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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15262