X-Message-Number: 33398
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From: Gerald Monroe <>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:21:47 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33363 - #33394
--20cf307f389ac0072a049d5bc92f
Robert Ettinger - why do you consider uploading to be nonsense?
To reverse current suspensions, the most comprehensive and logical solution
is an atom by atom scan of every fragment of the frozen brains in the dewars
today. Current methods and equipment don't have anywhere near atomic
level resolution - if we scanned a brain today, we'd destroy a portion of it
making the slices, and would scan each slice using a relatively low
resolution light microscope. If you are wondering what I am talking about,
here's a website where a brain was scanned using today's methods :
http://thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/hm_live.php
From this scan, we can probably determine some of the reasons why the
patient was unable to form new long term memories. If we knew what to look
for, we might be able to infer a rough guess of the patient's personality
and temperment, as well as what types of things the patient was skilled at.
But nothing specific enough that the patient would experience continuity of
existence, which is the primary ultimate goal of cyronics.
However, atomically precise scans are theoretically possible, and we can do
them today for small two dimensional surfaces.
Anyways, once we perform such a scan, we'll know exactly with almost perfect
resolution the physical structures of the synapses of the brain. Currently,
we think that all information stored in the brain is represented by
interactions between networks of synapses that each have a potential for
firing and potentials for changing, aka thresholds and plasticity. Some
areas of the brain are far more plastic than others, and can actually form
new synapses - although we currently think that new synapses are formed
randomly, and they are retained or deleted depending on how useful a new
connection is. In any case, all of the biology - all of the ridiculous
complexity - is most likely reducable to a simpler set of rules that apply
per synapse. At any given connection in the brain, there might be 10 or
less parameters that represent the "state" of that location. A parameter
for the density for each protein type related to the handling of charge and
neurotransmitters, for the concentratration of loose long distance
neurotransmitters that bathe the intracellular fluid, and so on.
Anyways, once we map someone's mind, what do we do next? Neuroscientists of
the future will have to understand exactly what they are doing to even
attempt a revival. While we do not know all of the precise details of how
the brain's interconnects actually work today, that will have to be known by
the time a revival is even contemplated.
Well, the most logical step is to take the exact same technology we used to
make the molecular scan - molecular manufacturing - and print ourselves a
massive cube of electronic circuitry that precisely emulates each and every
synapse of the cryonic patient's mind. Since each and every processing
core is a copy of every other one (just loaded with different data
reflecting the current state of a synapse) and following the same microcode,
human beings could engineer and build such an emulator. Also, when things
go wrong, we can debug something that we designed and created.
It's possible that the brain exploits strange quantum effects that
conventional digital circuitry can't reproduce. Not a problem - just add
molecular circuits to our cube that emulate this property of the brain as
well. As long as you assume that the brain relies on matter and energy to
perform computation, and that alternate designs of a brain could run the
same human personality, then this is ultimately possible.
Also, actual studies of real neural tissue reveal the stuff is
horribly noisy and unreliable and so many of the subtle effects we wonder
about are likely lost in the noise.
Or, door number 2 is we attempt to use our molecular manufacturing to create
a new brain, with each neuron and glial cell and blood vessel and everything
else made from a molecular pattern representing a *living *state. Also, the
manufacturing equipment will have to work with a solid, so the living
neurons must start as frozen and be constructed to survive thawing. I think
this is possible, but the complexity - understanding of living systems to
the level of God himself - may be beyond the capabilities of human brains to
ever solve.
I firmly believe revivals can be done with a person waking up in the peak of
health, but it'll probably take a hybrid approach such as first opening door
#1, bringing people back as emulations of their formal selves, and running
those emulations at speeds millions of times faster than realtime to solve
the problems with approach number 2.
In any case, please pop my soap bubble. What facts and data can you bear to
show that we can't emulate a system that was apparently designed through
pure blind chance and is a prototype in the natural world. (humans are
basically prototypes because we haven't existed for enough generations for
evolution to refine us, which is both why our brains can fail so
spectacularly and why no other species has our capabilities)
I don't mind learning that I am wrong. I took my first neurscience course
in medical school fairly recently. It's just that there's an awful lot of
stuff I've learned about that support this idea.
Gerald Monroe
p.s. : Rudi : this is why computer scientists were the first to jump on
cryonics. It takes a deep understanding of math to visualize a software
function with 10+ variables representing each synapse, and how trillions of
said functions interacting together could lead to the emergent complexity we
actually see in humans. And that a copy is as good as the original, and
that exponentially more intelligent systems are possible. Most people in
the United States probably ultimately believe that our God given souls
trigger each neuron like strings on a puppet.
--20cf307f389ac0072a049d5bc92f
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