X-Message-Number: 3981
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #3968 - #3977
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 22:54:35 -0800 (PST)


Hi!

To Ralph Merkle: For someone who believes that no work on better means of
preservation is needed, you seem remarkably leery of the damage which present
suspension techniques may cause. I don't claim to know just what techniques
will be used; but I will point out a few things. First, embryonic neural
tissue is much more durable under freezing than that from adults. This 
suggests to me that some relatively simple biotech fixes might bring us
a long way. 

Second, if we want to revive someone by ANY means, then the
information which constitutes their memories must survive. In some cases (we
really don't know this, which is why I want to see much more research NOW)
cracking may be quite sufficient to destroy those memories: nanotechnology
of your kind or not. Furthermore, if we focus only on information, a great
deal of disruption can occur without loss of information. This can mean that
even after the temperature has been raised significantly (but hardly to normal
body temperature) that information will remain.

Besides, it remains open to us to design biological repair means which use
a different solvent. Simply altering the genome of viruses, which is done
a lot now, is only a start. And biotech does remain well in advance of 
other varieties of nanotechnology.

I will also say that after my suspension I want to be revived, and don't
care at all about the exact means used. But I do think that biotechnology
seems to be too much forgotten here.

(and also: as an intelligent man, here is something you might think about.
How did it come about that life forms did not develop nanodevices further
than the complex chemical reactions with enzymes etc which they use?
Remember that enzymes themselves act as tiny machines. This is a question,
not an answer. And please don't just give me a line about how inadequate
life forms are. That's not an explanation, it is a refusal).

To Robin: Sorry, but I don't subscribe to EXTROPHY. If you want to continue
this discussion, then please send the relevant article to me (1037 S.
Colonel Way, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019-2172). If you don't, then don't. And
if you give me the same answer next time, I shall simply answer that I
solved all of your questions and decisively countered your arguments in 
a 300 page tome which I haven't bothered to publish.

To Mr. Clark: No, we do not think in symbols. We learn to use them, but
that isn't the same thing. A neural net, when trained, will react to 
particular events in special ways. It is not operating with symbols, any
more than a can opener is operating with symbols. The same is true of 
human beings, except that they are far more elaborate than any current
neural net. They are even elaborate enough to USE symbols!

In fact, most things in the world do not think in symbols when and if they
ever think. They are reacting, just as water boils when heat is applied.
Those reactions can become very complex indeed, as we can see when we look
around us at other people. 

I suspect that this is a key point which underlies our discussion. I hope
I have explained it well enough. If we had only symbols, we would inevitably
find ourselves in an infinite regress. On my side, I find it hard to see
how you can think that water boiling is doing so in response to symbols...
(unless you have a very weird notion of what is a symbol). 

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas

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