CryoNet #32905 - #32910

CryoNet - Wed 6 Oct 2010

    #32905: Nice web site [Jonano]
    #32906: AW: #32904 [Jens Rabis]
    #32907: Re: CryoNet #32903 - #32904 [Freeposity]
    #32908: Re: CryoNet #32903 - #32904 [Freeposity]
    #32909: 15th reason why uploading is unlikely [Ettinger]
    #32910: Re: CryoNet #32904 [Mike Perry]

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Message #32905
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 11:50:02 +0200
Subject: Nice web site
From: Jonano <[email protected]>

This is a nice web site:

www.academia.edu

I have my profile there if you search Jonathan Despres.

I didnot find anyone interested by cryonics out there... not a surprise.

--Jon

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Message #32906
From: "Jens Rabis" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: AW: #32904
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 12:38:12 +0200

... o.k. o.k. then it is a bad copy of a frozen brain. A copy I will not be,
certainly not a bad copy.
I maintain an ongoing / flowing process in the living brain is the solution.
Who does not understand it, should play a few years
online games similar to "Second-Live". 

*****

... o.k. o.k. dann ist es eine schlechte Kopie. Eine Kopie will ich nicht
sein, erst recht nicht, eine schlechte.
Ich bleibe dabei, ein "flieBender Prozess" am lebenden Gehirn ist die
Losung. Wer es nicht versteht, sollte ein paar Jahre
Onlinespiele wie "Second-Live" spielen. 

Best greetings Cryoson
Jens Rabis
Germany-Berlin



Message #32904
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 22:00:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Reason 2

Content-Language: en

 
Why  successful uploading is unlikely, ever. 
Reason  2.  Bad physics. The simulation MUST be  erroneous in some ways and 
some degree, because the program necessarily is based  on current knowledge 
or guesses about physics, some of which is certainly wrong  or incomplete, 
and this will be true for a long time to come. The importance of  these 
errors is yet uncertain, but their existence is not. Remember that just
about 
all of the once-dominant "laws" of physics have eventually been shown to  be

wrong, inaccurate or incomplete. 
It continues to amaze me that most people not only have  not considered 
this fact, but do not acknowledge it even when  told. 
Robert  Ettinger

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Message #32907
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 10:19:34 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32903 - #32904
From: Freeposity <[email protected]>

From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 22:00:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Reason 2

Content-Language: en


Why  successful uploading is unlikely, ever.
Reason  2.  Bad physics. The simulation MUST be  erroneous in some ways and
>some degree, because the program necessarily is based  on current knowledge
>or guesses about physics, some of which is certainly wrong  or incomplete,
>and this will be true for a long time to come. The importance of  these
>errors is yet uncertain, but their existence is not. Remember that just  about
>all of the once-dominant "laws" of physics have eventually been shown to  be
>wrong, inaccurate or incomplete.
>It continues to amaze me that most people not only have  not considered
>this fact, but do not acknowledge it even when  told.
>Robert  Ettinger

Such lovely bio bias is reminiscent of the following

Sir John Erichsen (1873):

"There cannot always be fresh fields of conquest by the knife; there
must be portions of the human frame that will ever remain sacred from
its intrusions, at least in the surgeon's hands. That we have already,
if not quite, reached these final limits, there can be little
question. The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut
from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."



Freep


"Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!" -- Bill Gates, 1981

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Message #32908
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 10:32:21 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32903 - #32904
From: Freeposity <[email protected]>

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Freeposity <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 22:00:54 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: Reason 2
>
> Content-Language: en
>
>
> Why  successful uploading is unlikely, ever.
> Reason  2.  Bad physics. The simulation MUST be  erroneous in some ways and
>>some degree, because the program necessarily is based  on current knowledge
>>or guesses about physics, some of which is certainly wrong  or incomplete,
>>and this will be true for a long time to come. The importance of  these
>>errors is yet uncertain, but their existence is not. Remember that just  about
>>all of the once-dominant "laws" of physics have eventually been shown to  be
>>wrong, inaccurate or incomplete.
>>It continues to amaze me that most people not only have  not considered
>>this fact, but do not acknowledge it even when  told.
>>Robert  Ettinger
>
> Such lovely bio bias is reminiscent of the following
>
> Sir John Erichsen (1873):
>
> "There cannot always be fresh fields of conquest by the knife; there
> must be portions of the human frame that will ever remain sacred from
> its intrusions, at least in the surgeon's hands. That we have already,
> if not quite, reached these final limits, there can be little
> question. The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut
> from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
>
>
>
> Freep
>
>
> "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!" -- Bill Gates, 1981
>

I would like to add that even a genius can make profoundly wrong
statements about the ability of man to manipulate and understand his
environment. ----


A quick Google search shows: On 29 December 1934, Albert Einstein was
quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying,

"There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever
be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered
at will."

