X-Message-Number: 31704
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 23:12:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: david pizer <>
Subject: RE: Cryonet post - Time Travel


My friend R. sent me some ideas on the subject of time travel (backwards) that I
would like to share.  
 
R. said:
  
> David-
> This is an awesome idea.
> How close to Perry's Forever For All vision
> would (could) this take us?


David's Reply:

Perry's idea, as I understand it, is that there are other universes and there 
are so many of them that there is bound to be another one just like ours 
somewhere and in that one that is just like this one, there is a person living 
that is just like you, (and one that is just like me and one that is just like 
every person in this universe), and that person that is just like you is a 
duplicate of you, and a duplicate of you is you, therefore you are surviving in 
that other universe.  


I don't buy that.  A duplicate may be you, but are there other universes just 
like ours?  If so, in those other universes are they people exactly like the 
people in this universe?  I don't see any reason to believe that even if there 
were an infinite number of other universes out there somewhere, that that has to
be one just like this one.  


My idea is that we create brains that are exactly like the brains of people that
have lived in THIS universe at a point in time (best if we create a brain like 
theirs was just before they died so that there is the maximum amount of 
information available).  We are doing all this in the one universe we know does 
exist.


Those brains we copy in the computer are structured exactly like the brains of 
each and every person who has ever lived at each point in time that they did 
exist.  So when we copy them we then have duplicated the minds of the person who
did exist.


We get to know the structure of these brains by figuring out what caused each 
effect in the universe and working backwards.  We can start anywhere in time 
that we have all the data and work back to the beginning of the Human Race.  
This does not rely on there having to be another universe that may or may not 
exist somewhere outside this universe, and even if other universes do exist 
there could be an infinite amount of them and still not one just like ours.


It only relies on computers that we can build some day in the future, and that 
there being a cause for every effect.  I think these are both truths in 
principle that we know are true now.

Here is how it plays out the differences between Dr. Perry's and My ideas:
1. They may both work to save loved ones.
2. They may both not work?
3. One may work and the other may not?


I like my idea because it is based on engineering work that could be done in 
principle, and does not require any additional unknown (for now) universes to 
exist that may or may not exist and does not require those universes, if they 
did exist, to have people exactly like each of us in them.
  
R also said: 
> I'm uncomfortable on one point: speed of the
> simulation.  Intuitively I'm thinking that the
> computer system creating the simulation must operate faster
> than time is progressing forward, otherwise we'd
> be inexorably drawn into the future, because the
> simulation would have to account for the progression of time
> forward as it's recreating the past?


David:  I don't see this as a problem since time goes on all right, but the time
in the computer (going backwards) is not real time that we live in, but 
simulated time for just working out a problem.  So in 10 years from the start 
date of the project, the computer might have duplicated the brains of every one 
that existed 10 years before the project was started (or 20 years from the 
current date if it takes one year of computer work to recreate one year before 
the start of the project).  I don't see that as a problem. It just means that 10
years after the start of the project you can rescue someone who died 10 years 
before the project started.  If I am immortal in the future (as people will be) 
and I can bring back someone who died 20 years ago at that time, of 1,000 years 
ago, that's OK.


Think of yourself playing a movie backwards in current time.  As real time goes 
on you look further back into the past.  So you discover something that happened
20 years ago an hour after you started.  Allt his means is that we will have to
waid a certain amount of time (from the start of the project) until we can 
rescure people.  When we reanimate them in our time, the change is going to be 
relative to them not to us.  Can they handle this?  What if you woke up 500 
years in the future?  Would that be a good thing or bad thing?


What if you started to work to bring Alexander the Great back now.  So in a 1000
years you have worked back to create an exact duplicate of his brain.  So he 
wakes up way in the future?  

Immortal people will need long term projects to keep them from getting bored.

R said: 
> How did you come up with this!


David: It just came to me as I was thinking about it.  It came in a burst of 
thought about 2 or 3 minutes long?

Might be the way we do it someday?
Might be stupid?
We won't know for a while.

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