X-Message-Number: 7523
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7505 - #7509
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 10:54:30 -0800 (PST)

Hi everyone!

I missed previous messages for various reasons, but I do want to underscore
the importance of research NOW.

Unfortunately, no matter how powerful our technology may become by (say)
2400, we have a problem in getting to 2400. No amount of nanotechnology will
really be enough here, especially so long as it remains almost entirely
THEORY rather than actual fact. 

First of all, cryonics remains small. Your suspension may have been perfect,
but that will not protect you when the local law enforcement people come
round to shut down your facility. Yes, the cryonicists in charge will try
to avoid that, but they won't necessarily be able to do that in YOUR case.
Moreover, what will happen in the future is unknown. Perhaps we'll pass 
through a period of public agitation AGAINST cryonics (say, for the reasons
Ben Best states in quoting Hayflick). It may not be the law but a mob that
comes round to shut down your facility.

Moreover, no measures of protection are perfect. Even if we don't run into
organized opposition, what if YOUR capsule springs a leak and isn't fixed
soon enough to preserve your brain? It's not that those societies doing
storage are negligent; they all try as best they can to prevent that from
happening. But the universe isn't friendly, and someday ...

Second, no amount of nanotechnology can revive you unless it grapples with
the real biological problems of how your brain works. Sure, we can waft
about abstract ideas which say there is a boundary between the fixable
brains and those so messed up that they cannot be fixed (there is no unique
way to reconstruct them based on the information we have). All that is 
no more than theory, which is to say that it is WORDS WORDS WORDS ...
perhaps with a few fancy equations thrown in. Where is that boundary and
what must we do to KNOW we can fix the brains which result from our 
procedures (that is, KNOW they can be revived). No advocate of nanotechnology
has given anything close to a good answer. I do not want to be brought
back as an 80% approximation of Thomas Donaldson, I want to be brought back
as a much closer approximation --- well over 99%, if at all possible.

Not only that, but much of the PUBLIC interest in nanotechnology (except
for biotechnology, which I think cannot fairly be excluded) deals with 
ELECTRONICS. If we want means for our revival, they won't come early unless
cryonicists develop them. Or do those who think otherwise believe that
high-powered computers, alone, will solve our problems? 

In fact, as everyone on Cryonet knows, there is right now an effort to
raise money for research into freezing and reviving brains -- Prometheus.
Learning how to do that will show we have means to put ourselves on the 
right side of that boundary I've just discussed. WE would then know we
can be revived not because XYZ has produced books full of theory but
because WE KNOW HOW TO DO IT. Just how we might be revived in the future
will then cease to matter; we will know that at least one way exists. 

Third, one major problem with the nonbiological kinds of nanotechnology
is this: so far, not one working device has been made. Sure, there are
now reams of written material, and even more calculations. Proposals 
exist to make all the individual machines: levers, gears, etc... but
these are no more than proposals. And sure, STMs and other such machines
DO exist, but without even more work the idea that they might make
the devices WE need is laughable. Not only that, but to any exponent
of this variety of nanotechnology, I will point out that comparisons 
between it and other means for our revival show a gulf: they compare
something which EXISTS NOW or can soon be brought into existence with
tools we already have to something which DOES NOT EXIST NOR DO THE TOOLS
TO MAKE IT EXIST. It is very easy to make a comparison between something
which does not exist, and something which does, come out very much
in favor of that which does not exist. You're comparing the theoretically
idea with the actual --- and the actual will inevitably come out the 
loser. But for some mysterious reason, when we actually want to DO 
something rather than theorize, we always choose the actual.

What will really happen is that we will work up to these perfected machines
through imperfect ones: ones larger than perfect, slower than perfect,
more clumsy than perfect ... but still advances on our current means.  
(Yes, I personally believe biotechnology is the field to look at if we want to 
START this process. In terms of the manipulations of matter it can do, it can 
do far more than STMs or other means --- NOW. Not only that, but so far, even 
in NANOSYSTEMS, the best that has been done is to devise in THEORY machines 
which match (granted, in another milieu -- a vacuum!) what enzymes can do 
now --- and enzymes work because they ARE small machines.
And yes, I think that biochemistry still has many lessons for anyone who
wants to design such machines, especially if they are to repair us).

But that is an aside -- though if some wish I will expand on it elsewhere.
The real point is that we can expect a far longer time for perfect
nanomachines to arrive than for nanomachines themselves --- and depending
on how you define "perfection", it may NEVER arrive.

If we are to advance cryonics we need RESEARCH. Electronics companies, and
even biotechnology companies, will not do this for us. We are too small.
We must do it ourselves. And as Paul says outright, we may find our 
recruitment works far better if we can truly say we're working on all the
problems cryonics involves than if we start arguing that future technology
will be able to rescue us -- THEORETICALLY. And the better we can make our 
suspension methods --- even if they clearly remain imperfect --- the better 
will be our case for cryonics.



And finally, a matter irrelevant to the above:

Recently I found a reference to a lifespan experiment with DHEA in a book
singing its praises (the praises of DHEA, not the lifespan experiment). And
unlike many, this one had an actual reference so I could go a read it 
myself. So yesterday I went up to UCSF Medical Library and photocopied
it. No luck, no luck at all. The lifespan experiment showed that New Zealand
mice --- specially bred to be subject to early lupus erythematosis, an 
autoimmune disase, and thus among the very short-lived mice -- could have
their lifespans extended by DHEA. Although I may add a mention of this 
experiment to the Appendix where I discuss DHEA, it once more fails to show
any merit of DHEA as a means to increase our lifespan.... unless some of
us suffer from autoimmune diseases. 

			Long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson


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