X-Message-Number: 3324
From:   (Anders Sandberg)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Rebuilding brains
Date: 21 Oct 1994 09:49:45 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <>

 wrote:

>A while ago Robert Ettinger wrote:
>
>>There are many reasons for this long term optimism, but the simplest
>>bottom line is that I believe the universe is strictly deterministic.
>>This means that no information is ever lost, and with enough time,
>>wealth, and incentive any previous structure can be repaired or rebuilt.
>
>A close friend of mine suffered a massive stoke resulting in the destruction
>of most of his left hemisphere :( Can you forsee any way to rebuild such a
>critical structure together with its unique contents?

I think this is a *very* hard problem, since the information has by now
dissipated quite a bit. Plain nanotechnology won't solve this, we need
more than the ability to just rebuild tissue to create the correct neural
connections. The large-scale structure ought to be possible to restore
by comparing it to the right hemisphere, other known left hemispheres and
the genetic pattern of your friend. From this a quite accurate replica 
could be built. However, for the fine structure this certainly isn't enough.

One possibility, described by Hans Moravec in "Mind Children" is to 
use the extreme computing power of the future to calculate history
backwards, always making sure it will fit known data. This could be used to
upload simulate persons, which would correspond as close as possible to
the originals. I doubt the feasibility of this, but maybe some limited
version which just tried to simulate your friend and his interactions
with the world, fitting it to known data might be workable. It will still
not be very complete, just an approximation.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg			 	  	     Towards Ascension!
   http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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