X-Message-Number: 15461
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 08:06:44 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: answers to 2 questions

Hi everyone!

The issue of Cryonet first on my list (I haven't been up on the Net
or looked at cryonet for a while) has two questions:

1. Since I am still officially a member of the Board of INC, Ettinger
   wanted my opinion on the ionic method to assess viability. The first
   thing I'll have to say is that although I founded INC, and paid to
   get it set up as a corporation AND one to which you can donate in
   the US and pay no US taxes on the income you donate, I'm no longer
   involved in the discussions.

   I would value the ionic method for assessing viability because it
   does touch on a characteristic of our cell membranes which is 
   quite necessary for viability. However if we can get actual operation
   of neurons: sending impulses and responding to them, then that's
   much more valuable and trumps any other method. This is a statement
   of what I think, independent of what research INC has been involved
   in.

2. Once more on neurons, brains, and computers: basically we do not 
   have a situation in which we have some large subset of our neurons
   which connect totally to one another. Our connections take up only
   a subset of those possible. Just how big a subset and just which
   neurons connect to others has some commonality between us, but 
   when we look at details we are all different. Anyone who reads
   PERIASTRON and thinks about what its articles say will know this.

   Moreover, our fine connections are not stable (recent discoveries
   verify this). That is why the number of possible connections is
   closer to 2^N and than N^2... though the number N here is hardly
   well known, as yet. Yes, at any instant Mike Perry or Thomas 
   Donaldson will have a given set of connections between a given
   set of neurons, and less than N^2 of them, too ... but since our
   experiences will cause new connections and wipe out some older
   ones, this fact hardly seems important. If we wanted to make
   an instant copy of Mike Perry, for preservation, his exact set
   of connections WOULD become important, but only for that purpose.
   Once we revive him, his set of connections will start changing.

   The value of parallel computing here is that living in the real
   world we must do several different "mental" processes all at the
   same time. Not interleaving them, but really at the same time.
   Most of these are unconscious, but they're hardly less important
   because of that. I will mention breathing and heartbeat as two
   examples, but hardly a complete set. There are enough of each
   that we cannot really expect to work well with a single computer
   at all ... which does not mean we might not be able to THINK
   well, but instead that we could not SURVIVE well at all.

   I hope this point explains why I think numbers like N^2 mean
   very little if we want to find out how brains work and preserve
   them. As for parallel computing, even in computing, its value
   comes because it lets us do things which otherwise would take
   far too long ... in some cases, even now, things which would
   literally take millions of years, when done on a single fast
   sequential computer. And that's why I think Turing neglected
   timing, and timing is important enough that it should NOT be
   neglected.

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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