X-Message-Number: 7875
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7862 - #7870
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 11:20:57 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

1. While I certainly hope the Oregon situation resolves itself in a way
   favorable to cryonics, the suggestion that autopsy may be REQUIRED raises
   serious problems for cryonicists --- and not most others interested in
   this possibility. 

   Ultimately we must somehow find a way to allow cryonic suspension on its
   own merits, not as one more form of suicide. If anything, even the ability
   to preserve and revive brains may help us to do that.

2. Computers, computers, what then are computers? I raised this issue in my
   last posting, but it deserves more amplification. If we say that a computer
   is any finite state machine, then in what way is a Model T automobile not
   a finite state machine? In what way is a ROCK not a finite state machine?
   (Yes, it may have only one state, but one is a finite number). We have lots
   of machines all around us and do not call all of them computers.

   First of all, since many of these machines exist in a real world which is
   NOT digital, someone may answer that the Model T is not a finite state
   machine because (in the world, not just as an isolated object) it can
   take an infinite number of different states. Of course, our brains too
   have that characteristic. (Nor for that matter do our brains operate in
   a digital manner). Since attempts to emulate nondigital phenomena such as
   weather, or even the motion of the planets (in detail) with a digital
   computer will go awry over time, there is one problem with uploading into
   a DIGITAL machine. (I am not referring to quantum mechanics or anything
   basically mysterious. Many physical systems have the property that they
   will AMPLIFY rather than damp down small errors --- this is the origin of
   "chaos" that so many people talk about now. And of course there is no 
   way a digital machine can match perfectly the parameters of one which
   is NOT digital. Just how soon the emulation runs off the track, of course,
   depends on the machine we're trying to emulate. Certainly we can keep
   this from happening for any set time ... by increasing the accuracy of
   our calculations. But that automatically means more memory and more 
   calculation).

   Furthermore there is a serious question at the heart of the whole idea
   of emulation or simulation. A simulated Model T takes you nowhere. It
   fails in the basic purpose of a Model T. Forgetting for the moment the
   issue of chaos which I just raised, let us suppose that we have a 
   PERFECT simulation of a person. Is this simulation the same as the 
   original? Sure, it will (by definition) fool any third person into 
   thinking it is the original. But if you are brought back as a simulation
   will you know you've been brought back? The simulation doesn't even 
   think, it just simulates thought. Not only that, but when we look at
   its insides we find a computer program running the simulated neurons 
   so that they simulate the action of neurons. We do not have a real 
   brain but instead a very large computer program. Somehow this does not
   look to me to be enough, even if (theoretically, remember!) such a
   simulation were good enough to simulate YOU and fool me into believing
   it was you. As it stands now, I think that this possibility is theoretical
   only and will remain so indefinitely, for the reasons I've already 
   given. And if it does not, then YOU can go first. 

   I do not mean by this that we cannot improve ourselves or improve our
   neurons. All we need do is to make machines which will behave like 
   neurons, not simulating them but actually doing the activities involved.
   As I said before, that is far from impossible. And I would not insist
   that these novoneurons use the same chemistry and other features of 
   our present neurons.... a generalization is quite good enough. Or we
   could modify our own neurons into something better. Nor does this
   argument suggest that we cannot STORE the configuration of our neurons
   and whatever other features and properties turn out to be important
   in a digital computer. Sure, there will be a certain inaccuracy, but
   if that information is then used to BUILD another brain rather than
   simulate it, it will revive you or me, close enough that I would not
   complain.

   Are we then computers? Let us say, nondigital ones? Well, our neurons
   do not act simply by moving around bits of electrical current, and 
   they grew, they were not built. You can decide this question however
   you wish --- I do not wish to argue merely over definitions. But unless
   you wish to claim that everything is a computer, and thus make the word
   meaningless, you (and I too) should look carefully at the actual 
   objects we are discussing. 

			Long long life (in whatever form)

				Thomas Donaldson


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