X-Message-Number: 4409 Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 14:59:18 +0200 (MET DST) From: Eugen Leitl <> Subject: mea culpa Dear co-cryonicists, I have to apologize. I have been told by Mr. Kevin Q Brown in perfectly civil but not uncertain terms that the subject of uploading, though perfectly fascinating on its own, has very little relevance (and interest) to the readers of this list. Moreover, since many subscribers are caught in the web of Compu$erve, they have to pay horrible fees for their access to Internet. I did not know this. I apologize and will in future never post on anything having but firm links to the mainstream. This is the last follow-up. Discussion will we swapped out to private emails or delayed until the installation of pure uploading mailing list which is purported to go off ground in some 1-2 months according to Join us there to hear more ravings. A pointer will be forthcoming. Charles Platt writes: > Wrong question. The real question I think is, "what has bloody uploading > got to do with cryonics?" then elucidates his considerable efforts (why, he has practically initiated the movement), says uploading will not become reality until next 50 (yes, actually I would say about twice that long) years, in short uploading will save no lives today, hence ROI over short time won't pay, so don't split forces. This all is perfectly true of course. Yet consider: - since uploading will not become a viable option within lifetime of everybody around, uploaders are prime candidates for signing up. I will certainly sign up once I'm out of university and my finances are settled. I am also helping to spread the understanding of cryonics in my immediate vicinity. - uploading needs vitrified tissue with minimum information lossage due to postmortem deterioration and freezing artefacts. Destructive force microscope scans are prime tools to understand what's happening on micro to nano scale and thus will help to optimize the freezing process, which, I think, should be of interest to any mainstreamer. - it is perfectly clear that however fantastic progresses the cryoperfusion/vitrification will be, freezing damage is much too great to allow restoration of original tissue without action of hypothetical nanotechnology. Let me tell in no uncertain terms that Drexler's designs are more than fantastic. I've read an early draft of "Nanosystems" and purchased the book lately. He has improved upon the draft, but not by far. His maths is sound but many of his assumptions are invalid. Don't be deceived that I speak from my view as organic chemist here, I see the enormous potential of diamondoid generic assemblers. And I see in what respects their constrained chemistry differs from the one I learned at the university. But. If one can do them at all: - they will be much bigger than envisioned - they will be slower in action and reproduction - they will make much more errors - they will be much dumber - they would be dangerous as hell to use, I'd rather wield a nuke - uploading may interest fresh young minds sufficiently to join the movement. Currently, cryonics concentrates on pure preservation. This is not science, this is cemetary. The reasons are obvious: lack of funding. But perspectives remain gloomy. Then he wrote: > There is a lot of work to be done in cryonics before it will become > remotely reliable. Research, fund raising, public relations, and signups > are the obvious areas that come to mind. When you remember how few people Agreed. Money and PR are the constraints here. Money we might get. PR will be tough. Real tough. Thanks for your valuable and constructive comment. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Donaldson wrote: > > To Mr. Eugen Leitl: > > I find it paradoxical that you dismiss what I said about brains on the grounds > that it is unproven (it isn't even the result of MY work, I was describing I wasn't attacking you personally. In the scientific community little is proposed without heavy evidence. (Outside of the lab walls, that is ;). I merely said that it was not very probable to assume pure binary synapse coding. Hell, if the dynamic modulation range of a single synapse is exceeded, sprouting a new one might increase it. I am not a neuroscientist. I am a (bio)chemist. I do not know. > the opinions of others) and then proceed to discuss first how we can emulate > brains in elaborate NN machines and second how we can read off their contents > ... all of which you yourself state are not available at present (ie. unproven). I thought it was obvious that it was more like blueskyeing/flights of fancy. Above methodology does not violate any basic physical laws. Other guys seem to be able to sell books and build industries on the fundament of their cloud castles. (I'm not using names here, mark.) > I have raised the issue of connectivity (neurobiological) before. It may make > it hard for EXISTING neural net computers to emulate brains. There are not any neural net computers worth to be spoken of in existance. Even the most elaborate one I know of, the SNI's Synapse2 architecture has very limited power and flexibility. I've been at the demo and seen the specs. I was speaking of maspar wafer scale integrated neuroaccelerators yet to come. Connectionist AI. > I will also say, about just how we might wish to be stored as blocks of > information, that I brought up the question of the longevity of such storage > precisely because it is far safer to depend on something which you know will > last 1000 years than to depend on something which must be copied (copying also A human is soft and easy to kill. The process of living results in being restricted to one single area of spacetime, while being subject to different unfriendly influences. If I was to live 1 kyr I would never cross the street, never use any car or fly and look for a safer place to live. In fact, life would become extremely boring. If you are information, you can be stored. You can be copied and exist is several distributed vaults. You might fabricate a limited clone, each watching over other ones well-being. If a meteorite falls on the top of your head you will be dead. If a nuke eradicates a single vault, there will be others. I will be only losing information since the last backup. (Of course, I will backup incrementally). > subject to mistakes and failures) every 20 years. And this issue applies to The failure rate of each individual copy is known. By providing redundancy, compares and redundant representation we can reduce the process to effectively zero bit error rate. The process of copying can (should, actually) be automatic. However, there is no need, since brain architecture, which, of course, is preserved in the emulation, is extremely tolerant to lesions. Even major ones. But tapes are inadequate, obviously. I wanted merely to illustrate the fact that the bulk storage technology exists even now. Durable and small, it will be commonplace in the future. > cryonics too, but not as an objection: someday we will have much better forms > of storage which don't require constant attention. If we are to be preserved > NOW, however, we have no other choice. I have also no choice since the technology will not be sufficient for uploading within my lifetime. I'll meet you in the fridge. Provided, you do not insist on other roommates in the Big Foot dewar. > > And naturally, any form of preservation will need institutions to maintain it > and bring us out of storage when needed. Those institutions are presently > called cryonics societies. The absolute minimal base for any form of cryopreservation and uploading. Absolutely. > Finally, as for the issue of uploading into a computer, one major feature > which all our machines (electrical or mechanical) now lack is the ability for > self-repair. Even our brains have some small ability at self repair (not to Actually, I see this as a plus. I can always swap out the information when the module goes sour and insert a new one. (Make no mistake, a molecular circuit embedded in a diamondoid solid will run several 10-100 years until sufficiently deteriorated. Even protein crystal based ones will be quite hardy.) > mention other body parts) and I would expect that these will increase much > more in the future. As I've also mentioned, the present consensus about brain > repair in humans compared to that in (say) salamanders is that our ability to > repair is still (in a sense) present, but is blocked by other factors. And You'll need a lot of self-repair ability if you get run over by a truck. Or a car bomb chooses to explode just as you pass by. No, thanks. > current work is now focused on how to remove that blocking. But of course, It is blocked with good reasons. Unblock it enough, and all you get is a cluster of wild proliferating degenerate cells. Also called cancer. > the issue of uploading into a computer not for storage but as a new creature > to be awake and active has been discussed at some length here before, and I > won't go further into those issues here. Yeah, the issues are long settled. I enjoyed your post. Eugene. 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