[extropy-chat] "Dead Time" of the Brain

A B austriaaugust at yahoo.com
Tue Apr 25 19:51:37 UTC 2006


Hi Robert,
   
  Yes, I also agree with this. Consciousness (existence if you want) is without a doubt a process as Heartland says, enabled by the presence of matter arranged into a useful and changing pattern. If a brain is vitrified, the mind is obviously gone. That particular individual has died. I would personally take it a step further and suggest that because we can "time-slice" a living, functioning mind into small but meaningful time frames (such as 10^29 Planck Intervals), where not even a single neuron is discharging, that each of us is in fact dieing with every passing moment. You and I are just (imperfect) copies of the person (we can call him the "original" if we want, but this really has no meaning) who has just died a moment before. Our entire life is a "copy's illusion". And if this (the type of existence I am experiencing right now) is my fate after being vitrified for 15 years and then revived, well, so be it... I'm fully satisfied.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich

Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
  
I'd suggest that the people reading this thread go do some googling or some wiki-ing on precisely how neurons function.  In particular you have several possibilities for time slicing.  Slices during which no atom in the brain effectively moves (neurons electrical transmission depends on the flow of sodium and potassium ions into and out of neurons -- no ion flow = no electrical transmission).  Then there is the synapse transmission process which involves (a) the movement of neurotransmitter vesicles from within an axon terminal to fuse with the cell membrane and release the neurotransmitter, (b) the diffusion time of the neurotransmitters across the synapse and (c) the accumulation of neurotransmitters in sufficient quantity to trigger the electrical transmission process in the receiving neuron.

You can calculate the time it takes ions to diffuse across a cell membrane or the neurontransmitters to diffuse across the synaptic gap based on the mass of the ions or molecules and the temperature [1].  See Nanomedicine Vol. I Section 3.2 (it should be online).

But a better way of dealing with this discussion is to simply agree with Heartland.  Yes, OK, so when I'm frozen or vitrified my synapses don't release and take up molecules and my axons don't transmit electrical signals.  I'm DEAD!  So *what*?  If a majority of what remains of my functioning brain is restored to a functional condition (or if the information it contains is supplied to a brain simulator) I have "risen" from the dead.  Since I'm I a reasonable person I can be perfectly happy acknowledging that I was dead and have subsequently been resurrected.

Since my resurrected self presumably will be happy to acknowledge, just as my pre-death self is now, that -- Yes indeed, I was really and truly 'dead' -- I challenge Heartland to propose an argument, other than a semantic one of the form "once all your brain activity stops you are dead", that would convince me that I should really *care* about this.  Hell, I don't care that much if the solar system gets particularly crowded and I have to be suspended 9 out of every 10 years or 99 out of 100 years to allow for a couple of orders of magnitude more "minds" to have their share of the resources available (I presume that there may be groups or generations of "friends" who may choose to be suspended on synchronized schedules).

Robert

1. Don't hold me to any of this -- its been 15+ years since I took physiology.
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