Re A start-up says it can back up your brain. However, there’s one small catch. - The Washington Post

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
> Date: March 16, 2018 at 12:58:51 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net, "     'ip'" <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: RE: [IP] Re A start-up says it can back up your brain. However, there’s one small catch. - The Washington 
> Post
>
> The question with all this is the assumption that the process captures all the salient properties.
>  
> To use a trivial analogy imagine claiming to preserve a book by scanning all the pixels at high resolution. But it 
> turns out that the color of the text was vital to the meaning of the contents of the book and one didn’t even know 
> that the ultraviolet and infrared colors were even present. Or for mathematicians it’s like preserving the current 
> value but not the derivatives.
>  
> Now imagine all the other properties of the brain we’re not aware of as well as the vagus nerve and other factors … 
> it makes me more interested in why people take this venture seriously.
>  
> Bob Frankston
> http://Frankston.com
> @BobFrankston
>  
> From: Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> 
> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2018 23:28
> To: ip <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: [IP] Re A start-up says it can back up your brain. However, there’s one small catch. - The Washington Post
>  
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Frank Wales <frank () limov com>
> Date: March 15, 2018 at 3:53:34 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: ip <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] A start-up says it can back up your brain. However, there’s one small catch. - The Washington Post
>
> Dave, for IP if you like.
>  
> As with any backup system, the real test is not how well the backup process works, but how well the recovery 
> procedure works. Wonder how they’re planning to test that? :-)
>  
> Of course, in this case, there is also the slight question of where one gets scratch brains to do the recovery into.
>  
>  
> Frank.
>
>
> On 15 Mar 2018, at 16:20, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
>  
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2018/03/14/a-start-up-says-it-can-back-up-your-brain-however-theres-one-small-catch/?utm_term=.11ebe77c7ef4&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
>
> A start-up says it can back up your brain. However, there’s one small catch.
> By Gene Marks
> Storing dead brains is not a new business. There’s a company in Arizona that right now holds more than 150 bodies and 
> heads — including the head of Red Sox great Ted Williams — in liquid nitrogen with the hopes of a future reawakening. 
> But now there’s a start-up that says it can do all of this and better: it can make a complete backup of your mind. 
> However, there’s just one catch: you have to die first.
> The company, called Nectome, says its proprietary chemical solution can keep the brain intact for hundreds — even 
> thousands of years. “You can think of what we do as a fancy form of embalming that preserves not just the outer 
> details but the inner details,” Robert McIntyre, the company’s founder told the MIT Technology Review.
> But here’s the thing: the brain’s got to be fresh and the patient must be alive for its embalming chemicals to do 
> their job. For this to happen a patient must be willing to die in order for the process to complete. The product is 
> “100 percent fatal,” McIntyre admitted. “The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide.”
> ...
>  
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