I wonder why they’re trying this on brain-dead patients first.
Nothing to lose.
If your brain is gradually degenerating, a treatment that might fix it or might (say) give you cancer and kill you horribly in short order might well seem like a good deal on balance, but I expect you’d have to think about it. But if you’re already brain-dead, nothing this treatment does to you can make things worse.
The question I’d be asking instead is: Why haven’t they published their results showing success in (say) rats? Except actually I probably wouldn’t bother asking because the chance of this being anything other than bullshit seems so very very small.
They are probably thinking of person as a soul. Kickstarting the brain might give you different thoughts or some other trivial thing, but the ghost should be the same, right?
I first wrote the quote below first. I’m not so sure now. Maybe some personality is basically damage.
No, I don’t think you get a new person. Any damage or distortion won’t project onto another person in mindspace, but just a broken or distorted version of you. There may be less of you, but not more of someone else.
Nothing to lose.
If your brain is gradually degenerating, a treatment that might fix it or might (say) give you cancer and kill you horribly in short order might well seem like a good deal on balance, but I expect you’d have to think about it. But if you’re already brain-dead, nothing this treatment does to you can make things worse.
The question I’d be asking instead is: Why haven’t they published their results showing success in (say) rats? Except actually I probably wouldn’t bother asking because the chance of this being anything other than bullshit seems so very very small.
Worst case is IMHO that a new person will be created in an old and damaged body.
How plausible that is depends, I think, on what you mean by “person”.
How would you tell, what would this “new person” theory predict differently then the old person theory?
They are probably thinking of person as a soul. Kickstarting the brain might give you different thoughts or some other trivial thing, but the ghost should be the same, right?
I first wrote the quote below first. I’m not so sure now. Maybe some personality is basically damage.