🧵 Ship of Theseus'ing the human brain
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 01:10:40 UTC No. 16465549
I'm going to sound like an adeptus mechanicus, but please hear me out /sci/.
What exactly, aside from lack of required knowledge, is stopping us from connecting an artificial hemisphere to the corpus callosum and slowly letting it take over functions and memories from our biological brain?
There is some scientific research that highly suggest our brain is technically two separate brains that only behave as a single unit due to this connection. A corpus callosotomy will often be performed on people with atonic seizures, by either partially or completely removing that connection. Callosal syndrome, or split brain, is often a side effect of that surgery, resulting in split consciousness. You have, for all intents and purposes, two brains acting semi independently inside a single body (as far as I can tell from the research, correct me if I'm wrong).
Therefore, if splitting the brain (and consciousness) in this manner is biologically possible, why wouldn't it be (theoretically) possible to connect another artificial hemisphere to it through the corpus callosum, and letting it slowly take over the biological brain functions and memories until it can work on its own?
If that were possible, you could Ship of Theseus your way into a new brain by replacing each hemisphere at a time until you end up with a completely new brain without any complete breaks in consciousness (avoiding the teleporter problem).
So aside from the required knowledge to build an artificial hemisphere, connecting it through the corpus callosum, and how risky the surgery would be, what exactly would be stopping us from doing this?
>inb4 the soul or some crappy religious reason
I don't care about religious reasons. If you do, then explain how corpus callosotomy can result in a split consciousness with just one "soul".
You will never be able to explain it, therefore the machine brain has already won.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 02:50:43 UTC No. 16465639
>>16465549
im like 99% certain you can ship of theseus the brain, however the corpus callosum is only one pathway that connects both hemispheres of the brain.
however, instead of thinking about creating a whole new hemisphere, instead try doing something easier but still meaningful, like building an artificial cortical column and expand out from there. there's already a line of research in it coming out of the allen institute.
i would also suggest looking at theodore berger's hippcampus prosthesis for an idea of how we're currently doing with replacing parts of the brain with hardware.
dont worry about the math for now, just know that there is alot of masters level electrical engineering math and some machine learning being used for computational neuroscience and neuroprosthetics.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 14:20:24 UTC No. 16466008
As far as I remember, there's also another connection between hemispheres located at the back, not the front.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 16:10:50 UTC No. 16466125
>>16465549
Seems sensible. Thought of this myself too. Don't see anything preventing invention of this process except difficulties making artificial neurons and getting them in situ.
Nothing stopping you plucking out replaced neurons and reassembling your brain too. We just don't do that so we can pretend we're still us as we perceived it.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 16:12:12 UTC No. 16466128
>>16465549
oh BTW this tech won't be coming for a few thousand years, civilization will collapse and reemerge by then.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 20:32:38 UTC No. 16466380
There is only one consciousness. But many egos.
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 20:34:56 UTC No. 16466384
>>16465549
Doesn't this already happen in the body naturally as cells are replaced?
Anonymous at Thu, 7 Nov 2024 21:04:15 UTC No. 16466421
>>16465549
What you describe is not "Ship of Theseus". In the case of the Ship of Theseus, the new ship takes the same form as the original ship. What you describe is like extending the ship, and then demolishing the old parts, until finally you have a totally different ship with nothing of the original design remaining.
Imagine your subjective experience slowly fading away. Reality recedes, as your shrinking mind dissociates. And yet your body seemingly continues on like on autopilot, you can't stop it, can't even think it. Everything just goes black and nobody on the outside ever even realizes your death.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 10:46:30 UTC No. 16466995
>>16465549
There is another... possibility. Genetic engineering, make the brain repair itself (hopefully without spawning a dozen tumors this time).
Most of the body already does this, albeit not perfectly, that can be fixed but usually results in an enormous increase in cancer.
I'm sure we can figure out a way to get rid of the tumors, though the slow advancement is that area greatly upsets me.
It seems rather straightforward to me, the thing needed for telomere lengthening to work, we could build some tiny genetic Turing machine that fits within each of our cells. The machine scans for signs of cancer, and once one or more are found it kills the cell.
I know, absurd idea and it's easier said than done, but I don't see a simpler alternative. Only other viable option is genetically modifying a virus or bacteria that does the same thing, but that appears more prone to unpredictable behavior compared to building one completely from scratch that behaves exactly as needed.
Our own mitochondria-style organelle, built specifically for telling cancer cells to immediately kill themselves. A permanent cure for cancer, and a way to avoid the telomere lengthening tumor party.
Why isn't this a thing yet?
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 10:59:30 UTC No. 16467001
>>16466995
B4 inducing cellular death always end in death cells
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 11:13:47 UTC No. 16467005
>>16467001
I'm not sure what you meant, but if you mean that when inducing cellular death it would cause other healthy cells to also die in large quantities, then that's why I suggested a genetically engineered mitochondria-style organelle that would induce cellular death from within each cancer cell.
I imagine the problem with current approaches is that we're trying to induce cancer cell death from *outside*, which will invariably affect other cells around it because we don't have a way to target cancer cells only with enough precision. Doing it on the inside appears to be a safer approach, and it's worth trying.