CryoNet #33453 - #33458
CryoNet <[email protected]> 11 Mar 2011 10:00:00 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.science.cryogenics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
CryoNet - Fri 11 Mar 2011
#33453: Message #33451 [M2darwin]
#33454: A Layman's Perspective (Thanks to Chris Manning) [Melody Maxim]
#33455: Re: CryoNet #33443 - #33452 [Luke Parrish]
#33456: Re: CryoNet #33443 - #33452 [Snewellinstitute]
#33457: Emulation? [Ettinger]
#33458: Uploading [Eric]
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Message #33453
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:32:33 EST
Subject: Message #33451
Message #33451
From: "Chris Manning" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: All About Evil, Part 2
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:23:55 +1100
Well just as one small example, here is what happened when I made a
suggestion to CI. The Nov-Dec 2009 issue of 'Long Life' magazine had an
article about the annual inspection of the CI premises carried out on
behalf
of the American Cryonics Society. The article contained a photo of Andy
Zawacki manually measuring the level of the liquid nitrogen in each
cryostat. I posted the following to the CI group:
'I was surprised by the method of measuring the level of the liquid
nitrogen
in the cryostats. I had assumed there was some automated process with
gauges
connected to floats (like in a car) and you just go around and read the
gauges. Surely something like this could be done.'
I will take the liberty of quoting Andy's reply:
'The method we use to measure the liquid nitrogen level is simple,
accurate,
foolproof and inexpensive. Floats and gauges can and do give false
readings.
The more complicated things are, the more chances you will have for a
failure. Why would you want to change our measuring methods and increase
the
risk to our patients, even if the risk may be small?'
The response seems perfectly reasonable to me - my suggested change *was*
unnecessary - and I will be happy for CI to continue using the method it
uses now. And I will be happy for the cryostat I eventually occupy to have
its level measured in this way.
MD: The most valuable resource any enterprise has is the productive
capacity of its people. The value of good people to an organization even trumps
money. While there is nothing "wrong" with manually checking the LN2 level in
cryostats using the dipstick method (I did it for years), it is boring,
time consuming and becomes increasingly unsupportable the more units you have
in operation. Mostly, it is a poor use of human resources. In theory, you
could shift this work to a local volunteer, a retiree perhaps - someone who
lives nearby and wants to help... But in reality such "work" is a waste of
that person's time as well, because any volunteer with that degree of
agility and diligence can be put to other, more useful tasks - *in particular
tasks that a machine cannot do.*
Of course, if LN2 level monitoring were an exotic or costly technology, or
one that was failure prone or unreliable, that would be a different matter.
But such is not the case. Nor is it necessary, or even desirable to use
"floats" or similar mechanical devices. As is the case with boiling water,
there is a large and abrupt discontinuity in temperature between the boiling
liquid nitrogen and the vapor above it. Thermocouples have the advantage of
being fail-safe, in that they will not provide a believable reading in the
event of a malfunction. They are also inexpensive.
There are other ways to measure to liquid level that are similarly robust.
The Dwyer Magnahelic differential pressure gauges, that are to be seen on
the sides of the Alcor dewars, are not connected to floats. Rather, they
measure liquid level by monitoring the pressure in a column (tube) of gas
submerged in the LN2. Again, this system is robust, and reasonably fail safe.
There are even ultrasonic systems that are quite elegant, albeit a bit a
pricey.
If you look at the photo here:
_http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/IMG_2845.JPG_
(http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/IMG_2845.JPG) you will see the infrastructure CI uses to access the
cryostats for liquid level measurement. I have clambered up and down the ladder
and catwalk at CI, and exposing personnel to the risk associated with doing
that with increased frequency on an year in, year out basis, "even if the
risk may be small" is not a good trade-off IMHO. If CI were located in a
litigious state with (comparatively) strict workers' compensation regulation,
like California, they would likely see the increased risk to workers posed
by this procedure and infrastructure in the form of increased workers'
compensation insurance premiums. In fact, the access ladder employed by CI,
which is a conventional "stepladder" that has been attached to the catwalk
farming would be an OSHA violation in some states, but not all! In many
states, a fall-arrest system is required, as called out in ISO 14122-4:2004. The
point is, climbing up and down a ladder and across a catwalk with a
(hopefully) increasing number of cryostats, in order to check LN2 levels is
neither efficient, nor good practice with respect to worker safety, in the long
run.
