CryoNet #33416 - #33418

CryoNet - Fri 4 Mar 2011

    #33416: cryonics book [Chrissie de Rivaz]
    #33417: Re: CryoNet #33410 - #33415 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33418: Re: more on uploading [Keith Henson]

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Message #33416
From: "Chrissie de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: cryonics book
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 10:47:35 -0000

>>
While editing may not be "the problem", it is _a_ problem, and the one I consider myself best qualified to solve.  That said, there are *lots* of potential problems, and lumping them all together into "writing it AND getting it published" isa great way to cow oneself into total deer-in-the-headlights paralysis.
<<<<

Interesting .. I have posted on the subject previously. What sort of book are you thinking of?
I have attempted the following:-
1)A simple sort of 'Cryonics for Dummies' book to explain the history, the process, signing up, telling the family etc. 
2)A fantasy novel using cryonics as a vehicle between past and present
3) A straight 'family' novel with a son who goes through the process of signing up and with his mother gradually being converted to the idea. (I used questions from some of the many interviews I have done, as a basis)

The result? No agent or publisher felt they could sell or publish material on this subject. I tried numerous agents, many of whom I actually know but they were negative. Publishing is in a bit of a mess right now ... digital books (e-books) are making a big impact but nobody seems certain if this is the future or not. I am involved in the publishing world ... around 36 published books to my name but these are feel good romances, a pretty safe genre.

Chrissie de Rivaz (aka Chrissie Loveday) 

http://www.ChrissieLoveday.com 
http://www.Rough-Clay.com 


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Message #33417
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 10:40:37 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33410 - #33415

--bcaec501c5ba99dee3049d96b114

 What is Mark PLUS's agenda?
I don't understand "Mark PLUS" claiming that cryonics is going to be
destroyed and his claim that it's all because individuals "abused their
position".  Does Mark want cryonics to be destroyed and made illegal?  His
post seems to imply that he does...that he would rather he died and
experience oblivion for eternity in order to see individuals he doesn't like
fall from grace.

Robert : think of it less like a map of a thing and more like a duplicate
copy of the same thing that has been simplified to only contain the key
elements.  If the brain is a mountain and the important part of the mountain
is the surface rocks, then think of an electronic analogue as a duplicate
copy of the mountain with the surface rocks faithfully mirrored.  (but a
little pixelated in spots).  The difference is that the electronic analogue
of the mountain has an interior made of something else.

I was just working out a way to do this, today, by studying a neuroscience
book and trying to simply the complexity to the key elements.  Each synapse
would be a capacitor, and each target a larger capacitor.  The amount of
charge in each capacitor would be varied by charge control circuitry that
would have an internal set-point representing the thresholds for that
synapse.  Some logic would give some synapses more plasticity than others.

The truth is, most experiments show the brain is so horrendously noisy that
this simple analogue could very well be more than adequate.  More subtle
effects are probably drowned out by thermal noise, electrical noise, noisy
switches and leaks and so on.  The brain self-tunes and uses massive arrays
of neurons in parallel to overcome this noise..assuming these electronic
analogues have all of the same self adjustment properties your consciousness
would quickly adapt to your new high speed brain.  If the brain really does
exploit subtle quantum effects, then perhaps we'll have to add a few
electron entanglement traps to our circuit diagram.

Yes, I'm aware that efforts to build brain analogues this way have not yet
resulted in sentient entities. (I have only read of one such attempt,
actually).  However, the collections of hardware analog neurons do have
surface signalling patterns that mimic what we see on EEG.  And we still
have to copy the software - we will need a detailed scan of a cryogenically
frozen brain to get the software.  Perhaps it wouldn't need to be atom by
atom - even a lower resolution scan that took detailed mappings to get the
exact pattern at samples in spots - might be enough to build a sentient
entity.  There is a limit to how much complexity could be specified in the
brain by our DNA and the resulting hardware created by that DNA.  There have
to be shortcuts that nature uses to decide where to make the 7*10^14
connections.

--bcaec501c5ba99dee3049d96b114

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Message #33418
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 12:03:47 -0700
Subject: Re: more on uploading
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 3:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> Mike Perry says that a simulation of a computation is a computation, and
> not unimportant. I say it is unimportant in the same sense that a copy of a
> map is unimportant--not really affecting the general rule that  a
> description of a thing is not that thing.
>
> As to quantum computation, there are many unanswered questions.
>
> As to the suggested universal character of symbolism, that also remains
> speculation. Not that I'm against speculation, but it needs to be kept in
> perspective. And never forget that the symbolism is CODED, requiring
> interpretation.  In general, a set of symbols does not have a unique  interpretation.
>
I am not sure these objections make sense in practical terms.  Back
last Oct I wrote:

"While I am sympathetic with Bob Ettinger case that uploading can't
happen, what do we do with the case of downloading back into a human?

"If uploading is possible at all, then the reverse process should be no harder.

"Assume a person is uploaded, and their body and brain shut down.
(Because of a "one version at a time" law.)  Then some time from hours
to years later, the state of their brain is updated with the current
information from their uploaded version, their body warmed up and they
go for a walk with the memories and skills they acquired in the
uploaded state.

"Are the memories they have of their time being an upload legitimate?

Like Bob, I find Hans Moravec's destructive uploading distasteful.
But for the clinic seed story, I had to give a lot of thought to the
problem.  It seems that nanomachines can be so much smaller than nerve
cells that (eventually) we could infiltrate a brain with them and
extract not only structure (connections) but learn the process of
every nerve cell and synapse.

An external swarm of computers could duplicate the process--which
looks to me like an upload.

Bob, would some of your objections go away if *every step* in the
uploading could be reversed?

Keith

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