[maaku]

Note that this approach should be compared with cryonics, which attempts to vitrify the brain and preserve it in a glass-like state at liquid nitrogen temperatures:

http://www.alcor.org/

Personally I have some reservations about the plastination approach to personal longevity. Depending on your philosophical views on the nature of consciousness, it may be that under this procedure you would die and cease to exist, while some future emulation of your brain thinks it is you -- i.e. biological-you and future-emulated-you are two separate people that just share memories.

It is however interesting science and may be a short-cut path to getting necessary scanning resolution for whole brain emulation.

[danieltillett]

Isn't this the same as saying you are a different person every morning and that the person that went to sleep and the person that woke up are separate people?

[sanoli]

No, its very probably not the same. The brain doesn't shut off when you go to sleep. It keeps going, it keeps doing it's stuff, messing with memories, thoughts, all the bodily functions and a whole extra stuff that we don't know too well, but which probably still makes you you. Killing that brain and then simulating it somewhere else is not the same.

[fallous]

More importantly, does anyone suggest that running the original brain and the copy doesn't result in two separate diverged intellects? If running two results in separate consciousnesses then obviously they are not the same.

[x1798DE]

I don't think that follows. If "your" consciousness is just the consciousness that has a continuity of memory with a previous version of you, then the two copies would both be you, but they would not be one another.

[maaku]

Let's say that I a suitably advanced fMRI is developed that is able to map out the connectome non-destructively, I use this device on you to create a copy of your mental state, and then let you go about your day. At some point later I turn on a whole-brain simulation from this data. What do you, the you-that-walked-into-the-scanner expect to experience?

[erroneousfunk]

You'd experience nothing unusual.

[maaku]

That's obvious to me, but I've learned that it's not obvious to everybody. It's an instance of the mind projection fallacy that your or I think that is a simple obvious truth but others think the opposite is just as intuitive. I sometimes wonder if different people have different experiences of consciousness and self-identity...

[aperrien]

What about what happens during hypothermia? Both during Cardiopulmonary bypass and cold water immersion, the brain is cooled enough that activity stops.

[M8]

I personaly subscribe to that opinion. Even if the change is negligible. This is why I would like to be sober and conscious in case of any uploading.

[eli_gottlieb]

To recap for everyone joining the conversation afresh: our intuitions about selfhood, continual consciousness, and personal identity probably don't make any sense at all if applied to this kind of question. The right thing to do isn't trying to repair the intuitions, but instead trying to figure out which of the unintuitive possibilities we happen to like.

[Shorel]

What about the Ship of Theseus paradox applied to brains?

If you don't 'feel' your death but all parts in your brain are eventually replaced by 'equivalent' ones, are you still yourself?

[hvs]

Buddhism has some interesting views on the nature of consciousness and "selfness". I think this is an interesting opportunity to think about what being "you" really means.