> This is also an artifact
> of CI President Ben Best considering himself an expert in just about
> every
> technical area of cryonics, with the added handicap of being unable to
"
> weight," scale, or do cos- benefit analyses on various technologies - as
> well as also frequently lacking the necessary experience base to
> understand
> them.
While I can't think offhand of any specific examples, I don't get the
impression that Ben claims expertise that he doesn't have. I don't know
what
is meant by 'unable to "weight," scale, or do cost-benefit analyses on
various technologies'.
MD: LOL, well, maybe you just haven't dealt with Ben enough; I suspect
Andy might have a view contrary to yours;-). Please also understand that I
think Ben is a very good guy - sincere, hard working, and an utterly committed
cryonicist. I'm sure he'd say the same about me - and have many criticisms
as well - a fair number of which would be justified!
> It is only necessary to look
> at CryoNet, to look at Cold Filter, and to look at the reams of internal
> criticism of cryonics BY cryonicists TO other cryonicists, to understand
> that the vast majority of people signed up simply don't care. They are
> informed of the screw-ups, the incompetence, and the often grotesque
> errors, and
> THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE. One of the really good things about Ben Best's
> nightmarish CI case reports, are that they constitute due diligence
> documentation to CI members, to prospective members,and to the public,
of
> just what a
> mess they can expect to have made of their care.
I do read every CI case report, with the same layman's approach as
described
above for reading the posts made here. I would not describe them as
'nightmarish', I certainly would care if I thought they were, and I don't
get the impression that they make a 'mess' of members' care.
MD: Notably, you don't ask for chapter and verse as to why I believe
otherwise. Sigh. That' probably just as well.
I am intrigued by the fact that Mr Darwin has the *time* to post these
many
long emails. I assume he would say that the time spent composing them is
justified by the importance of setting the record straight (as he would
see
it).
MD: Wow, this is a weird statement. Information processing and
communications technology are advancing at a rate that simply blows me away - and I'm
not easily impressed. If medicine were progressing at 1/10th, or maybe even
1/100th the rate that is being sustained in these areas, we'd all be
immortal already. You might as well have asked me how I manage to find the
*time* to post so much, given that using a hammer and chisel to carve my words
into stone takes so long. And that's a good place to end this post, because
it returns us to where we started out: the intelligent use of technology to
improve the utilization of the most valuable resource in the world: human
intelligence and productive creativity. -- Mike Darwin
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Message #33454
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:38:08 +0000 (UTC)
From: Melody Maxim <[email protected]>
Subject: A Layman's Perspective (Thanks to Chris Manning)
Mike Darwin wants to pretend I am making "much ado about nothing," in regard to what I perceive as attempts to deceive laymen into believing the services of Alcor and Suspended Animation are far superior to what they actually are. Mr. Darwin writes:
> It is only necessary to look
> at CryoNet, to look at Cold Filter, and to look at the reams of internal
> criticism of cryonics BY cryonicists TO other cryonicists, to understand
> that the vast majority of people signed up simply don't care. They are
> informed of the screw-ups, the incompetence, and the often grotesque
> errors, and
> THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE. One of the really good things about Ben Best's
> nightmarish CI case reports, are that they constitute due diligence
> documentation to CI members, to prospective members,and to the public, of
> just what a
> mess they can expect to have made of their care.
In response, Chris Manning wrote: "I do read every CI case report, with the same layman's approach as described
above for reading the posts made here. I would not describe them as
'nightmarish', I certainly would care if I thought they were, and I don't
get the impression that they make a 'mess' of members' care."
What Mr. Darwin refers to as "Ben Best's nightmarish CI case reports," are a lot more "honest" than those of Alcor, or SA, in my opinion. CI's reports are, for the most part, much more simplistic than Alcor's or SA's reports, and here's a layman saying he doesn't see the "messes" Mike Darwin claims are "glaringly obvious" in the more simple CI reports? Did Mr. Manning read SA's case report, for the Curtis Henderson case? I'm a medical professional, familiar with vascular cannulations and perfusion, and it was easy for me to read between the lines of SA's nonsense. It was also VERY CLEAR to me that a layman, such as Mr. Manning, would look at that report and think real medical professionals competently carried out SA's procedures, (services they try to sell, with a price tag of $60,000.00,
I'm told), when nothing could be further from the truth. Would Mr. Manning, (or any other layman), have read that report and realized the person doing the procedure was NOT a surgeon, as she
described herself? Would a layman have recognized that Ms. Baldwin struggled for MANY HOURS, attempting to perform a procedure that would have taken a competent person MINUTES to carry out? All those hours, leaving Mr. Henderson at much warmer temperatures, than he would have been, had Ms. Baldwin been capable of performing her duties? Would Mr. Manning, or any other layman, have recognized that, in the SA report? NO, THEY WOULD NOT.
