X-Message-Number: 13547
From: 
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 10:16:43 EDT
Subject: Re: to M. Perry about uploading

Dans un courrier dat  du 12/04/00 11:02:51 Paris, Madrid (Heure d' t ), 
 a  crit :

<< 
 Unfortunately, uploading cannot be an "option" because *we don't have
 it*--not yet. When we do, it might indeed be preferable. But I don't see us
 getting it any time soon. Freezing, or some sort of physical preservation,
 is what we are stuck with for now, and we have to work with that limitation.
 
 Mike Perry.
  >>

Uploading asks for a "brain reader", a system able to scan a 3-D object
the size of the brain down to macromolecular level. This may be done in
two steps:
One giving a map at the neuron conection scale, near 0.1 micrometer
and another looking a dendrite buttons (neuron links). Unfortunately, these
are frail structure and get dissolved fast. We need a way to detect the nature
and position of decay products,so that the original element may be deduced.
This will imply a scale near ten nanometer.

The first system is in the capability range of magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) by polarized helium 3.
The second is only in the reach of X-ray scanning.

Neither, the first or the second system can work at that precision level if 
the
"sample" is not solid. This can't work on a living brain, only a frozen one.
Note: classical MRI works only on liquids, on the contrary, the polarized
helium 3 version accept solid objects.
The X-rays at the requested intensity would "cook"  any sample if a quantum
non demolition system was not implemented.

With these two systems, brain scanning is a technological possibility. More:
it works on frozen brains and is not destructive. It is THE way out of
cryonics state as it is practized now. If someday nanotechnology may
repair bodies, well, this will be a secon exit door. Using the first will not
compromise the second.

The question is not cryonics or uploading, it is cryonics and what after?
Get out fast with uploading or or wait for the far away promise of nanotech?

For me, I choose the fist option, even if laws forbid to link the uploaded
brain to a clone of the original body and I get back as a bat or a lizard.

Yvan_Bozzonetti.

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