X-Message-Number: 1771
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: cryonics: #1762-#1766
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 16:50:13 PST

To Michael O'Neal:

As someone who has been studying the biomedical side of "uploading" I'll have
to say that reading out someone's memories needs much more than powerful
computers. It needs an understanding of how our memory works in the first
place, which at present we have not got.

Depending on the results of that understanding (yes, I believe that we will
someday achieve it!) it may or may not be easy to do the uploading. Our 
memories are probably highly distributed, and have no more obvious correspond-
ence to their content than do the memories in a Neural Net device. This
means that we would need to devise a technology which could read off every-
thing neuron by neuron. Again, I believe that this can be done, but again it
will require more than just an understanding of how to make "intelligent"
computers (whatever intelligence really means here).

It looks to me like the speaker you describe believes that the computer issues
are the only ones that need solution. I'm saying that's not so... not that
solving these computer issues would not be a big achievement in itself, but
it will take some other big achievements, too.

I've decided to review a recent book (actually not by a computer scientist but
by a philosopher) which falls into a similar hole. That would be for CRYONICS.
It seems to me to be a pity that this speaker did not mention cryonics at all,
especially since computer people are a strong minority among cryonicists. 

I don't know your personal beliefs on these issues at all and do NOT mean 
this comment to be any kind of criticism of them. I'm discussing the ideas
you report to have been brought out by someone else. And yes, the report is
quite interesting in its way. But I do have a powerful sense of deja vu. I too
believe we can, if we choose, eventually solve all of these problems; but they
are far deeper than any single scientific discipline can tell us, and with what
little we know now it seems unreasonable to make very firm predictions about
when they will be solved.

		Best, and a long long life,
			Thomas

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