CryoNet #33471 - #33474

CryoNet - Sun 13 Mar 2011

    #33471: Re: CryoNet #33459 - #33470 [Gerald Monroe]
    #33472: Re:Henson reply [Ettinger] [Keith Henson]
    #33473: Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Uniqu... [David Stodolsky]
    #33474: Subject: #33458: Uploading  [Eric]

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Message #33471
References: <[email protected]>
From: Gerald Monroe <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:42:29 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33459 - #33470

--001636c92cd2d931fd049e4bc415

Melody, Mike : perhaps you can reach some kind of truce?

Both of you want the same thing.  Both of you want cryonics procedures to be
performed on a consistent basis in a manner that saves patients well enough
that revival is actually plausible.  Both of you want the service providers
that exist now to be held to their word : to actually provide the services
they promise, with competent, experienced employees and ongoing R&D to
improve the process.

BOTH of you have issues with the current cryonics organizations.  You both
want mostly the same thing, just implemented different ways.

Now, there's been a bit of a snit over things, and both of you are claiming
the other said stuff that the other denies.  Does it matter?

Do you both want to be still arguing this until the moment when you die in
some hospital that doesn't respect cryonics and you rot away from ischemia
while Alcor or CI fights over your remains in court?  Don't you both face a
common enemy far more dangerous than any threat you pose to the other?

--001636c92cd2d931fd049e4bc415

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Message #33472
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 12:38:45 -0700
Subject: Re:Henson reply [Ettinger]
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 3:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> Replying to Keith Henson's message below:
> My point was that an attempted emulation must fail because
> we don't know enough abut the laws of physics to construct a
> realistic algorithm. If you work backwards,
> using an alleged emulation to build a bio brain,
> the result would also be unrealistic.

Bob, I wasn't talking about building a bio brain.

You start with one, infiltrate it with nanomachines/sensors and figure
out what every cell and synapse is doing.

Then you run a simulation in parallel for long enough to be confident
that your simulation is close as you want it.

Next you shut down the biological brain with cold, but keep the
simulation running while mechanically constructing memory in the
biological brain.

After a while, minutes to years, you warm up the biological brain and
synchronize its nerve firing with the simulation.  Then halt the
simulation.  (To avoid laws about one at a time.)

There is no particular reason a person would lose consciousness during
such a seamless uploading and downloading.

Fully reversible uploading of this kind is the only way I would
consider doing it.

(I know, lots of people consider me a reactionary luddite.)

Keith

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Message #33473
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Uniqu...
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:32:44 +0100

This article argues that human evolution was a result of group processes.

dss


http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6022/1286

Science 11 March 2011: 
Vol. 331 no. 6022 pp. 1286-1289 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1199071

Contemporary humans exhibit spectacular biological success derived from cumulative culture and cooperation. The origins of these traits may be related to our ancestral group structure. Because humans lived as foragers for 95% of our species' history, we analyzed co-residence patterns among 32 present-day foraging societies (total n = 5067 individuals, mean experienced band size = 28.2 adults). We found that hunter-gatherers display a unique social structure where (i) either sex may disperse or remain in their natal group, (ii) adult brothers and sisters often co-reside, and (iii) most individuals in residential groups are genetically unrelated. These patterns produce large interaction networks of unrelated adults and suggest that inclusive fitness cannot explain extensive cooperation in hu
 nter-gatherer bands. However, large social networks may help to explain why humans evolved capacities for social learning that resulted in cumulative culture.



David Stodolsky
[email protected]          Skype/Twitter: davidstodolsky

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Message #33474
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:31:13 -0700
From: "Eric" <[email protected]>
Subject: Subject: #33458: Uploading 

Four responses come to mind...
First: I didn't think there was all that much vitriol. And I never
meant to imply anything about your capacity for intellectual
abstraction - quite the contrary!
Second: There was probably more vitriol than there should
have been - sorry about that!
Third: What vitriol was there I didn't mean to be directed at
you personally, but more at this endlessly recurring concept.
It triggers an emotional response in me because it's one of
those life-and-death issues that tend to set off some of us
cryonicists (me). Sometimes it seems that my cryo-buddies are
one of the last glowing embers of rationality in an insane
world and it would seem that such a bunch of life-extensionist
reductionist materialists would be among the very *last* folks
to be sucked into this siren's call. I'm sure I'll get along fine with
their copies, but still...
Fourth: In the (highly unlikely, IMO) chance that copies actually
become possible and this sort of thinking becomes common, it
could be a life-and-death issue for *me*. I wouldn't want my
resurrection-techs in the future to be thinking, "This guy's platform
is too much trouble to fix, and we've had nothing but great
feedback from the duplicates we've been doing, let's just save
ourselves some time and start fresh..."

>Really though, I would like to know why you are so against the
>uploading/downloading concept. What harm is there in bringing new life into
>the world? Even if it is not an "identical  copy. After all, we "piece of
>meat entities" are not identical from one moment to the next ourselves. The
>mind is a dynamic entity. You are not the same person from the night
>before, when you wake up the next morning. Although, you are, "very similar .

I don't mind the tiniest little bit about bringing this new life into
the world - never said I did. It's the disposing of the original
that I object to. And I know I'm a dynamic entity. Being multicellular,
continuity is very important to me, and an awful lot of the changes
are something I'd prefer to do without. With the death of every
little neuron, a little bit of "me" dies - even if I don't notice it at
the time. If I had my druthers, I'd prefer to gain new neurons rather
than lose my old ones. In the meantime, I'm doing everything I can
to slow down these damn changes. You could probably "close the
deal" with me if you were offering little synthetic neurons that would
seek out my own neurons that were about to crap out and replace
them, rather than figuring out elaborate ways to destroy the perfectly
good ones en mass and "replace" the whole shebang.

Take care,
Eric

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