X-Message-Number: 33038
References: <>
From: Gerald Monroe <>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2010 06:30:14 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33036 - #33037

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Perry : for the repair task to ever complete it has to happen faster than
cosmic rays damage what you are working on.  There is such a thing as "too
slow".  Also, how could you test or validate a process that takes a century?

  Even if you could construct "free floating" nanomachines capable of
operating while immersed in liquid nitrogen, how would you get the data out
of them?  You'll need a gigantic computer with enough memory to store a
compressed form of an atomic map of every single atom.  (well, you probably
would run compression filters at the very start of the process on the
incoming data, but it would still need ridiculous amounts of memory)
Nanobots working alone probably cannot have enough intelligence to make
meaningful repairs within the laws of physics.  And THIS law is a basic
assumption : that you cannot make a computing element out of anything
smaller than clusters of a few atoms each)

 When I say "gigantic", I mean in capabilities compared to the current state
of the art.   With molecular circuitry, which you would have the ability to
create by definition if you had molecular manufacturing, the computer might
fit in a closet - but it would need to be supplied with many watts of
cooling and power.  (unless you could somehow make "reversible computing"
work but that only works with limited types of algorithms)

Anyways, here's the "base assumption" that a working device might resemble.
 It's how I visualize it, I'm aware there's probably many other ways that
might work better.  The machine's a flat plate, about the size of two human
heads and a few centimeters thick.  It's probably all the same color on the
outside because it's entirely composed of identical repeating blocks of
nanomachinery.  On the edges there are all sorts of data and power and
coolant connections.  At the molecular level the device is composed of many
many trillions of nanoscale parts that can remove chunks of tissue a few
atoms at a time.  The patient is still at the same temperature they were
stored at, but the machine might operate at higher temperatures internally.

Internally the machine can analyze these chunks to determine exactly which
atoms are in each and then the machine then pipes the along along a highway
of molecular conveyer belts to the other side where it reassembles the brain
a chunk at a time.  It also reports to the control computer a compressed
version of the atomic structures it discovers.  Software determines from
analyzing the orientations and densities of the proteins and signalling
molecules the 'state' of each synapse in the brain.  It then corrects the
damage by substituting in to the molecular 'printing pattern' the templates
for cells that we know from experimentation are "known good", except that
these cells will have the consensus DNA sequence of the original patient and
the synaptic states of the original patient.  These cells will have to
survive thawing, so they would probably be reinforced or have temporary
support nanomachinery that would mostly remove itself after you warm up the
brain and have it running again.  You could also insert "boot up code" into
the genomes of each neuron that would cause certain changes to be made after
warming, to further put the neurons closer to the original condition they
were in when the person was alive.

The computational algorithm you would need to do this process would probably
perform many complex decisions that require knowledge of large sections of
the brain's structure.  Repairing a crack, for instance - said crack would
cleave many axons and require some kind of simulation involving billions of
atoms to calculate what the original structure prior to freezing was.  No
way a bot composed of a few hundred thousand atoms and stiff from low
temperature could figure out how to correctly fix a crack, unless there are
properties of matter we are unaware of.  Not to mention - how would the bot
eliminate the waste products it would produce?  Any energy-using device must
emit waste of higher entropy than the starting materials.  Not a good idea
to poop out waste while floating in the middle of a brain you are trying to
fix, whether that waste is heat or chemicals.

 This process, in order to create a working brain that is not afflicted by
all the biochemical changes caused by death, will have to make many many
changes.  Some information will be lost.  For ethical reasons, we could do
the process in 2 passes through this machine (the first pass gets the atomic
map but just creates the brain again like it was and the second rebuilds
everything with healthy neurons).   We could also store a copy of how the
brain was originally so that as technology advances more information could
be extracted from it.

I think the most accurate revivals could be done by using the synaptic
mappings to create emulated minds that run on molecular computing hardware
at millions of times faster than current human thought.  I would guess that
if you could even poorly copy a few scientists this way, they could solve
the more complex problems very well with a million years of time to consider
the problem for every year on earth.  These super-intelligent beings would
probably be able to fully extract nearly all of the information contained in
an atomic map of a person's brain, and make a version of the person
indistinguishable from the original.

Regarding cost - building a single instances of one of these machines would
be cheap.  While an end use device like this might be too specialized to
self replicate, molecular manufacturing equipment will be able to copy
itself, making additional copies cost very little.    All the cost is in
building copy number 1.

This is also why it probably won't matter much for those rich folks
considering cryonics whether their wealth is kept in trust to be 'used only
for them' or 'diluted' among all of the patients.  It's also hard to imagine
how standard investments would hold their value in a world that has
molecular manufacturing.

This is also why putting the majority of the funds into the Patient Care
Trust for keeping the patients frozen makes the most sense.  In a century
from now, when molecular manufacturing is available and it is obvious that
repair of cryonically frozen humans is practical, there would be enormous
pressure to develop the technology.  All those billions of people living
then would want medical care that could bring them back no matter what.
 With any luck, after developing the tech for common use they would use it
on those dusty old cryostats containing their sloppily frozen ancestors.
 (by the standards of a century from now)

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