CryoNet #33395 - #33401

CryoNet - Tue 1 Mar 2011

    #33395: Re: CryoNet #33352 - #33357 [andrej x]
    #33396: Mike Darwin's Rants [Melody Maxim]
    #33397: Cryonet lives! [Rudi Hoffman]
    #33398: Re: CryoNet #33363 - #33394 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33399: Re: CryoNet #33358 - #33362 [David Stodolsky]
    #33400: long term free energy [Ettinger]
    #33401: again, debunking uploading [Ettinger]

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Message #33395
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:06:36 +0100
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33352 - #33357
From: andrej x <[email protected]>

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Hi, my web-page about cryonics  http://krionika.webs.com  has just been
listed in google. I live in Croatia so idea was to write the
first webpage (and the first one that is "pro-cryonics") in my language to
explain all the basic arguments -scientific and philosophical, in greater
detail than newspaper articles or forum discussions. It covers issues like
preservation of identity, living in the future world, prospects of
nanotechnology/ nanomedicine, psychology of cryonics, etc.

It doesn't look like much now visually, but i am working to improve it.

andrej

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Message #33396
From: "Melody Maxim" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Mike Darwin's Rants
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:02:06 -0500

It seems I've upset Mr. Darwin, by drawing attention to the false statements 
he made.

Mr. Darwin challenging me to technical debates, to be carried out in front 
of an audience comprised mostly of people with no in-depth knowledge of 
perfusion technology, is simply absurd. I'm sure most of you are lovely, 
intelligent people, but I doubt many of you have the background required to 
properly judge such discussions. I'm about to introduce Mr. Darwin to my 
peers, a group of people who DO understand the topics of vascular 
cannulations, perfusion and hypothermia. If Mr. Darwin's high regard for 
himself is accurate, he should soon be a superstar, in conventional 
medicine.

Melody 

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Message #33397
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:00:04 -0500
Subject: Cryonet lives!
From: Rudi Hoffman <[email protected]>

--001636aa2b8e4af2d6049d58ef98

Hello, Dear Cryonetters:

This is just a quick comment to say Cryonet has seen a revival in
interesting and relevant postings as of late.

Thanks to all participants and lurkers for your passion and intensity and
erudition.

Rudi

--
Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC

World's Leading Cryonics Insuror rudihoffman.com
Former Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com
Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org
Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org,
Member Cryonics Institute cryonics.org
Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards
Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/
Securities offered through Broker Dealer Financial Services Corp. Member
FINRA and SIPC.

--001636aa2b8e4af2d6049d58ef98

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Message #33398
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:21:47 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33363 - #33394

--20cf307f389ac0072a049d5bc92f

Robert Ettinger - why do you consider uploading to be nonsense?

To reverse current suspensions, the most comprehensive and logical solution
is an atom by atom scan of every fragment of the frozen brains in the dewars
today.   Current methods and equipment don't have anywhere near atomic
level resolution - if we scanned a brain today, we'd destroy a portion of it
making the slices, and would scan each slice using a relatively low
resolution light microscope.  If you are wondering what I am talking about,
here's a website where a  brain was scanned using today's methods :
http://thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/hm_live.php

>From this scan, we can probably determine some of the reasons why the
patient was unable to form new long term memories.  If we knew what to look
for, we might be able to infer a rough guess of the patient's personality
and temperment, as well as what types of things the patient was skilled at.
But nothing specific enough that the patient would experience continuity of
existence, which is the primary ultimate goal of cyronics.

However, atomically precise scans are theoretically possible, and we can do
them today for small two dimensional surfaces.

Anyways, once we perform such a scan, we'll know exactly with almost perfect
resolution the physical structures of the synapses of the brain. Currently,
we think that all information stored in the brain is represented by
interactions between networks of synapses that each have a potential for
firing and potentials for changing, aka thresholds and plasticity.  Some
areas of the brain are far more plastic than others, and can actually form
new synapses - although we currently think that new synapses are formed
randomly, and they are retained or deleted depending on how useful a new
connection is.  In any case, all of the biology - all of the ridiculous
complexity - is most likely reducable to a simpler set of rules that apply
per synapse.  At any given connection in the brain, there might be 10 or
less parameters that represent the "state" of that location.  A parameter
for the density for each protein type related to the handling of charge and
neurotransmitters, for the concentratration of loose long distance
neurotransmitters that bathe the intracellular fluid, and so on.

