X-Message-Number: 7869 Date: Sun, 16 Mar 97 13:17:34 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Uploading On Sat, 15 Mar 1997, Arkady Elgort wrote (#7857): >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. Brain repair >after suspension also could prove impossible, but at least we KNOW >that biological brains do (sometimes) work.;) There is good reason to think that the human brain can be described as a finite-state machine, a very complex one to be sure. This follows from basic physics--every system bounded in spatial extent and energy content is a finite-state machine at the quantum level, which includes the human brain. (A discussion of this can be found in *The Physics of Immortality* by Frank Tipler.) Since a computer is also a finite-state machine that can emulate other finite-state machines, this provides "some scientific grounds" for the possibility of uploading--and remember there's no proof that cryonics patients can be resuscitated either, but again, just evidence. As for uploading, if/when it happens it will no doubt involve a combination of computers more powerful than ours today, and better understanding of the problem so we don't have to do a brute-force emulation at the atomic level. Mike Perry http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7869