X-Message-Number: 25904 Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 08:14:46 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: To Bob Ettinger and Yvan Bozzonetti To Bob Ettinger and Yvan Bozzonetti: To Bob Ettinger: We do not MAKE life by modelling it. Since I wasn't talking about modelling life at all, I don't know what led you to make your comment. I thought I had made the distinction clear. As for MAKING life, PRESENT-DAY electronics does not look at all like the best place to start, Turing tape or not. It's not nearly changeable enough. As for making a "neuron" with a cell body as small as present neurons, lots of work goes on right now toward miniaturizing our electronics (nanoelectronics, of course). That's fine. The next step is to make it changeable just as neurons are changeable, and of course include ways to make new neurons too. To Yvan Bozzonetti: You did not answer me, you merely repeated what you had said before with different words. Perhaps I did not understand that you were attempting to model a neuron rather than make a working substitute for a neuron. If so, I apologize. Just like all models it will fail to catch everything relevant about how neurons work. As a model that's fine. As a substitute for a real neuron, it will ultimately . Given present electronics, you'll have something far too big to be substituted for a real neuron. And if you really wish to answer me, tell me how your system will when put together work like our hippocampus --- including the dentate gyrus part of the hippocampus. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25904