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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The startup accelerator Y Combinator is known for supporting audacious companies in its popular three-month boot camp.
There's never been anything quite like Nectome, though.
Next week, at YC's "demo days," Nectome's cofounder, Robert McIntyre, is going to describe his technology for exquisitely preserving brains in microscopic detail using a high-tech embalming process. Then the MIT graduate will make his business pitch. As it says on his website: "What if we told you we could back up your mind?"
So yeah. Nectome is a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation. That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere.
This story has a grisly twist, though. For Nectome's procedure to work, it's essential that the brain be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals into the big carotid arteries in their necks while they are still alive (though under general anesthesia).
The company has consulted with lawyers familiar with California's two-year-old End of Life Option Act, which permits doctor-assisted suicide for terminal patients, and believes its service will be legal. The product is "100 percent fatal," says McIntyre. "That is why we are uniquely situated among the Y Combinator companies."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cocaine overdose on Monday March 19 2018, @04:34PM (2 children)
Hush, little Sammy. Graham gave you the spotlight for your soft and flexible hands, now it's time to enjoy the cash from your failed startup buyout, and shut your pretty, feminine mouth.
Otherwise, it's quite a silly thing to be euthanized when your handlers forget the other nervous tissue! Why, what is a man without his spine? Ah who knows. The important thing is that research into brain "digitization" is sparse. We're much closer to creating an AI waifu-bot than we are from even transplanting a head!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 19 2018, @05:04PM
You know, if anti-aging doesn't pan out soon, maybe Sam Altman would prefer undergoing the brain preservation w/ death procedure when he turns 35 or 40 instead of waiting until he's 70-something. That way he can get preserved before his brain function and memory starts to decline from old age.
Die sooner, revive later.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday March 22 2018, @11:07AM
That's a choice quote - looks like some clumsy philosophy going on here. I get the impression this guy figures that if there's a computer simulation of this brain, that means his consciousness is preserved.
It seems pretty clear that's not the case - if I clone you while you're still alive, and then kill you, you still end up dead.
Or maybe he doesn't care about the consciousness question, and just likes the novelty of the idea that there'd be a computer that behaves like he does.