X-Message-Number: 7864 Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 07:46:29 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Strout <> Subject: Re: timescale of cryonics & uploading In msg #7857, Arkady Elgort <> wrote: > As Thomas Donaldson mentioned, even massively parallel computers cannot > model anything like human brain. Therefore uploading into some unknown > machine has no scientific grounds whatsoever. I don't believe Thomas said anything quite like that. Perhaps he said that *today's* massively parallel computers can't model the brain, which of course is true by wide margins. But this is different from saying that no computer could model the brain. And I think your conclusion is unfounded. The scientific grounds for uploading is quite solid. Briefly, it goes like this: neurons can be emulated. The brain is composed of neurons (and glia, and a few other things, which I assume we can also model). Therefore, the brain can be emulated. Today's computers are not well suited to the task; certainly emulating an entire brain would take specialize hardware, but what of it? There's already a growing field that works on this; do a Lycos search for "neuromorphic" and you'll turn up a hundred interesting links. We still have a LOT of details to work out, both in the science (details of how neurons work individually and collectively, etc.) and the engineering (better emulation hardware, faster technology, etc.). But the foundation appears solid. If you can see some fundamental problem I have overlooked, please let me know. > Brain repair after suspension also could prove impossible, but at least > we KNOW that biological brains do (sometimes) work.;) Yes. And biological brains are computers, are they not? So we know our consciousness (etc.) can be supported by at least SOME computers... Regards, -- Joe ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Department of Neuroscience, UCSD | | http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/ | `------------------------------------------------------------------' Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7864