From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 22 2000 - 07:42:42 MST
Hal Finney wrote:
>I think the problem with the cryptographic analogy is that cryptographic
>transformations are, by design, reversible. All the information in
>the plaintext is intentionally preserved, in scrambled form, in the
>ciphertext. ...
>However, chemical reactions are biased in the direction of increasing
>entropy. The body's metabolic reactions have to constantly fight
>this trend in order to maintain order. ... Increase of entropy means
>loss of information. The unanswered question is whether this information
>is sufficient to obliterate personality, memory, ...
>This was my objection to the Ralph Merkle essay mentioned ...
I'm not sure this is coherent. Physics and chemistry are reversible.
I don't see the difference between saying "all the atoms are still there,
but we lost info about which was where", and "all the plaintext is there,
but it is scrambled."
>other people who have actually looked at frozen brains, including Eugene
>and cryonics "godfather" Mike Darwin, seem to have a more pessimistic view.
It is a bad sign for cryonics, the worst that I know, that such pictures
are not available on the web for us all to browse. It makes one suspect
they are hiding something.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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