X-Message-Number: 15262
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 07:24:25 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: more on computers and brains

Once more on revivals:

Fundamentally my problem with even a philosophical notion that someday
we might be revived in a single computer is that it bears no relation
to the computing problems we'd have to solve to revive someone, say, in
100 years. Or for that matter in any practical time. (It may never 
become possible in REALITY as distinct from philosophy because by the
time the universe has slowed down enough, our computers also would
have slowed down ... they would have to be built of electrons and 
positrons, or possibly black holes (which would eventually decay
themselves)). 

Even for cognitive problems (which take in only a subset of what
our brains do, and cannot be separated so easily from the other
work of our brains) we have to consider parallel machines. And because
time is not incidental but ESSENTIAL, Turing's machines of any kind
simply don't fit the problem. As I've already said, in the universe
we presently live in, many things go on at the same time, and cannot
be easily split into different events which can be computed in some
standard order (or nonstandard order, for that matter). 

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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