You lose some data at the borders between slices, and you’d have to do it extremely quickly, but I’d expect it to work much better than the current method.
I think he means “create a functional human you, while primarily sourcing the matter from your old body”. He’s commenting that slicing the brain makes this more difficult, but it sounds like the alterations caused by current vitrification techniques make it impossible either way.
We shouldn’t make what thing we want dependant on what is harder or easier to do, and in any case if one of these is possible, the other is too. Some more centuries of technology development don’t mean much when you’re suspended.
It doesn’t change what we want, but it does change how likely we are to get it. Waiting additional centuries increases the probability of catastrophe significantly, be it a power outage or a nuclear war, as well as making it correspondingly harder to reintroduce yourself to society. And we don’t actually have any reason to believe that if one is possible then the other is too—perhaps human technology will never get to the point of being able to map the brain perfectly and the only path to resurrection is with the same tissue, perhaps the tissue will be beyond repair and uploading will be the only viable option. Both are plausible.
The important part of the claim is that current vitrification is nowhere near sufficient to preserve your brain’s information.
Might it be enough if the brain was cut into slices and those stored with the process mentioned above, ignoring excessive cost?
You lose some data at the borders between slices, and you’d have to do it extremely quickly, but I’d expect it to work much better than the current method.
You’d lose any ability to do direct revival in that case.
What does “direct revival” mean? If the slices were properly reconnected, the function of the brain should be unchanged.
I think he means “create a functional human you, while primarily sourcing the matter from your old body”. He’s commenting that slicing the brain makes this more difficult, but it sounds like the alterations caused by current vitrification techniques make it impossible either way.
That criterion doesn’t make sense as per No Individual Particles and Identity Isn’t In Specific Atoms .
Unless you expect that revival of existing tissue will be a much easier path than assembly of completely new tissue. That’s a plausible assumption.
We shouldn’t make what thing we want dependant on what is harder or easier to do, and in any case if one of these is possible, the other is too. Some more centuries of technology development don’t mean much when you’re suspended.
It doesn’t change what we want, but it does change how likely we are to get it. Waiting additional centuries increases the probability of catastrophe significantly, be it a power outage or a nuclear war, as well as making it correspondingly harder to reintroduce yourself to society. And we don’t actually have any reason to believe that if one is possible then the other is too—perhaps human technology will never get to the point of being able to map the brain perfectly and the only path to resurrection is with the same tissue, perhaps the tissue will be beyond repair and uploading will be the only viable option. Both are plausible.