X-Message-Number: 7861
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7854 - #7856
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 23:40:40 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

To Mr. Roscoe:

Perhaps I did not explain myself well enough. I was NOT discussing the passage
of time as it would appear to someone who had been uploaded versus someone
who had not. I was discussing the time, as measured in this world, required
to upload someone ... or for that matter, because I was discussing parallel


Since you raised the issue, I will add a bit more. If you have been uploaded
into a computer, then presumably you want to experience more rather than
less. Forgetting all other issues, if the computer is too slow you will 
experience much less than if you had NOT been uploaded. Parallel computing is
one way to increase speed. There are other ways, but fundamentally if you
have any computer capable of working at speed X, and can write or rewrite
your program to run in 100 such cooperating (important!) computers, then you
can make it run at a much faster rate than X. In the best cases, 100 times
faster (there are generally other issues in a parallel program which can
slow things down). 

I know that many people are interested, for instance, in virtual reality. 
Making a version of virtual reality which comes anywhere close to the 
appearance of reality will require VERY fast computing --- and probably 
therefore parallel computing. (After all, many things are going on in the
world, all at the same time).

About embalming, with formalin or other means:

I doubt that anyone involved in cryonics would argue with this possibility
IN THEORY. However, there are bad problems of implementation. Among them
is the problem of getting the formalin or other fluid into every brain 
cell rather than just a layer of cells surrounding the rest of the brain.
Believe it or not, in the beginnings of cryonics this idea was actually
tried (experimentally, not on a patient). It did not work, for just the
reason I describe. We can get cryoprotectant into brains (if we get the
patient soon enough) but chemicals like formalin raise a whole new set
of problems --- basically because they "embalm" whatever they touch, and
we can't get them to spread through the brain without blocking off access
to most of it.

I have personally wondered (I too don't think cryopreservation is holy, it's
just the best way we know NOW) about a system which might solve this 
problem. Ideally, say, you have devised modified bacteria which carry 
with them chemicals which when combined will produce an embalming solution.
They are injected into the blood stream and spread throughout our brain,
passing through the walls of our capillaries and venules and putting themselves
near every cell. Then you send down a chemical signal through the bloodstream,
which causes these machines/creatures/bacteria to release the chemicals they
carry, which react with one another and produce an embalming solution to
embalm all the cells near each such machine/creature/bacterium.

I suggest modified bacteria because I think we're much closer to any 
ability to do that than to make such devices using other forms of
nanotechnology. The exact means, of course, does not matter.

Such a system sounds fine to me, except for the small problem that we're not
yet able to build it. There may be simpler ways, but I have yet to hear of
them. Frankly, I think freezing is now the best way to go --- not that we
won't someday have better ways, but we DO have to go with what we have
rather than spend our time dreaming about alternatives. When saving my life
is involved, the last thing I want is dreams about alternatives.

As someone who has spent some time studying brains and how memory works, 
I must also add another criterion for our "preservative solution" --- even
if we have a way to get it in in the first place. Neurons are much more
complex than simple electrical switches. Not only do they still have more
connections with other neurons than any computer chips yet build, but
they use not just electrical signals but a large number of different 
chemical signals, all of which neuroscientists are now slowly working out.
Whatever preservative we might use, it must allow us to recover the 
state of each of our neurons before it was preserved: not just its
electrical state (not so important, actually) but its CHEMICAL state. And
that does put some conditions on the chemical preservative.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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