X-Message-Number: 15149 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 06:26:52 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: 2 more comments, current and old Hi everyone! The piece by Mark Plus is a very interesting antidote to people going on about how the rate of progress has increased. I am not so sure that it really represents what is going on, but I'd also say that whatever may be the rate of progress, and how it is to be measured, it's far from clear that we're going much faster than before. As for current progress, I'd look more at changes in the underdeveloped world (and countries which many of us remember as underdeveloped but which now are not) than at changes in the industrialized center. Work on agriculture, for instance, has done a lot to provide more food for people than before .... not in the developed world, where there was no scarcity, but in the underdeveloped areas such as India. The really central changes are going on elsewhere. As for medical advances, the piece Mark Plus reprints basically underlines a fundamental problem that most doctors have utterly failed to address: it's been clear now for at least 30 years that further significant increases in lifespan can only be obtained by working against the phenomena which cause AGING. Any other work basically does small things on the margin. How long societies will take to realize that and change where they center their medical research I don't really know, but that's where they'll have to direct their attention. And to the extent that a society does NOT do that, it will fall behind. Finally, I got to read Mike Perry's answer to my short reply to him. This was back towards the end of November (27th, I think). Basically he argues that speed does not matter ie. if we make a machine which imitates me, or Bob Ettinger, or anyone reading this, it won't matter at all that it works far more slowly that I, Bob Ettinger, or the readers work. This should be clearly fallacious. First, if we put such a machine in the real world, it simply won't survive very long. The speed with which we operate may not necessarily be best, but to work far more slowly is a guarantee to mishaps which will kill us. If, on the other hand, we take such a slow version of us and have it live in a universe which is similarly slowed down, we escape one problem only by putting ourselves in the midst of another: where does this ENTIRE SLOWED UNIVERSE come from, and how do we create it? For that matter, just what is the point of doing so? We want a computer version of ourselves which runs at least as fast, not one what can survive only in an artificial universe which we make ourselves. For that matter, Mike's original answer to my comment didn't really explain even how to make a computer version (which would naturally fulfil the demands of Turing). After all, if I read him right, the only thing he's doing is saying: OK, I don't know if making a human "computer" must necessarily do things Turing's computer cannot, so I'll suggest instead that we make an entire universe containing that human "computer". Or to put it more directly, if I can't solve one complex problem, I can at least put it inside another even more complex problem. In what way is the entire universe imitatable by a Turing machine? For that matter, even if it were, does it follow that parts of it are also? Lots of assumptions here, based on no more than a belief in the merits of an older theory about computers. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15149