A preliminary but encouraging step toward mind uploading?
Cryonics for uploaders! Also, conversations with Max & Natasha.
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers!
Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first:
I hosted Max More and Natasha Vita-More in separate conversations, and published our conversations as Mindplex podcast episodes titled “Our Extropian future, with Max More” and “Our Extropian Future, with Natasha Vita-More.”
YouTube: Our Extropian Future: Max More on AI Timelines, Life Extension, Cryonics, and the Birth of Transhumanism. Is the AI revolution moving fast enough to save us from aging? Or are we repeating the same over-optimistic mistakes of the past? In this deep and personal conversation, Giulio Prisco sits down with Max More, a philosopher, futurist, and founding figure of the Extropian movement, to revisit the ideas that shaped modern transhumanism and assess where we stand today.
YouTube: Our Extropian Future: Natasha Vita-More on AI, Nanotechnology, Mind Uploading, and the Birth of Transhumanism. What happened to the future we dreamed about on the Extropian mailing list 30 years ago? Did we get the timelines wrong, or was the architecture of our thinking correct? In this compelling follow-up to the conversation with Max More, Giulio Prisco sits down with Natasha Vita-More - futurist, designer, and co-founder of the Extropian movement - to assess the state of “extropian technologies” in 2026.
By the way, there’s a new and very nice interactive interface to the archives of the extropians mailing list, try it!
I embraced Extropy after reading “Meet the Extropians,” by Ed Regis, in 1994 on Wired. Then I found them online and started talking to them. Max and Natasha, the “royal couple” of the Extropian movement, are among the thinkers who have influenced me most, and today I’m honored to call them friends.
In this chats we covered a lot of things. I’ll just mention one interesting highlight for each chat:
The discussion with Natasha trespassed into politics and cultural politics several times. Listen to Natasha’s crystal clear analysis of politics and culture in Extropian discussions and in today’s world. And why are so many people feeling the need to apologize for having interacted with Jeffrey Epstein before the Epstein thing was known? To me, this is a clear example of how “woke” bullshit has ruined the world.
At some point I told Max that I’m not signed up for cryonics, or more generally biostasis, because I don’t have the money. Max mentioned Sparks Brain Preservation as an option that could be very complicated but cheap. I’ll certainly look into that. I believe in some or some other kind of life after death so if I can’t be preserved in biostasis it’s no big deal, but it would be fun to see what happens next with my memories intact.
This brings me to my main topic:
The main topic of this newsletter is introduced in my latest article published in Mindplex:
So has a fruit fly been uploaded? Or not yet?
The very fact that this experiment has been tried and even produced some very preliminary but essentially encouraging results seems significant and worth celebrating.
Some neuroscientists say they have uploaded the mind of a fruit fly to a virtual brain/body. Not so fast, say other neuroscientists. I don’t disagree with the skeptics - of course this is not full mind uploading. But I still find it an impressive if very preliminary advance. I think the next steps could be: first, scanning the full body of the fly and repeating this experiment with full links between the simulated brain and the virtual body. Second, repeating the experiment with a physical robotic body.
The brain of the fruit fly was preserved with the chemical brain preservation method that won the Brain Preservation Foundation’s Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize and Large Mammal Brain Preservation Prize. Therefore, I think this “uploaded” fruit fly story adds to the available evidence (without proving, at least not yet) that this chemical brain preservation method works.
If today’s brain preservation technology can store brains in a way that really preserves all relevant information for future uploading, then brain preservation today is step one, and one day it could be followed by step two: mind uploading. This is “cryonics for uploaders” - a biostasis method that we can use today to store our brain for tomorrow’s mind uploading.
The biostasis service provider mentioned by Max used the same preservation method. I’ll take a look, and perhaps one day I’ll fly out of the solar system as a mind uploaded to the post-circuitry of a faster-than-light starship.