X-Message-Number: 4736
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Rebooting a suspendee
Date: 4 Aug 1995 18:06:33 GMT
Message-ID: <3vtnj9$>

References: <> 
<3veele$> <>


In <>  (Anders 
Sandberg) writes:

>I don't see how it (rewarming) could be
>trivial. When doing general repairs at -130'C, the nanites
>have lots of time, they can survey an volume, calculkate the
>best responses, put everything in place and add nanites
>for "postprocessing". It is complex, but essentially an
>immense optimization task where you can spend an arbitrary
>time finding the best solution. But as the body heats up, a 
>lot of things are going to happen at once, the nanites obviously 
>have to react in some cases and make sure the damage is not 
>impossible to repair at body temperature in many other cases, 
>cell machinery is going to come online if it is not properly
>fixated and if it is fixed you have to remove the fixation
>gently enough not to cause any harm - this requires not
>only detailed knowledge of the biochemistry, but also how
>to control it dynamically. Hardly impossible to learn if
>you have nanotechnology, but repair seems simpler IMHO.

	There is a very simple argument that shows the
triviality of the rewarming problem (and I thank you
for raising the issue so that I was able to refine it):
Suitably prepared tissue samples (though not whole organs)
from most parts of the body can already be cooled to 
deep subzero temperatures and rewarmed with little or
no injury.  This shows that cellular states exist
from which viable rewarming is possible without any
nanotech intervention at all.  Thus we have at least
one definitive brute-force solution to the rewarming
problem: Take as much time as necessary with advanced
nanotech to restore subzero tissue to a state which
we know from conventional cryobiology will survive 
rapid rewarming and cryoprotectant washout.  (Rapid
rewarming could be achieved by either rf heating or
in-situ exothermic reactions.)  Viola!  I don't think
that this is the most likely scenario, but it certainly
shows that if you have capabilities for general repair 
at subzero temperatures, then rewarming is a minor issue.


>> 	Aye, and there's the rub.  I don't think you
>> gave this problem much thought because you simply saw
>> it as an opportunity to post some uploading propaganda.

>Actually not. I was genuinely interested in the question. 

	Then I apologize.

>I think it is odd that there should exist animosity between
>uploaders and cryonicists, in my opinion the two areas are
>so interlinked they are hard to distinguish. To get
>uploading we need a biological know-how, computer power and 
>technology not far from cryonics, and the knowledge gained
>from uploading research is obviously applicable to cryonics.

	There is no inherent animosity between cryonicists
and uploaders.  In this case it is purely personal.  It comes
from years of being told by uploaders that cryonics is
crude and unperfected, and that uploading is much more
interesting and promising.  It comes from watching Hans
Moravec sell thousands of copies of Mind Children, while
Charles Platt (a professional author of dozens of successful
books) cannot even find a publisher for a book about cryonics.
It comes from watching people post elaborate plans for
interferometric brain  scanners on CryoNet, and assert that
personal development work on such scanners will do more
to increase their life expectancy than cryonics arrangements.
It comes from the realization that most (though certainly
not all) uploaders are more interested in talking about the 
future than getting to the future.

	There are certainly exceptions to the above (such
as Eugen Leitl, and perhaps yourself).  But in my experience
uploaders who take the logical step of becoming cryonicists
are very rare, and it is the hypocrisy of this that frustrates
me more than anything else.

---Brian Wowk 


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