From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 00:20:59 MST
I don't have much time for this, so I have to be selective/brief. Also
this is starting to get past the point of diminishing returns.
Billy Brown writes:
[...]
> Now, I think that the case of cryopreservation is a lot closer to my example
> than yours. Typical slides of preserved tissue show a bewildering jumble of
> mixed-up parts, not a homogeneous sludge. In this kind of situation the
You'll never see a homogenous sludge because the system has not been
perfectly homogenized (I don't know why you did expect that), and also
because there is autoassembly. You can be looking at pure artefacts,
yet thinking you're looking at native structure. This can be very
deceptful. As I said, things look just great on vanilla light
micrographs.
> I'm a software engineer - and yes, that is a very different thing than being
> a programmer. But that's another thread.
I urge you to accept my word for it that software people believe in an
orderly world. Too orderly world. Way too orderly world. It is both
because of the self selected personality style and because of the
training. Heck, I've been noticing some of it myself. You need to take
that intrinsic bias into account when you look at things.
> > If I use a true random generator (or a pseudorandom generator unknown
> > to you) to scramble the picture, information is lost. Period.
>
> No kidding. I've said that several times myself. There's no need to keep
> beating a dead horse.
I think it just moved a bit. There! It's just pretending.
> > 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?
>
> Ah, the argument from authority. Does this mean you don't have actual data
> on hand?
If you ask me whether I'll believe Merkle or Fahy when it comes to
interpreting electron micrographs, I will hesitate about 250
ms. (About as long as it takes me to understand the question). Call it
blind belief in authority, if you must.
Also, I think I have a pretty good intuition for physical processes. I
can think on my own. I think.
> There are no specialists on brain reconstruction. Neurobiology,
> conventional medicine and cryopreservation are all only tangentially
> related. Asking a specialist in one of these fields about reconstruction
> techniques is like asking a paint-and-canvas artist about digital image
> processing. Heck, most 'experts' still seem to think that clinical death
> and the capacity for spontaneous recovery are meaningful yardsticks here.
1) I am usually not known for being conservative
2) on this list I arguably know more about the matter than anybody
else
I also intend to find out a lot more in the years to come.
> The only group that even tries to understand the real situation are the few
> pioneers who do cryopreservation research for the cryonics organizations,
> and they haven't had the time, funding or manpower to create the kind of
> well-supported body of experience that would allow them to become a real
> specialty. Besides, the last I heard they were cautiously optimistic except
> when they're asking for money.
They wouldn't be asking for money if they didn't want to find out more
about what is going on. Otherwise I'm not sure about the optimism bit,
with the exception of the kidney cryopreservation (that one might
actually work, albeit probably not economical by the time it is
perfected).
> Meanwhile, the people whose opinions I most respect in this regard
> unanimously hold the same position I do. The only difference between my
> claim and the comments that Drexler, Merkle et. al. make is that I left out
> the minimal qualifiers that scientists habitually attach to any statement of
> fact.
Fine, you have your authorities, I have mine.
> > So we assume a best case as default. No further research needs to be
> > done, because the information Is Still In There, Somehow.
>
> No, we take past experience as our guide. Finding ways to computationally
> unscramble mangled structures is so common that we should expect it to
> happen as a matter of course whenever someone decides to devote some real
> effort to any given problem. If you don't think it can be done in this
> particular case, you need to actually show that the necessary information
> does not exist.
Once again, in the topsy-turvy world of cryonics the bringer of bad
news bears the burden of proof. Don't expect me to waste a lot of my
time on it.
> Which brings me back to the point you've been ignoring. The fact that a
> structure 'appears' scrambled says nothing about its actual information
> content. The fact that cremation and long-term decomposition cause
Nothing indeed. It's all just a PRNG, deep down below. Once you know
the algorithm, you can reverse it. In a vision, St. Margolus told me
that, while cherubs Fredkin and Toffioli sang a sweet duet above.
> irreversible damage is easy to demonstrate, but the same is not true of less
> severe insults that leave substantial amounts of structure intact. So, do
> you have any actual experimental evidence regarding the degree of
> information loss caused by various forms of trauma? Failing that, do you
> have a good logical argument for believing that the information loss is
> catastrophic?
You'll have your evidence, hopefully in form of a few
publications. Once again, don't expect me to waste significant amounts
of my time pounding the message home. I do not care enough to try to
change your mind.
> You need to calm down and start actually reading me before you reply. Look
> at Drexler's scenario in Engines of Creation for a typical example of what
> I'm talking about. You've got a bazillion MIPS of computing power being
> used to run something that sounds like a mating between a molecular CAD
> program and an expert system. I understand why he didn't want to spend
> another 50 pages getting the reader fully up to speed on what is really
> possible, but his brief references to engineering AI go right past most
> people without ever making an impression.
I have been telling you all the time that for the purposes of
argumentation you can assume to have access to perfect
technology. Behold, yon dead horse, in a perfect illustration of
reversiblity, just rose and is galloping away as briskly as ever.
D e s t r u c t i o n o f i n f o r m a t i o n. N o O m e g a.
No other constraints. This are the assumptions I'm operating on.
Did I already mention I was a big pessimist?
> Certainly, there are people around who know better. Drexler is one of them,
> and so are most of the other big names in nanotech. But most people (even a
> lot of extropian and transhumanist types) are still thinking in terms of a
> program that shuffles atoms using algorithms that any good programmer could
> implement.
Not this transhumanist type.
> That is not even remotely realistic. What they should be imagining is
> something more like the FBI working over an especially important crime
> scene, only with even more layers of specialized knowledge and processing.
> The degree of expertise that can be applied to solving each particular
> sub-problem (membrane reassembly, oxidation reversal, etc.) will grow
> steadily over time, and it is difficult to say exactly where it will reach
> its limits.
It will be reaching their limits asymptotically when the amount of
extractable information about the original structure still contained
in the artefact has been extracted. I hope this was clear enough.
> What on Earth does an argument about the quality of current suspensions have
> to do with the long-term stability of cryonics organizations?
Nothing. However, an argument about attitudes about the quality of
current suspensions on long-term stability of cryonics organizations
does quite a lot.
> Actually, if you look back on this thread, you'll find that my original
> remarks were directed against a post that argued this very point -
> retroman@turbont.net was claiming that the odds of not getting suspended at
> all were high enough to constitute a valid reason for not bothering to sign
> up.
That's his personal calculus. If there was a 5-10% chance of being
successfully suspended and ~100% chance of cryonics to work in
principle I would have mailed my signup paperwork long time ago.
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