tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post748808619736533393..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Brain On The TrainDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-82551703815262651682013-03-22T14:27:41.340-07:002013-03-22T14:27:41.340-07:00> Perhaps the inserted tissue would find a way ...> Perhaps the inserted tissue would find a way to integrate itself or<br />> rewire itself per the configuration of the new body it has been<br />> implanted in. <br /><br />**Something** like this comprises the maguffin of an SF/Thriller crossover<br />novel I spent a couple of hours speed-reading at Barnes & Noble a couple<br />of weekends ago. (It's not "inserted tissue" in this case, it's an<br />entire human cerebral cortex repurposed as a wireless-implant-connected<br />component of a computer/biological hybrid AI after what Gerald Edelman called the<br />"key reentrant loop" underpinning consciousness is surgically<br />severed in the human. Creepy! It's the basis of a Chinese "homeland security"<br />surveillance system whose name translates as "Supreme Harmony".)<br /><br />http://www.amazon.com/Extinction-A-Thriller-Mark-Alpert/dp/1250021340<br />http://www.markalpert.com/books/extinction/about-book.php<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20325042270840284622013-03-22T13:00:34.386-07:002013-03-22T13:00:34.386-07:00Indeed. The nervous system which is connected to t...Indeed. The nervous system which is connected to the brain, does run through and is integral to the entire body so I am inclined to agree and posit that the brain is not some vaunted seat of the soul or in more modern terms "consciousness", whatever the heck that means. I think the brain is simply a piece of flesh that processes and maintains and organizes external stimuli aka "information" and memory through and by the body, by some spooky chemical and electrical effects that scientists today don't yet fully understand; and is literally conditioned over time by such external stimuli, which gives the personal and subjective illusion that a person has a continuous self or memories or thoughts etc. The body is simply more sophisticated than any computer or simulation or machine out there, and I don't even think the body is even a machine for that matter. Many people seem to be using and falling for false metaphors and analogies comparing our complex bodies to simple objects and tools (computers) and this reveals that the way in which we describe and picture our bodies, means that we don't understand it. If a human being dies ,it's brain is indeed also dead, and there is no way to extract memories of thoughts from it. "Thoughts" information and data is not not there. All wee see is flesh, fatty tissue, and gray matter. This is so unlike a hard disk in which data can easily be extracted so long as the drive is even partly in good condition and does not depend on the chassis of a computer to survive. However, if there was a way to say give a stroke victim a healthy portion of brain tissue or brain cells from another person to restore some critical brain function, I think the surgery would have just as much an innocuous effect as receiving a heart from another person, say... an Olympic sprinter and putting it in the chest of a 60 year old man. Indeed even more so as the brain does not have antibodies to reject other tissue. Perhaps the inserted tissue would find a way to integrate itself or rewire itself per the configuration of the new body it has been implanted in. <br /><br />Overall, I am nearly certain that a person would not see or experience the "thoughts" or life or another. I am skeptical that there are even such things as "thought". When scientists scan brains, all they see is electrical activity, not some ethereal or metaphysical objects called "thoughts". I am most certainly sure that a person could not and cannot live on in another individual based on their brain tissue alone, though such idiocy, I am sorry to admit, was entertained in the classroom, and one student even said that "the brain is like a computer" YIKES!Black guy from the future pasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14136170325730022110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-43849641263732956092013-03-22T12:38:16.063-07:002013-03-22T12:38:16.063-07:00> what would happen if you transferred a person...> what would happen if you transferred a persons brain into another body?<br /><br />I recommend Edgar Rice Burroughs' _The Master Mind of Mars_ as the<br />first and last word on the subject. Especially the Ace paperback<br />edition of my own youth with the wonderful Roy Krenkel cover:<br />http://skoce.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/mastermind.jpg<br /><br />I remember that this novel added the word "pulchritude" to my<br />10-year-old vocabulary. I do not know whether the fascination<br />of the plot -- the evil old queen Xaxa swaps bods with the<br />beautiful and kind-hearted princess Valla Dia, and the hero spends<br />the rest of the book plotting to undo this gross injustice --<br />had anything to do with my being a budding queer. I suspect<br />that a lot of hetero sci-fi nerds found it equally compelling.<br /><br />These days, though, whenever I think of the name "Xaxa"<br />(and you can believe I keep count of **that**) I think of<br />Zaza Napoli.http://u.jimdo.com/www27/o/s45f87e0ef81a2f7f/img/i06ef37a2699f1d2e/1279233321/std/zaza-napoli-jou%C3%A9e-par-michel-serrault.jpg<br />Probably the hetero ERB fans don't do that.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com