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    Canada Avalon Member Fellow Aspirant's Avatar
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    Default Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity

    A new start-up called Nectome is offering a service that sounds straight out of a futuristic science story. For $10 000 they will "preserve" anyone's memories in a manner that will allow the client to 'live forever', perhaps as a computer simulation. I guess this is supposed to be better than the current technology of preserving one's brain for future revival, which is a cryogenically treated 'head in a bucket', but I can still see a few flaws in the operation.

    Their mission statement:


    "Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favorite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family. If memories can truly be preserved by a sufficiently good brain banking technique, we believe that within the century it could become feasible to digitize your preserved brain and use that information to recreate your mind. How close are we to this possibility? Currently, we can preserve the connectomes of animal brains and are working on extending our techniques to human brains in a research context. This is an important first step towards the development of a verified memory preservation protocol, as the connectome plays a vital role in memory storage."

    home link: https://nectome.com/

    While the impetus to preserve a person by preserving their brain structure is an understandable goal, there is nothing in their approach that suggests anything to do with the human spirit - the method is completely grounded in a "materialistic" philosophy. What could go wrong? Oh, I don't know. Zombies? Skin walkers? A.I. androids with no compassion, ability to love or to have a real understanding of what it means to be human? All of the above?

    The first and most obvious drawback is that they must kill you first. Or 'euthanize', whichever sounds more accurate to you. It sounds outlandish, but apparently they are making a serious offer. And while the deposit is refundable, one wonders how one would go about collecting said money once things have gone past a certain point.

    Despite the obvious (and not so obvious) hazards of such an undertaking, Nectome is now marketing its service and, they claim, 25 depositors have signed up.

    From a recent BBC report:

    "Nectome has said it will one day be capable of scanning the human brain and preserving it, perhaps running a deceased person's mind as a computer simulation.

    However, its current process requires a fresh brain.

    The product is "100% fatal", the team behind it told MIT Technology Review.

    The company is backed by Y Combinator, an organisation that picks a group of new companies each year to fund and mentor in the hope they receive major funding further down the line.

    According to the company's website, Nectome claims it will one day be possible to survey the brain's connectome - the neural connections within the brain - to such a detailed degree that it will be able to reconstruct a person's memories even after they have died.

    "Imagine a world where you can successfully map and pinpoint a specific memory within your brain," the site reads.

    "Today’s leading neuroscience research suggests that it is possible by preserving your connectome."

    Nectome will be part of Y Combinator's demo days next week - an event where start-ups pitch their new companies to an audience of investors and journalists.

    Previous Y Combinator firms include Dropbox and AirBnB.

    The firm is also backed by a $960,000 (£687,000) grant from the US National Institute of Mental Health, which said it saw a "commercial opportunity" in brain preservation.

    According to MIT Technology Review, the team has consulted lawyers familiar with California's relatively new laws on dignified end-of-life measures.

    The company plans to focus on working with terminally ill people in the testing phase.

    The company uses an embalming process to preserve minute details of the brain in microscopic detail.

    Its work won a prize for furthering the field of brain preservation when it tried the method on a rabbit.

    Taking that further, the team said it had already attempted its technique on a just-deceased woman in Portland, Oregon.

    However, even a delay of just a couple of hours meant the brain was already badly damaged, it said.

    The next stage is to find someone planning to die via doctor-assisted suicide.

    There is to date no proof that memories can be retrieved from dead brain tissue, though the team is looking at methods to perhaps begin the process while a person is in their final moments.

    Other experts believe the stated goal of preserving memories is an over-promise from Nectome, and part of a growing trend of Silicon Valley figures becoming obsessed with their own mortality.

    Cryonics, the sci-fi vision of being able to "freeze" a body in some way and eventually bring it back to life, has, of course, never been realised.

    Equally, there is deep scepticism about the feasibility of what Nectome seeks to do.

    Regardless, the firm has launched a waiting list as a way of gaining funding. People can join for $10,000, refundable at any time.

    According to MIT Technology Review, 25 people have already done so.

    One crucial distinction between Nectome's work and more typical cryonics is that the company is not seeking to bring a brain back to life, but instead to store the memories as comprehensively as possible.

    "Right now, when a generation of people die, we lose all their collective wisdom," said Nectome co-founder Robert McIntyre.

    "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."

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43394758


    Brian
    Last edited by Fellow Aspirant; 22nd March 2018 at 15:45.
    A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

    Albert E.

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    Avalon Member uzn's Avatar
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    Default Re: Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity

    It only works with fresh brains (in theory). So you have to agree to them killing you first.

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    Great Britain Avalon Member
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    Default Re: Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity

    But they do not know where memory or consciousness resides! Or do they?

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    Default Re: Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity



    Yea, right... no further comment.

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    Default Re: Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity

    Quote Posted by meeradas (here)


    Yea, right... no further comment.
    LOL! Yeah, this is exactly the scene that popped into my mind!

    B.
    A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

    Albert E.

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    Avalon Member Flash's Avatar
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    Default Re: Company Offers to Preserve Your Brain and Identity

    i hope they won't kill the great scientists before their time in order to preserve their knowledge.....

    they also had promised Walt Disney to preserve him, but he has been defrosted... so, can anyone trust them?

    Also, the brain neurons die or the connection between neurons brake apart when not being used. How are they going to preserve usable brains if the body is not connected to it. All the neurons making the world coherent will be broken for lack of sensory information. Plus, the emotions may go away as well, for lack of interactions.

    This is truly spooky
    How to let the desire of your mind become the desire of your heart - Gurdjieff

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