#21

Hey, I’m old…maybe you have a face like Sylvester Stallone in @AnUser’s movie and god knows what @Neo’s so attached to…but if I’m going to get a new young body, I want a young face too - and honestly, for marketing purposes, I think that’d be a big selling point. A brain transplant - or digital transfer - also just sounds cleaner (less “yuck” factor), something about the face just makes it too bizarre, too horror movie like. That’s never going to play in Peoria. Brain’s just another organ…tell Joe Bloe “No big deal, just like getting a kidney transplant.”
We can’t even legalize marijuana for chrissakes, Biden’s tip-toeing around like he’s walking on eggshells…but I’m sure they’ll go for the head transplant thing :face_with_spiral_eyes:

PS- just watched the whole video and saw that they renew your face with plastic surgery. Guess they could make you look like whoever…Michael Jackson even.

1 Like
#22

A digital transfer would be pointless. What use is it if a copy of you lives on but you yourself don’t?

2 Likes
#23

Just posted 4 hours ago.

“Can You Use Head Transplants to Cheat Death?”

#24

Are you saying the soul can’t be digitized? Who knows? but maybe if you could do a near identical replica in AI (I think this is what Scarlett Johansson is afraid of) and have it include memories and everything (like Arnie in The 6th Day) that could certainly have useful applications (as yet unimagined) and doesn’t seem that far-fetched technically. A mental replica of yourself.

#25

@ng0rge - would love to hear your thoughts on above

#26

Assuming our souls are immaterial, they can’t be digitized. Assuming our consciousness is merely an emergent property of our brain, copying the brain’s structure would just create a second, virtual consciousness but we would still be trapped in our biological bodies.

A mental replica of yourself.

The second you start it, it becomes a different person altogether because your experiences diverge.

#27

Thats a whole other question… first scientists would have to validate this concept, which I don’t believe any have with good evidence.

Most Americans believe they possess an immaterial soul that will survive the death of the body. In sharp contrast, the current scientific consensus rejects the traditional soul, although this conclusion is rarely discussed publicly. In this book, a cognitive scientist breaks the taboo and explains why modern science leads to this controversial conclusion. In doing so, the book reveals the truly astonishing scope and power of scientific inquiry, drawing on ideas from biology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the physical sciences.Much more than chronicling the demise of the traditional soul, the book explores where soul beliefs come from, why they are so widespread culturally and historically, how cognitive science offers a naturalistic alternative to religious conceptions of mind, and how postulating the existence of a soul amounts to making a scientific claim.Although the new scientific view of personhood departs radically from traditional religious conceptions, the author shows that a coherent, meaningful, and sensitive appreciation of what it means to be human remains intact. He argues that we do not lose anything by letting go of our soul beliefs and that we even have something to gain. Throughout, the book takes a passionate stand for science and reason. It also offers a timely rejoinder to recent claims that science supports the existence of the soul and the afterlife.

#28

I missed this part, I’m not sure I understand where that is coming from. I hope that less surgically involved things like next gen CRISPR/gene editing, partial reprogramming, and stem cell, tissue and organ replacement and other regenerative medicine and rejuvenation therapies end up working out and in time for people your and my parents ages (and of course of young age groups too).

At the same time, it does seems like being able to make replacement bodies is something we should develop in any case for people with incurable lethal and extremely painful diseases - e.g. untreatable cancers, multi-system organ failure, types of severe ALS, etc, etc - so why not also develop it as a parallel path also for longevity in case the things in the paragraph above don’t work out.

–

Btw, have no preference for “head” vs “brain” being the recipient of the replacement body - and don’t think I have ever suggested I have any such preference?

1 Like
#29

So your interest is strictly scientific, no interest in it personally?
I think many of us imagine maybe using it ourselves one day.

#30

Based on your reactions I looked into this a bit more. Here are a few interesting tidbits:

First Human Head Transplantation: Surgically Challenging, Ethically Controversial and Historically Tempting – an Experimental Endeavor or a Scientific Landmark?

