X-Message-Number: 19678 Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 09:19:37 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #19672 - #19676 About brain readers and storage on CDs: To read brains AND understand what you have read requires much more knowledge of how brains work than we now have. It's also true that storage would take much more knowledge. Again, if the purpose of a brain reader is to simply give a copy of someone's brain, not only the appearance under one or another form of light or radiation, but also the chemistry would have to be worked out and stored IN DETAIL. This would take much more than the capacity of current CDs because, after all, the copy will in a sense contain far more information than would really be needed to recreate the person --- except for the small problem that we do not presently know just what part of the information in the copy is needed and what part is not. We won't have those abilities without a great deal more research (and the technology involved in doing it at a finer scale than we now can). As a way of preserving oneself as in cryonics, it just doesn't look like a successful strategy for anyone with a currently normal lifespan. I actually believe that SOMEDAY we will come to have that necessary knowledge, and with it the ability to do such things as those described. But right now that knowledge and ability does not exist, and anyone looking at brains in seriousness would agree. And yes, someday such methods will substitute for those we now use ... though knowing human beings, such a method might well still be called "cryonics". Best wishes and long long life to all who read this, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19678