CryoNet #33423 - #33427

CryoNet - Sun 6 Mar 2011

    #33423: Mark Plus [John Smith]
    #33424: Jeff Davis on uploading [Ettinger]
    #33425: Re: CryoNet #33401 debunking uploading [ronhave]
    #33426: Anonymity on web site postings endangered [Stephen Bridge]
    #33427: Jeff Davis addendum [Ettinger]

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Message #33423
From: John Smith <[email protected]>
Subject: Mark Plus
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 11:15:04 -0500

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Your message in:


http://cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=33413


Please find something more constructive to do with you time than frequent rickross forums. It does not help cryonics movement in anyway.


John Smith
 		 	   		  
--_47c02c4a-df22-4a0a-a67d-235423ee18d6_

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Message #33424
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 13:14:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Jeff Davis on uploading

Thanks, Jeff, for an opportunity to clarify your errors.
 
First, it was not up to a reasonable standard to bring in non sequiturs  
and attribute opinions to me that you know I don't have. When you are  
responding to me, why drag in stuff about "soul?" You know, or ought to know,  that 
I am a materialist and reductionist. Much of what you wrote is in this  
vein--just irrelevant.
 
You say I demeaned your view by saying "simulation" instead of "emulation"  
and that by saying "simulation I implied importance to speed and fidelity.  
 I have repeatedly said that it is not a question of speed or fidelity, but 
of  the very nature of the alleged uploading--that you are describing and 
not  creating or copying.
 
Jeff makes an issue of static vs. dynamic things and their descriptions.  
There is no relevant difference. A drawing of Mickey Mouse (or of a real  
person) is a description, and a movie with Mickey Mouse (or a  person) is also 
a description. 
 
Jeff writes: "uploading is feasible, for the simple reason that anything  
done
with ordinary --as in "non-magical" -- matter, can be done  with
different matter, if that different matter can be configured to  equal
or exceed the performance of the original substrate."
 
Duplication of function is not the issue. We are talking about description, 
 not copying, which is another long discussion.
 
I could go on, but part of the problem has been that too many points are  
brought into a single missive, leading to disregard of some. Let's see if the 
 above makes any dent.
 
Robert Ettinger
 
 
 
Sometime back, Robert Ettinger provided a list of reasons why
uploading  was never going to happen.  I disagreed then, as I do now.
After  considering his points, I concluded that the first two, the most
important,  were not valid, so I breezed over the rest, finished with
it, and put the  matter aside.  I simply did not want to dispute the
point with Dr.  Ettinger.  I put it aside out of respect for the man
whom I consider the  founder of cryonics.  But maybe it wasn't respect,
just cowardice, ...or  laziness.  It seems now that it might be more
respectful to challenge  his view, if I think he's got it wrong.  Well,
the upload issue is back  again, and with it Dr. E's opposing view.  So
here's my  bit.

Gerald Monroe put forth a very concise and orderly statement of  how
and why uploading should work, with which I agree entirely.  I  take
Dr. Ettinger's main point in rebuttal (point number one (?) in  his
previous list of ten(?)), paraphrased, as: a simulation is  a
description, and a description of a thing is not the thing.

First, I  object to the use of the term "simulation", as it immediately
conveys -- to  me, at least --a presumption of limited fidelity, in the
sense of an  "approximation", vis a vis original to simulation.  Having
used  "simulation" to beg the question of upload fidelity, he then
amplifies the  presumed defective fidelity by using the term
"description".  A  description is a thought-generated abstraction: a
notion, generally static,  conveyed by the use of symbols:
alpha-numeric, graphical, or audible.   Clearly a description of a
thing is not the thing.  This statement is  clearly true, but the logic
that leading to it -- leading to identifying an  upload with a
"description -- is presumptive and tautological.  It has  no validity
for me, I can only reject it and start over.

The human  persona is a dynamic information structure.  For comparison
purposes,  "Huck Finn" is a static information structure.   The human
persona  is mediated by the arrangement of matter we refer to as a
human body.   "Huck Finn" is mediated by the arrangement of matter we
refer to as a  book.  The "state" of the human persona is always in
flux, always  changing -- thus the term "dynamic" -- updating its state
every thirtieth  (approx) of a second in response to the dynamic
interplay of internal and  external events.  "Huck Finn" is static,
stays the same, never  changes.  "Huck Finn" has untold copies in
various mediums -- paper,  parchment, sheepskin, power point, slides,
audio book, synaptic memory, etc  -- each of them indisputably "Huck
Finn" because each contains an adequately  accurate "copy" of the
"authentic" information structure.

The dynamic  information structure which is the human persona has only
one instance.   Yet that is merely a statement of the circumstances of
the moment.  Up  till now the opportunity to create a "copy" of a human
persona has not  presented itself.  The understanding of the details of
the persona, and  its "biological substrate", is currently inadequate,
as is the technology  needed to create an engineered substrate to
support the persona and its  dynamic activity.  How can I or anyone
then speak authoritatively to the  question, "Is that which is
currently infeasible, permanently so, or merely  temporarily so?"  They
can't.  Not authoritatively.  And it  will do no good for someone to
say "It's never been done."  (Which, by  the way, is the argument so
often deployed as a challenge to the feasibility  of cryonics.)
Anything that becomes feasible, has to have a starting point, a  first
time. Before then -- and so what!?-- it's "never been  done".