This followed the discovery that year by Enrico Fermi that if you
bombard uranium with neutrons, the uranium atoms split up into lighter
elements, releasing energy.

Source: at http://spiritualdeepdish.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/10-impossibilities-conquered-by-science/
along with 11,000 other hits for "It would mean that the atom would
have to be shattered at will"





-- 
Money isn't speech.
A Corporation isn't a person.
http://www.movetoamend.org/

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Message #32909
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 14:59:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 15th reason why uploading is unlikely

Content-Language: en

 
 
I had said I planned to post one reason per week, but  have speeded things 
up a bit, since I have a sense that most of what is likely  to be said soon 
has been said. So, onward. 
I recently thought of a 15th reason. Like the others,  it's not conclusive, 
but I like it, and offer it here out of turn, but keeping  the number 15. 
15. Cruel  world.  
It has been argued that, if uploading becomes possible,  and more generally 
the creation of virtual worlds, then there will be scads of  virtual worlds 
and any world chosen at random is almost sure to be a virtual  one. 
However, it seems likely that virtual worlds will tend to  be pleasant 
ones, since the programmers are unlikely to be sadists. Yet the  world we see or 
whose past we infer is overwhelmingly a cruel one, built that way. 
Throughout almost all of  history and prehistory, life on average for individuals of 
all sentient species  has been one of misery, especially near the beginning 
and near the end, which  are dominated by suffering and death.  
Viewed from the birth end, a relatively high birth rate  is necessary to 
maintain population, because otherwise the high death rate would  soon result 
in extinction. (Almost all species have gone extinct anyway.) Viewed  from 
the death end, a relatively high death rate is required to prevent  
catastrophic explosions of population. (A hefty part of the deaths have occurred  in 
youth, infant mortality having been high in all species except some recent  
human communities. For most of history and prehistory, only a minority lived 
to  become adults.) 
I sometimes wondered what squirrels found to eat, where  there weren't any 
oak trees. Turns out that, among other things, they eat baby  birds in their 
nests. 
Once more"savor the bitterness of it--this suffering is  built into the 
system. Any hypothesis  that says we are typical must account for the 
prevailing misery. (This is  similar to the old "problem of evil" but clearer and 
more  pervasive.) 
Robert Ettinger 



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Message #32910
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:24:12 -0700
From: Mike Perry <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32904
References: <[email protected]>

At 02:00 2010-10-05, [email protected] wrote:
>[...]
>Why  successful uploading is unlikely, ever.
>Reason  2.  Bad physics. The simulation MUST be  erroneous in some ways and
>some degree, because the program necessarily is based  on current knowledge
>or guesses about physics, some of which is certainly wrong  or incomplete,
>and this will be true for a long time to come. The importance of  these
>errors is yet uncertain, but their existence is 
>not. Remember that just  about
>all of the once-dominant "laws" of physics have eventually been shown to  be
>wrong, inaccurate or incomplete.
>It continues to amaze me that most people not only have  not considered
>this fact, but do not acknowledge it even when  told.
>Robert  Ettinger

Current physics has it that *all* processing is 
algorithmic, this being based on quantum 
mechanics. (A reference is Seth Lloyd, "Universal 
Quantum Simulators,  Science 273 (23 August 
1996): 1073-79. A few physicists like Roger 
Penrose have attempted to challenge this premise 
but so far are a small minority and haven't 
produced a successful alternative.) QM in turn is 
the most successful scientific theory in history. 
Unless you plan to overturn quantum mechanics in 
some significant way, I don't see a way around 
this. So we are likely algorithmic in nature, a 
prospect that does not at all preclude 
probabilistic or "random" state changes. In 
particular our processing over an interval of 
time has a finite description and resolves into 
discrete state changes which could in principle 
be written out in a very long record. Maybe 
future discoveries will show somehow it isn't so, 
that no finite description could ever adequately 
record the significant events going on in the 
brain over even a short time interval. I doubt it 
but no one can say with certainty that it isn't 
so. Still I think the uploading premise probably 
could survive many changes in physical theories 
and it doesn't seem unreasonable to be confident 
it holds. If it doesn't we must look elsewhere 
for the better housing we would like to have for 
our minds, considering how fragile and vulnerable 
brain tissue is, and no doubt limited in terms of 
the processing power we will eventually want to 
have. We will have a long time to work on this, 
if our civilization survives. In one way or other 
we should be able to upload to *some* type of 
device we find more suitable than our present 
meat machines, for the type of life we want to live.

Mike Perry

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