X-Message-Number: 3569
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS: re: identity of connections in brains
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 1995 17:51:24 -0800 (PST)




Hi!



This is a (very delayed) response to Mike Darwin's posting about the nonidentity
of identical twins. As I recall, I doubted that the nerve connections and 
distribution would be identical in twins; and (although I knew some of the 
things Mike mentioned) he filled out that information a lot with things I 
didn't know. So I thank him.

If, of course, we are to be rigidly empirical about it, we should wait until
brain maps have actually been done. But for the present, what we have seems 
good enough until or if we somehow stumble on a reason to question it.

And by the way, if our brain maps are NOT identical, then it may prove
possible to ultimately recreate a copy, but one person's memories could not
easily be read into another person ... even someone genetically identical.
Furthermore, any attempt to store someone on a computer would also have to
store the nerve map too. (Remember that if anything we work like neural nets
do, though our precise design and operation isn't yet worked out: and if
the connections are different between people, then it would be as if my
memories were kept in my own special language individual to me, and no one
else's brain could interpret them). And to further explicate these
statements, they also mean that we could not simply be stored in a 
computer and then loaded into the body of a clone. A VERY advanced 
nanotechnology might so control growth of a brain that it would match the
connections of the one in storage, but that's quite far away.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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