X-Message-Number: 21258 Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 00:06:37 +0100 From: Henri Kluytmans <> Subject: Artificial MNT replacements Thomas Donaldson wrote : >My central problem deals with their present ABSENCE. If you, >or Freitas, or Drexler actually makes a respirocyte But isn't this a rather strange demand, you knew from the start of this debate that we were talking about devices that should be theoretically possible. That we cannot make them yet is therefore not a valid objection. You will have to give a valid scientific argument against the possibility of these devices or the possibility of MNT technology. But I wonder, why is Mr Donaldson a cryonist ? Because in cryonics too, a working demonstration is still absent! The respirocytes are just an example of a detailed exploratory design of a device that can theoretically be produced with a technology that should be scientifically possible. And what I want to make clear is that it looks that they should be able to do much better than current biological devices. Thomas Donaldson doubts the use of these MNT produced artificial red blood cell replacements. And I have my doubts too! But because of different reasons. In stead of replacing separate functions of the human body with better performing artificial replacements, why not replace the whole body at once. With advanced technology like MNT we could transfer the brain to a much better completely robotic body. And I don't mean a robotic body like the Borg in the Star Trek series, but an artificial body just as intricate as a biological one. And if wanted, this artificial body could be made to look indistinguishable from a natural biological body at the outside. In short, IMO the whole biological body will become outdated. But why not just take the last step too, (and as Mr. Donaldson suggested,) improve our thinking abilities, by replacing the brain with an artificial one. Exploratory designs of MNT produced computing devices seem to indicate an improvement of many orders of magnitude over "biological computing devices". Probably Mr Donaldson will object against comparing the brain to a "computing device". Therefore I shall rephrase that last sentence into : MNT artificial neural networks should be able to perform thousands, maybe millions of times faster than comparable biological neural networks. However if we could make a brain based on MNT artificial neural networks it will be able to run much too fast for interacting with real world in an acceptable way. In the real world everything will seem to be working much too slow, and it will be too boring to have to wait all the time for physical actions to unfold. (Unless, you slow your brain back down to current speed.) So for fast artificial brains we can expect the preferred environment to "interact" in, will be a virtual reality. However, it would be more efficient to do without a virtual reality all together, but that would require a redesign of the human brain at higher levels. Individuals that decide to redesign their brains into more efficient one's that don't need VR and should be able to outcompete the other ones. And I must say, I'm a little afraid about this last step too... Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21258