Would a layman have recognized that Ms. Baldwin did not understand the medical terminology she used in her own report? (She described searching for the femoral blood vessels in the femoral capsule (the location of the hip joint), when the femoral vessels are located in the femoral sheath (an area in the groin). Would a layman realize how absolutely ridiculous it is, for someone pretending to be a surgeon and spewing out all that medical jargon, to not be able to find some of the largest blood vessels in the human body? If Mr. Darwin knows ten percent of what he THINKS he knows, he will read that SA report and he will know it was a bold attempt, by SA, to deceive someone. That "someone" may very well be their benefactors and/or peers, but as a result, members of the general population (anyo
ne who reads the SA report) are also deceived. If SA's intentions were to honestly describe procedures performed by laymen, why didn't they just write the report in laymen's terms, rather th
an fill it will medical jargon, some of which even Ms. Baldwin did not understand? If their intention was not deception, why was Ms. Baldwin falsely identified as a surgeon? In my opinion, it was just another charade, in a long line of many.
While we're on this topic, why is Mike Darwin identified in so many Alcor case reports as a "surgeon"? How about the times he was referred to as a "Chief Surgeon"? What is the excuse for that? Does Mr. Darwin expect me to believe that verybody who reads those reports on the Internet knows Mr. Darwin isn't really a surgeon? Seriously?? The only reason I can think of, for doing something like that, is to deceive people into believing Mr. Darwin is something he is not.
As for Mr. Darwin's remarks about professional perfusionists being present for recent SA cases, do laymen realize that SA might as well have a chimpanzee behind the pump, if no one is there to do the cannulation?
I don't think the majority of people who are signed up for cryonics are "informed of the screw-ups, the incompetence, and the often grotesque errors" and "simply do not care." I think they are being lied to. I doubt most of them even read CryoNet, or Cold Filter, and if they do, they've been exposed to no small number of lies, which have been posted on those sites, a portion of those lies courtesy of some who have a lot of experience writing cryonics case reports.
As Mr. Manning stated, he reads those case reports with a "layman's approach," as do MOST cryonicists, (and anyone else who happens to stumble upon SA and Alcor's case reports, while investigating cryonics on the Internet). Mr. Manning didn't see what Mr. Darwin thinks should be glaringly obvious to anyone, and more than that, Mr. Manning CARES.
Melody Maxim
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Message #33455
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:15:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Luke Parrish <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33443 - #33452
For those not aware already, the source for the quote regarding
destroying cryonics was Richie Arnold, a UK bartender with a
genuine vendetta. It came from the Cult Education Forum, of
which "melmax" is an active participant and contributor.
Hopefully whomever is currently scheming with Richie to destroy
cryonics will fail to do so and fall flat on their face. Mike
seems to think there is a credible threat, due mainly to the
relatively uninformed and apathetic nature of the medical
community with regards to the ethical and technical requirements
of cryonics.
Personally I think there needs to be more of a drive to get
physicians and medical professionals informed on this. As the
Post War population ages, I have a feeling that many of them
will prefer not to "go gently in the night." More physician
involvement in improving and certifying cryonics can be a good
thing.
Nonetheless, it is essential that they be physicians who
actually understand the underlying biophysical and ethical
principles of cryonics. Individuals who are ignorant of (or
indifferent to) these principles cannot be allowed to write the
rules on the topic.
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Message #33456
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:02:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33443 - #33452
After reviewing some of these debates, a word of request seems reasonable.
I agree with my Asian ancestors to preface what I may debate by saying if
it is useful keep it, and if not useful just ignore me and go on with no bad
feelings, please.