Anyways, once we map someone's mind, what do we do next?  Neuroscientists of
the future will have to understand exactly what they are doing to even
attempt a revival.  While we do not know all of the precise details of how
the brain's interconnects actually work today, that will have to be known by
the time a revival is even contemplated.

Well, the most logical step is to take the exact same technology we used to
make the molecular scan - molecular manufacturing - and print ourselves a
massive cube of electronic circuitry that precisely emulates each and every
synapse of the cryonic patient's mind.    Since each and every processing
core is a copy of every other one (just loaded with different data
reflecting the current state of a synapse) and following the same microcode,
human beings could engineer and build such an emulator.  Also, when things
go wrong, we can debug something that we designed and created.

It's possible that the brain exploits strange quantum effects that
conventional digital circuitry can't reproduce.  Not a problem - just add
molecular circuits to our cube that emulate this property of the brain as
well.  As long as you assume that the brain relies on matter and energy to
perform computation, and that alternate designs of a brain could run the
same human personality, then this is ultimately possible.

Also, actual studies of real neural tissue reveal the stuff is
horribly noisy and unreliable and so many of the subtle effects we wonder
about are likely lost in the noise.

Or, door number 2 is we attempt to use our molecular manufacturing to create
a new brain, with each neuron and glial cell and blood vessel and everything
else made from a molecular pattern representing a *living *state.  Also, the
manufacturing equipment will have to work with a solid, so the living
neurons must start as frozen and be constructed to survive thawing.  I think
this is possible, but the complexity - understanding of living systems to
the level of God himself - may be beyond the capabilities of human brains to
ever solve.

I firmly believe revivals can be done with a person waking up in the peak of
health, but it'll probably take a hybrid approach such as first opening door
#1, bringing people back as emulations of their formal selves, and running
those emulations at speeds millions of times faster than realtime to solve
the problems with approach number 2.

In any case, please pop my soap bubble.  What facts and data can you bear to
show that we can't emulate a system that was apparently designed through
pure blind chance and is a prototype in the natural world.  (humans are
basically prototypes because we haven't existed for enough generations for
evolution to refine us, which is both why our brains can fail so
spectacularly and why no other species has our capabilities)

I don't mind learning that I am wrong.  I took my first neurscience course
in medical school fairly recently.  It's just that there's an awful lot of
stuff I've learned about that support this idea.
                       Gerald Monroe

p.s. : Rudi : this is why computer scientists were the first to jump on
cryonics.  It takes a deep understanding of math to visualize a software
function with 10+ variables representing each synapse, and how trillions of
said functions interacting together could lead to the emergent complexity we
actually see in humans.  And that a copy is as good as the original, and
that exponentially more intelligent systems are possible.  Most people in
the United States probably ultimately believe that our God given souls
trigger each neuron like strings on a puppet.

--20cf307f389ac0072a049d5bc92f

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Message #33399
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33358 - #33362
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:32:07 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 28 Feb 2011, at 2:16 PM, CryoNet wrote:

> I actually agree with you in that there's a reason cryonics is small.  *
> Partly* the problem is a chicken-egg issue : today, cryonics is too small to
> have access to or to *afford* teams of full time, fully formally trained
> folks in the relevant field.

A review of my earlier posted reanalysis of the Badger data will show that this is almost totally irrelevant to the growth of cryonics. Cryonics is small as a result of a profound failure to use even the most basic principles of marketing science (also discussed earlier: Message #32619)


dss

David Stodolsky
[email protected]          Skype/Twitter: davidstodolsky

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Message #33400
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:53:23 -0500 (EST)
Subject: long term free energy

At CI the cost of energy is not a major expense and our cryostats do not  
rely on electric energy. Even so, there can be spurts of price of oil or  
anything else, and independence would be nice.  Liquid nitrogen is not a  major 
expense either, but it would be comforting to be able to generate our own  
without paying for energy. 
 
