In David's life so far, he has read literally hundreds of books about the future. Yet none has had such a provocative title as this: “The future loves you: How and why we should abolish death”. That’s the title of the book written by the guest in this episode, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston. Ariel is a neuroscientist, and a Research Fellow at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia.
One of the key ideas in Ariel’s book is that so long as your connectome – the full set of the synapses in your brain – continues to exist, then you continue to exist. Ariel also claims that brain preservation – the preservation of the connectome, long after we have stopped breathing – is already affordable enough to be provided to essentially everyone. These claims raise all kinds of questions, which are addressed in this conversation.
Selected follow-ups:
- Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston - personal website
- Book webpage - includes details of when Ariel is speaking in the UK and elsewhere
- Monash Neuroscience of Consciousness
- Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest - Wikipedia
- Sentience and the Origins of Consciousness - article by Karl Friston that mentions bacteria
- List of advisors to Conscium
- Does the UK use £15,000, £30,000 or a £70,000 per QALY cost effectiveness threshold? by Jason Shafrin
- Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next? - US Berkeley News
- What are memories made of? A survey of neuroscientists on the structural basis of long-term memory - Preprint by Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, Emil Kendziora, and Andrew McKenzie
Related previous episodes:
- Ep 91: The low-cost future of preserving brains, with Jordan Sparks
- Ep 77: The case for brain preservation, with Kenneth Hayworth
Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration
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