According to many, head transplantation is considered to be an extraordinary and impossible surgical procedure. However, nowadays, relevant literature and recent advances suggest that the first human head transplantation might be feasible. This innovative surgery promises a life-saving procedure to individuals who suffer from a terminal disease, but whose head and brain are healthy. Recently, the first cephalosomatic anastomosis in a human model was successfully performed, confirming the surgical feasibility of the procedure, but still not the real outcome. Skepticism and several considerations, including surgical, ethical and psychosocial issues, have emerged in the scientific community since this imaginary procedure seems to be more feasible than ever before.

The goal of the first human head transplantation is to provide a life-saving procedure to patients who are terminally ill without any indication of pathology concerning the head or the brain, on the background that there is no other treatment (2).

We agree that the first attempt should be performed in a young person suffering from a terminal disease which leaves the brain and its functions intact such as progressive muscular dystrophies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6511668/

The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage

Several conditions would qualify… . White[29] pointed to tetraplegics, who show a tendency to multi-organ failure.

In truth, the impeller of White’s study was a possible cure for intractable cancer without brain metastases.

I believe that the first patient should be someone, probably young, suffering from a condition leaving the brain and mind intact while devastating the body, for instance, but by no means exclusively, progressive muscular dystrophies or even several genetic and metabolic disorders of youth.

These are a source of huge suffering, with no cure at hand.

—

I have not addressed the ethical aspects of HEAVEN. In Thomas Mann’s “The Transposed Heads,” two friends, the intellectual Shridaman and the earthy Nanda, behead themselves. Magically, their severed heads are restored – but to the wrong body, and Shridaman’s wife, Sita, is unable to decide which combination represents her real husband. The story is further complicated by the fact that Sita happens to be in love with both men. This short story highlights the ethical dilemma that must be faced: The HEAVEN created “chimera” would carry the mind of the recipient but, should he or she reproduce, the offspring would carry the genetic inheritance of the donor.

However, it is equally clear that horrible conditions without a hint of hope of improvement cannot be relegated to the dark corner of medicine. This paper lays out the groundwork for the first successful human head transplant.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821155/

Surgical, ethical, and psychosocial considerations in human head transplantation

Transplanting a head and brain is perhaps the final frontier of organ transplantation. The goal of body-to-head transplantation (BHT) is to sustain the life of individuals who suffer from terminal disease, but whose head and brain are healthy. Ideally BHT could provide a lifesaving treatment for several conditions where none currently exists.

Technology and knowledge push the limits of both medicine and society’s ability to process it. In the contemporary world, change comes rapidly, and although technology and culture advance together in a series of mutually informing leaps, individuals and social groups who are more distant from innovations are often left to their own devices and to numerous communication media to make sense of those changes.

This social dynamic is clear in transplantation medicine. The public reaction to the first kidney transplant in 1954 is widely known. Many demonized Joseph Murray as “playing God” and violating the rules of both nature and the divine.

A similarly negative reaction occurred after the first heart transplant and 50 years later in discussions leading to the first human hand and face transplants.

Joseph Murray later received the nobel prize and is today seen as one of the giant in medicine and human health impact

First, head transplantation, when performed in patients with terminal conditions but intact brain function such as multiple organ failure in ALS … would be life saving.

In the cases of early organ (especially kidney and heart) and hand and face transplantation, public criticism abated after the patient outcomes proved successful. Research addressing the ethics of face transplantation, after the first procedure was performed in 2005, changed its tenor, shifting from tentativeness and doubt to general approval and ethical tolerability [32]. It concluded that face transplantation became accepted as a reasonable and necessary option for the most severe cases of facial disfigurement.

