CryoNet #32934 - #32942
CryoNet <[email protected]> 15 Oct 2010 09:00:04 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.science.cryogenics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
CryoNet - Fri 15 Oct 2010
#32934: vapour technologies [John de Rivaz]
#32935: Has Mark Plus read "Nanosystems"? [Perry E. Metzger]
#32936: Re: experimental validation of uploading [David Stodolsky]
#32937: Scott Locklin and technological progress [Brian Wowk]
#32938: Perry Metzger's nervous breakdown [MARK PLUS]
#32939: Progressive uploading [Daniel Crevier]
#32940: Re: CryoNet #32930 - #32933 [Freeposity]
#32941: new book [Ettinger]
#32942: We are slow [Jonano]
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Message #32934
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: vapour technologies
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:46:36 +0100
Whether something is a vapour technology or not very much depends on historical perspective. A true breakthrough technology is often derided by contemporaries, with convincing argument at the time.
It also depends on the possible uses. Powered flight is still a vapour technology in terms of flying machines for the masses. (You can't use a microlight to do the shopping or commute to work.) Ray Bradbury wrote in one of his stories suggesting that by the 1980s people would own space ships in their garages like they owned cars in the 1940s.
Arthur Clarke predicted huge luxurious government owned space vehicles by 2001 when in reality 2000 heralded a whole mass of problems that lead to a series of severe economic declines still felt today. I am sure that there are still commentators to be found that say space travel is bunk and although possible, not practical, now or ever.
In the 1960s and even 70s there would have been people saying that networked computers -- several in every home -- would never happen. Those messing about with the concept with their little kits of electronic components making something that plays tunes or types a line of text were playing with toys and wasting their time. Useful digital technology was strictly for large companies and governments to use.
In the early 19th century people experimenting with cars would never live to see the mass ownership of cars. Their contemporaries would have said that they were wasting their lives. Horse drawn carriages and later railways were the only way to go.
If course it is possible to find commentators that say assembler nanotechnology is a waste of effort and will never happen. Whether it will really happen is not a matter of fortune tellers for or against, but the future as is unfolds.
--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and
more
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Message #32935
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:26:26 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
Subject: Has Mark Plus read "Nanosystems"?
References: <[email protected]>
> From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>
>
> The "nanotechnologist" still wears no clothes:
I don't think you ever answered the question of whether you have read
"Nanosystems" and understood it, Mark. Have you? If you have, could
you tell us what specific technical issues you have with the contents?
Surely if you believe nanotechnology (and indeed, your own body, since
you're made of nanomachines) is impossible, you should be able to give
us specific *technical* issues you think exist with the notion.
Repeating, could you tell us if you've read the book? If so, can you
tell us what SPECIFICALLY you think is incorrect in it?
For the latter, I expect you to say things like "In chapter X, Drexler
estimates the positional uncertainty of the system in question this
way, and clearly he's wrong because..." (that's just a made
up example to give the flavor of what I'm expecting, any hard
technical issue that you have with the contents will do.)
Now, I do have to say, if you haven't read the book, don't understand
the contents and can't give us specific technical defects you perceive
in the contents, one wonders on what basis you expect others to pay
attention to your opinion of the ideas contained within.
Perry
--
Perry E. Metzger [email protected]
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Message #32936
Subject: Re: experimental validation of uploading
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:22:11 +0200
References: <[email protected]>
On 14 Oct 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> Conscious animals evolved from inanimate
> matter, in the stuff of inanimate matter. Occam's razor brings the burden of
> proof to those who would suppose, without warrant, that there is something
> unknown and magical, some tertium quid/quintessence, that lets a brain make
> consciousness and that keeps anything else, including a machine, from making it.
This is not using Occam properly.
The flaw is in assuming that 'consciousness' can exist in machines, which is an Assuming the Consequent error.
First you must define 'consciousness'. Then you must perform a test of the null hypothesis: A machine can't be conscious.
dss
David Stodolsky
[email protected] Skype: davidstodolsky
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Message #32937
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:21:55 -0700
Subject: Scott Locklin and technological progress
From: Brian Wowk <[email protected]>
I find what Scott Locklin has to say about nanotechnology much
less interesting than his conclusions about technology as a whole. In
particular, his observation that technological progress is slowing
down is spot on.
http://takimag.com/article/the_myth_of_technological_progress
Thomas Donaldson had noticed this even back in the 1980s.
