From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 17:56:02 MST
Billy Brown writes:
> I do, however, think that the few people who actually do research on
> suspension techniques spend all their time concentrating on how brains get
> damaged in the present, which leaves them with very little time to think
> about how they could be repaired in the future. This is entirely
Let me try again. I have a couple of motley colored designer gummi
bears, which I drop into a big beaker of cold water. Nothing dramatic
happens. I now increase the temperature of the water. The little
critters begin to swell and there is some dye diffustion, but they
would still retain their relative geometric relations, and essentially
return to the original shape when dried. I could also compute the
original shape numerically, since this is a smooth transformation. The
exact procedure doesn't matter.
Now I bring the solution to the boil. Soon after I have a homogenous
gelatine solution, all traces about the gummibear's original shape and
coloration erased. Now time stops in the beaker. Freeeeeze. 256 years
later, time resumes, and the system is given advanced (but not
Omega-grade) future intelligences for analysis and reconstruction.
Which information is still present about the shape and distribution of
coloration of the original gummi bears? Would the type of technique
used for reconstruction influence the result a lot?
> appropriate, since the present is what we need to concentrate on now.
> However, it seems to result in an undue level of pessimism over the ultimate
> prospects for repair. To be honest, Charles Platt's reply reminds me a lot
This is not about pessimism at all. You aren't an engineer, are you?
> of the things the cryobiologists like to say about cryonicists - totally
> true from his perspective, but essentially irrelevant from mine.
>
> Nevertheless, I'm willing to take another shot at this if you are. My basic
> points are simply:
>
> 1) The fact that a structure looks completely scrambled tells you almost
> nothing about how hard it would be to figure out what it originally looked
> like. Look at image processing, or cryptography, or archaeology for that
If I use a true random generator (or a pseudorandom generator unknown
to you) to scramble the picture, information is lost. Period. If
enough noise is present, nothing can be said about the original
picture. If the noise is considerable, the information content is
degraded.
If you think that dissipative physical processes are driven by
pseudorandom number generators, you're in for a nasty surprise.
> matter. That doesn't mean that success is guaranteed in every case, but
> experience shows that it is always possible to deduce a lot more than a
> non-specialist would expect. Unfortunately, computational brain
You are surely aware that the position you question are held by the
only specialists in the matter there are? There are no better ones
yet. What are your credentials in the matter? Programmer, aren't you?
> reconstruction is a specialty that doesn't exist yet, so we can't just ask
> an expert about it.
So we assume a best case as default. No further research needs to be
done, because the information Is Still In There, Somehow.
Sorry, I don't buy it.
> 2) Every repair scheme I've ever heard of relies on massive computing power
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> and very limited intelligence. This is totally unrealistic. We should
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This sentence makes no sense. It is also pure fabrication.
> expect both the computing power and the intelligence of possible repair
> technologies to increase steadily over time, and it is not at all clear what
> the ultimate limits might be. IOW, we should ask whether a team of
The ultimate limits are very clear indeed: the information content
present in the specimen. We're not interested in somebody a bit like a
patient, so plausible substituions do not count.
> scientists with unlimited time and funding could reconstruct the state of
> cell X, not whether we can see how to write a program to do the job.
>
> 3) Many people seem to think that there is no point in signing up for
> suspension, because they will never actually get frozen. This is simply
I don't see many problems in getting frozen, a number of precautions
assuming. I see a lot more problems in staying frozen, mostly because
of above attitudes. "What, me worry?" hits too close to the mark for
comfort.
> nonsense. Most cryonicists do in fact end up being suspended when they die.
> So, people shouldn't use this as an excuse for dismissing cryonics - if you
Nobody is dismissing anything. You once again missed what this is all about.
> don't think it will work, argue that it won't work. (Mind you, the system
> could be a lot better than it is if the money was there, but that is a
> different issue).
>
> Billy Brown
> bbrown@transcient.com
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