being turned into some human captcha machine, at least having tried. Is it also not worth it in that case, knowing those both potential alternatives?
What’s the downside of skipping all that potential torture?… oh
Even in the best case scenario I would wake up in a world that barely makes any sense to me, where the things I cared about are long gone and nearly forgotten.
Imagine everyday waking up in a world that forgot the grammar you dream on. That's a curse.
Probably a good first step in life extension, I know a lot of first peeks at this came from hypothermic people. Those lessons are now used in heart surgeries to slow metabolism and limit cell deaths.
Fisherman1983•1h ago