---Brian Wowk
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Message #32938
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:20:53 -0700
Subject: Perry Metzger's nervous breakdown
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>
Perry, if you insist on assigning a fringe, sterile textbook, not
taken seriously by the mainstream scientific and engineering
communities, as homework to a 50 year old motel manager so that you
can manage the terror you feel that you've wasted time chasing after a
mirage, then you've made Locklin's case better than I could. You sound
like a missionary trying to get me to read your cult's literature
because I don't believe in your apocalypse.
At least I've done something useful to try to improve our suspensions.
Just ask the de Wolfs.
--
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!
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Message #32939
From: Daniel Crevier <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Progressive uploading
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:21:55 -0400
In posting 32932, 2Arcturus writes the following comment to my arguement
that partial uploading followed by no loss of consciousness would be an
objective demonstration of the survival of consciousness in the process:
> Of course, anti-uploaders might back up their argument and argue that the
> primary visual cortex, while interfacing with the part of the brain that
> gives
> rise to conscious, is not the part of the brain that gives rise to
> consciousness.
>
> The trouble with extending the experiment to include more and more of the
> brain
> would be that anti-uploaders would say that at some (undefined) point, the
> crucial part of the brain that supports consciousness would get swapped
> out with
> a device that merely supports a "philosophical zombie"/p-zombie. They
> might say
> - well, the subject is reporting being consciousness, but that is just the
> p-zombie glibly misrepresenting itself as being conscious.
You're right, they probably would say something like that. This reminds me
of theological debates of yore where unexplained natural phenomena (stars,
lightning, etc...) were presented as miracles proving the existence of God.
As science advanced, more and more of these received natural explanations
and proponents of the miraculous explanation had to retrench to an ever
shrinking territory.
Moravec's original formulation of the progressive uploading experiment might
provide a counter to the objection above. It you do the digitization
progressively, say neuron by neuron, and the patients never report any loss
of consciousness, then to be unfelt, the transition from true consciousness
to p-zombie misrepresentation has to occur suddenly, when one critical
neuron is digitized. Otherwise, as the digitization starts encroaching on
the critical brain area where consciousness really resides, the patients
would report disturbances in their consciousness. Surely this critical area
has to be larger than a single neuron!
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Message #32940
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:35:12 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32930 - #32933
From: Freeposity <[email protected]>
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:00 AM, CryoNet <[email protected]> wrote:
> Message #32930
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 10:43:52 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: uploading sequence suspended
>
> Because of results, or lack of results in the form of feedback from
> readers, I am at least for mow suspending my discussion of the case against the
> likelihood of uploading.
>
> Perhaps the best single thing to remember about it is this:
>
> A blue print is not a building.
>
A mind is not a building. You are experiencing a conceptual hurdle.
Maybe this functional simulation can get the right neurons to fire.
16 bit ALU in Minecraft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkkyKZVzug
Something else to ponder
http://xkcd.com/505/
--
Money isn't speech.
A Corporation isn't a person.
http://www.movetoamend.org/
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Message #32941
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:39:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: new book
LONG FOR THIS WORLD by Jonathan Weiner, Harper Collins 2010.
Weiner won a Pulitzer for THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, about ongoing evolution,
which I liked. The new book, about anti-senescence trends, in my opinion is
not so good. Tries too hard to be entertaining and doesn't offer enough
substance, and also tries too hard to be even-handed.. The biggest figure in
the book is Aubrey de Grey, one familiar to readers here.
Still, it may help a little in heightening awareness of anti-aging
efforts.
Oddly enough, the only mention of cryonics that I noticed was the statement
that de Grey has arranged to have his head frozen after death. The word
"cryonics" was not used and the organization was not named.
Robert Ettinger
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Message #32942
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 02:13:43 +0200
Subject: We are slow
From: Jonano <[email protected]>
We are slow, we are not ambitious enough, we must spend more of our
intelligence to cryonics.
So is technical/technology progress/progression.
Let's become crazy with ambition.
--Jonathan Despres
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