I have worked many years as a science teacher. When I was 14 years I
organized a small group of teens with the support of a college sociologist and
called the group "Delta Group" for the goal of changing the world using
resources in "Futurist" magazine of the World Futurist Society in the early
1970's. It was immediately my experience as a young idealist that people do
not generally respond to earnest debate speculating on the way to go to a
better future for the world with an easy and kind debate. It stirs up all the
worse suspicions talking about changing the world. Yet we do it everyday
even by accident, don't we? So all I ask is this, that most of the energy and
intelligence showing should be actually science analysis and not political
or psychological negative speculation. None of the eventual discovery and
result that works will be the product of one genius. This will be as much
science biological industry as anything done before.
One other thing I humbly ask of my colleagues in the Long Life movement:
That we keep in mind that on the other side of the economics of this effort
economics will look very different so let us not nickel and dime ourselves
into energy wasted wars. What is the credit rating of a person who will live
for another 800 years with all the skill sets and even vastly senior
experience they would have in that place of existence? Considering what we have
learned in 50 years since the cyberspace science blossomed, where will
capabilities be in 800 years?
I am all for professionalism and new efforts to reason out what kind of
regulations we will benefit from in a new blossoming science industry that
works and is called cryonics, but we don't need to do it by Junta
assassinations like some banana republic in social change do we? On the other side of
the economics when we find improved research results to our science
technology the possibilities will be expansive and will make immediate sense to
most the general public without much of a sales pitch needed. All we need to
do is pay attention to the actual work before us as a community. I thank
you for your time with deepest respects to all sides seeking to answer to the
truth.
SWN
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Message #33457
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:16:10 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Emulation?
My main argument against mind uploading into a digital computer is
that--with unimportant exceptions--a description of a thing (material object or
system) is not that thing. A map of a city is not a city. A blueprint of a
house is not a house, regardless of detail and fidelity. Difficulties and
confusions for the reader arise from several causes, mainly the reader's
unrecognized false assumptions. Let's try to sort this out, at least in part.
First, a description can be any statement--verbal, written, or other--that
calls the referent to mind. If you are intending to describe a woman, just
the word "woman" might be enough for some purposes. But if you are trying
to emulate a particular woman in a digital computer you clearly need a lot
more detail. Is this possible?
In principle it might seem that, yes, if you study the woman sufficiently
you will be able to describe her with perfect fidelity, atom for atom, and
predict her thoughts and actions over time. But just a little thought will
reveal that for the foreseeable future this is a hopeless enterprise. One
reason is that we don't know, and are unlikely soon to know, the basic laws
of physics which must govern the algorithm. For example, some of the
interpretations and extensions of quantum physics are the various brands of string
or M or brane theory, which may involve extra dimensions of space or time.
Until we know what's what, any "emulation" can be guaranteed to be a far
cry from the original and any predictions a joke.
This does not address the question of whether the attempted emulation would
be alive or conscious. It might conceivably be something useful, but it
wouldn't be an emulation. If you are the original, the"emulation" wouldn't be
you.
Robert Ettinger
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Message #33458
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:00:29 -0700
From: "Eric" <[email protected]>
Subject: Uploading
This is the kind of nonsense you can expect to get
with a generation raised on transporters, programming,
and mathematics without a grounding in logic - an
inability to distinguish between an abstract and
a concrete.
Over here in the real world, there's no such thing
as "identical." Identical is what's known as an
abstract. It plays nicely with other things that
are also abstracts - like numbers, concepts, ideas,
patterns. In the real world, not even two electrons
are "identical." If you destroy one, well then the
universe is down one electron. A little different
than trying to destroy the number "four." (This is
also true when you really, really emphasize it by
saying *identical* and IDENTICAL.)
How about you rephrase all of your uploading
arguments using more accurate descriptions like,
"very similar" and see how they sound?
What's particularly annoying about a lot of uploaders
are their attempts to slur non-uploaders with some
sort of accusation of being "mystical" for thinking
there's something "magic" about a particular manifestation
of a pattern - when they're the ones thinking that
abstracts are something that actually exist and
have these nifty magic properties in the real world.
Unfortunately, each of us is manifested in a particular
piece of meat. Nothing special or magical about
it - you could say the same thing about a rock. Now
you can go ahead and make as many "very similar"
copies of your meat as you want. Have a ball. They
can even be so darn good that they think they're
you, and everyone else thinks they're you. But if
you blow your brains out, well then the universe is
going to be down one uploading advocate.
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