X-Message-Number: 9599
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 19:47:42 EDT
Subject: Information Conservation

INFORMATION CONSERVATION

Jan Coetzee asks me to elaborate on conservation of information. I can't do
much of a job in a short space, but I can give some brief indications.

A basic question in cryonics is how much of the healthy state of the brain can
be inferred from studying the frozen or frozen/thawed brain (together with
relevant external information). My own opinion is that information is
conserved--none of it is ever lost--and therefore, in principle, no inference
about the past is forever out of reach.

Frank Tipler's book, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY (Doubleday, 1994), includes
his conclusion that, in the far future, computing power will be unlimited and
subjective life span also unlimited, so that we or our descendants or
successors could resurrect anyone who ever lived (and more). The chain of
reasoning in his main thesis--that this resurrection will actually
occur--seems to me to have some very weak links, but his "omega point" and
"multiverse"  notions are scientifically respectable, although by no means
generally accepted. Anyway, he appears to agree that information is conserved.

Most people have the impression that information is regularly degraded and
lost, and of course that is true on a local basis or with respect to a
particular mechanism of information retrieval. But from a GLOBAL perspective
the situation is entirely different.

Every particle or system or region of spacetime is connected to many others,
perhaps ALL others, through a variety of previous and present interactions.
(Much attention lately has been given to quantum entanglement.)  Hence
information about almost anything is to be found almost anywhere, if you know
how to look and have the time and motivation to make the equipment. 

Naturally, a system that has been "homogenized," as by prolonged and vigorous
stirring, will be very difficult--at present, in practice, impossible--to
relate to its previous condition of organization. But in principle it could
eventually be done, by studies of the global sequel. In practice, the actual
degradation of a frozen brain is only a tiny fraction of the maximum
theoretically possible degradation, and restoration to a normal condition
might easily be feasible in the relatively near future. For some details, see
Ralph Merkle's web site or his CRYONICS cryorepair article, available from
Alcor.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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