X-Message-Number: 3616
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS: re #3594-#3607
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 23:46:39 -0800 (PST)


Hi again!

I'm starting to run out of time (small t) so I'll try to reply briefly.

To Mr. Platt: My sense of the matter is that neither Coetzee nor Bozzonetti
have actually signed up with any society. Dumping on them whenever they
come out with a speculation may do its bit to convince them that they don't
want to have anything more to do with cryonics or cryonicists.

To Mr. Clark: Animals don't have wheels because they are designed to walk
on terrain which is a great deal less smooth and flat than roads. Bone is
already a light and strong material; even more so because its inner 
structure adapts to the stresses it feels. One major problem with aluminum
is the energy required for its manufacture: both animals and plants take
that into account, too. If you really want to criticize biological design,
it would help if you studied a bit more biology. Moreover, a lot of 
engineering by human beings came from studying the way animals or plants
did it. Even flight, for instance, came from studying the shape of 
the wings of LARGE flying animals (it quickly became clear from such 
study that flapping the wings was only efficient for quite small birds 
(and if we someday build devices of that size for use, not just models,
we may revert to flapping wings).

In the computer world, and after many failed attempts to imitate brains with
ordinary sequential computers, neural nets came into vogue.

In fact, right now there is a branch of biology which studies the 
engineering of living things. Look up Schmidt-Nielsen's books and work
to find out more.

I too am a fan of technology. However, a lot of the common examples put 
forward to "illustrate" the power of human planning compared to evolution
turn out to be comparing apples and oranges. Just because animals do not have
a design which suits OUR purposes it doesn't follow that they are poorly 
adapted to their own style of life --- quite the contrary. And if we could
design our materials to suit OUR purposes rather than use materials from 
living things not built for that, our engineering even now would improve
(the grain of wood and growth of bone has adapted only to specific stresses,
and we shouldn't swear at them as inadequate because they don't suit us.
What's more, a lot of work in materials science goes toward an ability to
design materials for our purposes).

Even aging itself has some sense to it when considered for animals. Most
animals, due to predation and disease, never live long enough to become
old. Why then should they be constructed to last forever? What has happened 
to human beings is that they have learned to control all those things 
which killed off their ancestors at an early age, and now find that they
are no longer adapted to the situation they have brought about. And of 
course, immortalism is the belief that we should use our minds to bring
about the modifications in ourselves to fit that new situation ---
something which after many generations evolution would cause of itself.

And now, as to brains: when you say that we can make nanodevices which 
handle the rearrangement of connections you virtually accept what I was
saying: I said, in the end we might make something which looks very like
a brain, though it is made of different materials. Your nanodevices, of
course, would play the same role as nerve cells; you may have other
nanodevices supporting these, which play the role of glial cells. 

And if there is any biological object that someone interested in uploading
should first try to understand, it is brains and their activity. We need
to do that because we ARE such devices, and to truly upload ourselves
we must understand how we work NOW. In this respect, I find your 
belief that brains use "less efficient" methods such as diffusion 
particularly short-sighted. Right now we simply don't understand how 
brains work in the first place. We know that nerves do send messages to
one another electrically. It's not as  if that was an impossible choice.
Rather than criticize, the first question to ask here is: just WHY are
these messages handled by diffusion of NO (say) rather than electrically?
It is trivial to criticize something you don't understand (and I too have
done that, I'm making a general statement. But to me you look as if 
that is what you're doing).

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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