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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7523