You are overwhelmingly likely not to wake up in a body, depending on the details of your instructions to Alcor.. Scanning a frozen brain is exponentially cheaper and technologically easier than trying to repair every cell in your body. You will almost certainly wake up as a computer program running on server somewhere.
This is not a bad thing. Your computer program can be plugged into software body models in convincing virtual environments, permitting normal human activities (companionship, art, fun, sex, etc.), plus some activities not normally possible for humans. It’ll likely be possible to rent mechanical bodies for interacting with the physical world.
It is if you want to not die, rather than be copied.
How likely would it be, assuming that politics and funding weren’t an issue, that we could grow a new body, prevent the brain from developing, yet keep it alive to the point that an existing brain could be inserted? I’m not necessarily concerned with the details of getting a brain transplant to work smoothly in general, just the replacement body.
It doesn’t seem like it should be difficult in theory; I’d be more worried about the resources.
I’m also curious as to what’s stopping us from keeping brains alive even if the body can no longer function. I’m not well researched in this area, but if it is a matter of keeping chemical resources flowing in and waste flowing out, then our current technology should be capable of as much. At that point, all we’d need is to develop artificial i/o for brains (which seems slightly more difficult, but not so difficult that it couldn’t happen within a few decades).
But I’ve probably overlooked something obvious and well known and am completely confused. :(
I don’t like the idea of being “revived” as an upload, though. An upload would be nice to have (It’d certainly make it easier to examine stored data, if only a little), but I still see an upload as a copy rather than preserving the original. And, being the original, that isn’t the most appealing outcome to me.
You are overwhelmingly likely not to wake up in a body, depending on the details of your instructions to Alcor.. Scanning a frozen brain is exponentially cheaper and technologically easier than trying to repair every cell in your body. You will almost certainly wake up as a computer program running on server somewhere.
This is not a bad thing. Your computer program can be plugged into software body models in convincing virtual environments, permitting normal human activities (companionship, art, fun, sex, etc.), plus some activities not normally possible for humans. It’ll likely be possible to rent mechanical bodies for interacting with the physical world.
It is if you want to not die, rather than be copied. How likely would it be, assuming that politics and funding weren’t an issue, that we could grow a new body, prevent the brain from developing, yet keep it alive to the point that an existing brain could be inserted? I’m not necessarily concerned with the details of getting a brain transplant to work smoothly in general, just the replacement body.
It doesn’t seem like it should be difficult in theory; I’d be more worried about the resources.
I’m also curious as to what’s stopping us from keeping brains alive even if the body can no longer function. I’m not well researched in this area, but if it is a matter of keeping chemical resources flowing in and waste flowing out, then our current technology should be capable of as much. At that point, all we’d need is to develop artificial i/o for brains (which seems slightly more difficult, but not so difficult that it couldn’t happen within a few decades).
But I’ve probably overlooked something obvious and well known and am completely confused. :(
I don’t like the idea of being “revived” as an upload, though. An upload would be nice to have (It’d certainly make it easier to examine stored data, if only a little), but I still see an upload as a copy rather than preserving the original. And, being the original, that isn’t the most appealing outcome to me.