Ensuring long-term preservation of human consciousness

post by Amy Minge · 2025-01-16T19:09:18.925Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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Many people believe there is a non-negligible probability (~.05?) that humans will become extinct in the next 500 years. 

Risk factors include artificial superintelligence, bioengineered viruses, naturally-occurring viruses, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, climate change, nuclear terrorism, “traditional” nuclear war, Earth-striking comets, and other potential catastrophes.

An unknown number of other species have become extinct, and there is no reason to believe that the Homo Sapiens species is unique in this regard.

Elon Musk is working to mitigate existential risk with plans to eventually transport humans to Mars. This is a good first step. However, many of the same risks that face Earth-bound humans will eventually face humans on Mars, so it seems that still more could be done.

One possible plan would proceed as follows:

People would arrange to have their brains chemically preserved after their “natural” deaths. (1) Then, in perhaps as little as fifty years, brain tissue could be digitized and emulated into virtual environments (or as temporary downloads onto robots).

A hypothetical process might involve neuroscientists (or controlled AI systems) dividing the brain tissue into extremely thin (20 micron?) slices. Then the tissue would be be scanned with electron microscopy. Digitizing the images into functional programming would occur from there. Then the human, to whom the brain tissue once belonged, would be allowed to “wake up” in a virtual environment. It is also possible that future technology will allow for whole brain scanning at this resolution.

Neuroscientists sometimes point out that the human brain has approximately one hundred trillion neuronal connections, and this would require an “unfathomable” amount of digital storage space.

However, many of those connections — such as the ones found in large portions of the autonomic nervous system — would be unnecessary for life in a virtual environment.

We should also keep in mind that digital storage capacity has been increasing exponentially over time. Even if it slowed to linear growth, we would still eventually reach the necessary capacity. Furthermore, there’s an extremely high likelihood that humans will develop new “breakthrough” technologies, the details of which we are currently unable to foresee.

The next step to ensuring the preservation of human consciousness would involve digitized humans choosing to transport themselves, via their hardware, on spacecraft that would move away from Earth.

There would need to be backups on spacecraft traveling in parallel to the primary spacecraft, and the backups should come online in the event that the backup servers should fail to receive a regularly-scheduled ping.

The underlying idea at the heart of this proposal is that that robotic hardware and servers can survive in a wider range of environments than organic human bodies, and could therefore be more widely distributed through space (which would, in turn, increase the likelihood of sustained human consciousness). 

For instance, hardware would not require oxygen, it could continue to operate in a much wider temperature range, it would be less-easily penetrated, it could receive energy more directly from the nearest star, and so forth. Furthermore, insofar as the environment needs to be controlled, the space required for one organic human would be equivalent to many orders of magnitude more digitized humans, which would require proportionately less resources. 

Another advantage of digitized humans is that, as mentioned, there could be backups (whereas currently, when someone with an organic body dies, there is no backup).

Of course a charter would be needed for each fleet of spacecraft, and all occupants of a fleet would need to agree to the charter in advance. The charter would need to address predictable issues, and should allow for the the fleet to split apart if factions should form (which seems almost inevitable, given human nature). (There would need to be enough spacecraft in a fleet to allow for this inevitability, in addition to backup requirements).

Then, after a certain amount of time has passed on Earth (500–1,000 Earth-time years?), the spacecraft could circle back to the home planet, and human consciousness could continue indefinitely.

 

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Useful resources for more information:

The Brain Preservation Foundation

(BrainPreservation.org)

Oregon Brain Preservation

(OregonCryo.com)

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1-I have personally arranged to have my brain preserved with glutaraldehyde by Oregon Brain Preservation. Although this will be a chemical preservation, and not literal cryonics/freezing, people sometimes refer to any preservation (with hope for future restoration of consciousness) as "cryonics".

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