X-Message-Number: 3607
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 18:39:27 -0500
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <>
Subject: Re: SCI.CRYONICS Re: Flash Freezing & Uploading Yourself

> let's suppose we could find some nanodevice which would convert, alone
> or with other devices of its kind, the heat in a patient's body into
> (say) x-rays (which will pass through the body and dissipate that heat
> elsewhere).

That would violate the second law of thermodynamics.  You can't use heat
to do useful work such as producing x-rays.

And even if you could, the resulting quantity of x-rays would cause
enormous radiation damage to the brain.

> To detect that heat the nanodevices would (I think) need to have a
> lower temperature than the body they are attempting to cool.

What do you mean detect heat?  Everything around them will be at the
same temperature.  Measuring this uniform temperature would be easy,
but I don't see the value of it.

Keeping a nanodevice colder than its surroundings would be very
difficult.  It could keep part of itself colder than the rest, but
considering the enormous surface area to volume ratio of anything that
small, and the lack of room for much insulation, it would have to run
its air conditioner like a house in Texas in July that had all its doors
and windows open.  This enormous energy expenditure would generate so
much waste heat that it would quickly fry the brain it was in.

> If you really want to [have an artificial brain], it might make more
> sense to try setting a brain up as software in a highly parallel
> computer.

I agree.

> That would get around a PART of the "remodelling connections" problem,
> though probably not all of it: after all, you would be modelling a
> brain on something with fixed connections.

That's not a problem unless you insist on the various parallel parts of
the computer mapping naturally into the various parallel parts of the
brain.  You could simulate the brain in whatever is the most natural way
for a serial computer, and then parallelize that algorithm.

> To deal with things like the diffusion of NO or CO, ...

I know that NO is a neurotransmitter, but are you sure that CO is?
Wouldn't any CO quickly bond to heme?

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