The main reasons it seems that ethicists are hesitant about body-head transplants (BHT) is that they are assuming that the body would come from a brain dead organ donor - where more lives could be saved from multiple organs going to different recipients

Where one body could save one life per BHT, the same donor body could save and enhance 10 to 15 lives through multiple organ (pancreas, lung, intestines, liver, heart, kidney, hands, and face) and tissue (cornea, bone, tendons, heart valves, veins, and skin) donations. On these grounds, BHT could be accused of failing to address current medical needs, given the large number of patients on organ and tissue waiting lists.

That whole argument disapears if we can manufacture/grow new bodies though

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5490488/

#31

I was commenting on you saying that an isolated brain being the recipient of the replacement body was perhaps better than a whole head being the recipient.

I don’t know enough to have an opinion on which of those two would be better. Perhaps heads in the generation of the procedure and brains subsequently if that is more complicated to solve all the aspects of.

#32

Is there any money even being allocated to research head transplants, are any companies working on it, what’s the future outlook?

#33

I just read the articles posted above Neo’s and the Forbe’s one was quite good and comprehensive covering a lot of the territory that Neo’s quotes did.(even if it was 2022)

Your outlook seems to be that the social good - the reduction of human suffering - is basically more important than any fears we might have about unintended and unknown consequences. And yes all the history of transplanted kidneys, hearts, hands and faces supports that. But the brain is still for the most part uncharted territory - see the talk above about the soul. Just because it looks like we could transplant a human head or brain, doesn’t mean we should, no matter how much suffering it prevents. “Playing God” can be a hollow phrase but it isn’t always. Climate change has been a long time growing but we just may have meddled where we shouldn’t have.

#34

Thanks @ng0rge Some good things to reflect on.

#35

If we are so close to having intelligent AI that it becomes alive, then aren’t the odds pretty high that we’re actually AIs living in a galactic civilization simulation?

Given how much technology has advanced in 40 years, what would lifelike simulations look like 40 years from now? It’d probably be indistinguishable from reality. And what about 100 or more years from now?

The Matrix is seeming more and more probable.

But even if that’s true, I’m going to live my life like it isn’t.

There’s a part of me that hopes when I die, I take off the VR glasses, realize that it was all an amazing historical simulation and say “Wow. What a life! Let’s try that again tomorrow.”

#36

a) We are not close to having intelligent AI that is “alive”
b) Even if we were it does not make the similation hypothesis more likely. I cannot see how that follows.

1 Like
#37

It’s just a comment on the rapidity of technological innovation. If our civilization can survive a few hundred or a thousand years, I have no doubt we will have simulations that mimic reality perfectly. Just look what we’ve accomplished in 100 years.

#38

There are physical limits to how closely we can simulate reality. A computer build in this universe which was assembled by using all existing matter would not be sufficient to simulate even a small part of the universe.

#39

Computer graphics has become more and more realistic over time, and now we can generate photorealistic video with AI (i.e Sora from OpenAI), making us able to create simulated worlds very soon in VR. So that makes it possible it already has happened. But then the simulators must’ve been simulated already, so then it is turtles all the way down, unless I am missing something.

1 Like
#40

The math around this - originated by Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom (in a paper cited by more than 1,500 other peer reviewed papers) - actually does not rely on whether we are close to having the AI capabilities to simulate a conscious being

Rather the question is if humans EVER would obtain such a capacity. So a much weaker requirement.

@John_Hemming do you think a simulation of a conscious experience ever could be possible?

Dr. Bostrom’s paper is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read - can very much recommend skimming it.

In a nutshell:

Bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called “the simulation argument”.

Despite its name, the “simulation argument” does not directly argue that humans live in a simulation; instead, it argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions is almost certainly true:

  1. “The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity simulations) is very close to zero”

or

  1. “The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations is very close to zero”

or

  1. “The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.”

The trilemma points out that a technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power; if even a tiny percentage of them were to run “ancestor simulations” (that is, “high-fidelity” simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total number of simulated ancestors, or “Sims”, in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors.

For anyone interested you can find the original paper here and other interesting things on the topic here https://simulation-argument.com/

1 Like