X-Message-Number: 11068
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: More on uploading: it is NOT going to be imminent
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 23:23:16 +1100 (EST)

Hi everyone!

To Yvan: 
We don't really know whether uploading will be so easy. The information
you give in your message isn't about uploading, but about a system which
just might be able to emulate the intellectual operation of a cat (to 
really emulate a cat it would need the proper senses and body).

What may well happen is that we'll all be presented with one more
illustration of just how difficult it is to make computers capable of many
things which seem trivially easy to us --- and cats. I await the outcome
of this work with interest.

For cryonics, uploading within the natural lifespan of anyone reading this
seems a totally lost cause. We may well be able to SOMEDAY find ways to
produce creatures to which we could upload ourselves --- I am optimistic
about such technology in the very long term. I doubt that we would now
call them "computers", or even their brains (or whatever substitutes for
a brain) "computers" either... any more than we would call our present
floodlights "candles". I do not intend to plan for my continuation by
working or supporting work on uploading.

			Best wishes and long long life to all,


				Thomas Donaldson

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