Which takes us to the meat (pun intended) of the matter.  I  conclude
that uploading is feasible, for the simple reason that anything  done
with ordinary --as in "non-magical" -- matter, can be done  with
different matter, if that different matter can be configured to  equal
or exceed the performance of the original substrate.  Every  indication
from the computing revolution -- which ten or fifty or two  hundred
years from now will likely be "indistinguishable from magic" --  is
that the information processing capability of neural tissue will  be
equaled and then surpassed by the information processing performance
of  engineered materials.

Nothing I said here is the least bit  original.  So why are we in the
cryonics community still discussing  it?

I suspect that the religion meme, the "soul" meme is the  cause.
Whenever you follow the logic of materialism you arrive at  the
conclusion that you are just a pile of stuff.  That you are  NOT
special.  Just a chemically active pile of clay.  A animate  lump of
undigested meat.  All of human experience, history, philosophy,  and
culture revolts at this notion.  "I'm alive!!  I'm  alive!!
Vigorously, abundantly, gloriously so."  Screams the  persona.  "Just
an illusion, fella." Asserts materialism."  "Just a  meat-borne
biochemical accident one minute, and a pile of irrelevant garbage,  the
next.   No god, no soul, no divine spark, no "paragon of  animals", no
"meaning" anywhere in the universe.  Get over  it."

You know the movie "The Night of the Living Dead", where the dead  rise
from their graves as zombies and rampage around the countryside,  all
soul-less in gray, raggedy, spastic, and menacing?  Well,  here's
materialism's truth:  You **ARE** the walking undead.  You  **ARE** the
zombies.

The notion of soul saves you from this horror,  which is why so many go
there when challenged by materialism's inevitable  implication.  That's
the bad news.  The good news is that once you  make peace with the
meaninglessness of existence, you have liberated yourself  to embrace
the future, and not be frightened by it.

Best, Jeff  Davis



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Message #33425
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33401 debunking uploading
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:43:59 -0500
From: [email protected]

I would ask the uploaders to make this thought experiment. Upload the 
contents of your brain to the fullest extent allowed by future 
technology.
Then blow your brains out with a gun and make sure your remains are 
thoroughly cremated. Are you happy to do this? If not, why not?
Surely, all that is essential about you has been preserved! Are you not 
now immortal?
Ron Havelock

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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Message #33426
Subject: Anonymity on web site postings endangered
From: Stephen Bridge <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 23:05:02 -0500 (EST)

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>From Steve Bridge:  The following small local event may turn into a much larger legal case affecting even CryoNet.  An Indianapolis judge has ruled that the Indianapolis Star newspaper must turn over identifying information about anonymous posters to the Star's website in a defamation lawsuit.  Of course, the newspaper will appeal the decision; but the opponent is a fairly well-known local businessman who may well have the resources to continue the suit if the newspaper manages to get the ruling reversed. I could see this eventually ending up in the State of Indiana's Supreme Court and even in the U.S. Supreme Court, since it clearly involves both freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  We clearly have anonymous, argumentative posters on CryoNet.  Part of the article is below, with a
  link to the rest.
 
Steve Bridge
 
*** A Marion County judge has ruled, for the first time in Indiana, that news media outlets can be ordered by the court to reveal identifying information about posters to their online forums.
 
In rulings this week and last week, Marion Superior Court Judge S.K. Reid became the first judge in Indiana to rule on whether the state journalism shield law protects media outlets from being forced to disclose names of anonymous posters on their websites or other identifying information about those posters, said Kevin Betz, an attorney for Jeffrey Miller, former chief executive of Junior Achievement of Central Indiana.
 
The rulings came in a defamation lawsuit Miller filed last year. He is seeking to broaden the list of defendants in his case to include people who criticized him anonymously last year on websites run by The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis Business Journal and WRTV (Channel 6).
 
The case is among a growing number of defamation claims nationally that target anonymous Internet posters to websites operated by news media and other owners.***
 
The rest of the article is here:  http://www.indystar.com/article/201103020245/LOCAL18/103020335 
 



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Message #33427
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 23:07:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Jeff Davis addendum

Another thought. Jeff seems confused about the meaning of  description. A 
description (of a material object or system) is a  representation of some 
aspect(s) of that thing. A code  is invented to translate. 
 
The description is never complete, because there is much we don't know  
about the composition of matter and about space and time. The description 
merely  has to be useful to some potential observer. The description is always a  
kind of shorthand.
 
A witness in court might start out by saying he saw a woman. Maybe he did,  
or  maybe it was a man in drag, or maybe it was a mannequin, or maybe it  
was just wash hanging out to dry, or maybe he was dreaming. In any event, the 
 report "woman" is just a shorthand for roughly and vaguely summing up what 
the  observer remembers. Its usefulness is always severely limited. 
 
In particular, a representation on paper or in a computer or through your  
vocal chords is not the thing represented. Even if I could  write down,  
using words and numbers, a complete and perfect description of an object, or of 
 its activities, writing down those things would not constitute creation of 
that  thing or anything remotely resembling it. You would only be creating 
some marks  on paper which, given the motivation and the code, could be used 
to infer  whatever you wanted to know about the thing. 
 
Does this help anybody understand the limitations of description? I was a  
teacher for a long time, and have reason to believe I'm a good expositor, 
but  this challenge is a doozy.
 
Robert Ettinger

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