Several types of energy are potentially nearly unlimited in magnitude and  
eventually relatively cheap. But the outstanding candidate for the long  
term is Seebeck electric energy.
 
The thermoelectric effects were discovered almost 300 years ago, and we  
consider a circuit with different materials on the two sides. If an electric  
voltage is applied across the circuit, one junction will become cooler and 
the  other warmer, the Peltier effect, which can be used e.g. for 
refrigeration (or  heating) with no moving parts. The reverse is the Seebeck 
effect--use of a  temperature difference to produce a voltage. (When Mae and I  lived 
in  Arizona, our house used thermo-electric heating and cooling.)
 
What makes Seebeck electric energy outstanding, compared say to solar or  
tidal or wind energy, is that it is available always and everywhere, not just 
 when the sun is shining or the tide is changing or the wind blowing. A 
Seebeck  generator requires only a temperature difference between two nearby 
locations,  and these always exist--e.g. surface and subsurface temperature 
differences  always exist, on  land or at sea, although of course some will be 
more  attractive than others. 
 
A simple Seebeck circuit, using temperature difference to measure voltage,  
is called a thermocouple. A bunch of thermocouples in series is a 
thermopile,  the voltages additive..  Once built, a thermopile has no maintenance 
cost,  since it has  no moving parts, and after you pay for the gadget your 
energy  is free. (I'll omit some very minor quibbles.) 
 
So far the capital cost is not in the competitive range, but it will get  
there.
 
Robert Ettinger
 

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Message #33401
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 02:37:50 -0500 (EST)
Subject: again, debunking uploading

Gerald Monroe asks why I think uploading is nonsense. Once more, here's the 
 gist of it.
 
First, most of Mr. Monroe's points are irrelevant, addressing a different  
question. viz., that of reproduction of a brain.  I don't claim that a  
brain cannot be copied or reconstructed, or that such a copy wouldn't be alive.  
The nonsense enters when we focus on  uploading in the sense of a  
simulation of a brain (or simulation of succession of states) in a digital  computer.
 
First, fix firmly in mind the fact that the computers in question already  
exist, except for speed and storage capacity.  The deficiency of a  
simulation is  not a matter of speed or storage capacity, but of the  intrinsic 
nature of a simulation. A simulation is a description, and a  description (in 
general) is not the thing.
 
Either of two mantras ought to do the trick, for those accessible  through 
logic.  Either "The map (with unimportant exceptions) is  not the territory" 
or "A blueprinjt of a house (no matter how accurate and  detailed)  is not 
a house."
 
There are many extensions and variations of the argument. For example,  
suppose I write down, with pencil on paper, the quantum mechanical 
specification  of a hydrogen atom in its ground state, which isn't difficult. So I've 
written  it down, and now I have some pencil marks on paper. Does that mean I 
have  created a hydrogen  atom? If you  believe that, next stop  Bellevue.
 
A computer does not acquire magical properties by virtue of more speed or  
more storage capacity. The simplest computer--conceptually, a Turing 
tape--can  in principle perform any calculation that any digital computer will ever 
be able  to do, albeit more slowly.
 
A computer massages data--something in, something out. It converts an input 
 set of symbols into an output set of symbols. All you have in the computer 
is a  succession of sets of symbols, which through an appropriate code can 
be  interpreted to signify something. Or not. 
 
Yet again, it is crucial to remember that adding speed or size buys you  
essentially nothing except convenience. A coded description of a thing in a  
computer is not that thing, any more than a painting of a person is a person. 
If  it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it may still be just a 
decoy. A  page full of words, or a  computer full of files, is not a person, or 
 indeed anything at all other than a set of symbols. 
 
Robert Ettinger

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