# Key Points from IRC Discussion (May 28, 2016)

• Kanzure discussed brain emulation ethics, suggesting that while virtualized torture is concerning, the same computational capacity could enable beneficial applications like endless backups and parallelization of consciousness, potentially outweighing the negatives.

• A proposal was made for large-scale comparative neuroanatomy (connectomics scanning) across at least 10,000 mammalian brains from different species to factor out differences and establish baseline cognitive abilities.

• Discussion of technical standardization needs for brain scanning, including a standard slice container format for vitrified brain samples prepared for antibody labeling to improve machine design and research consistency.

• Kanzure proposed using evolutionary search or random search methods to repair bad brain scan data for connectomics, suggesting that selection pressures in simulation could help improve emulation results.

• Ybit shared several technology links including metallic glue that might replace soldering and an FPGA webserver implementation.

• Maaku coined the term "backpropaganda" to describe deep learning hype, which was appreciated by other participants.

• References to papers on computational limits were shared, including "Ultimate physical limits to computation" and "Limits on fundamental limits to computation."